Monday I posted my review of Die Young: Burying Yourself in Christ by Hayley and Michael MiDarco. Today I wanted to post a number of great quotes from the book in chapter order.

Death is the New Life:

His death (Christ), then, allows for your death….His death is the one and only thing that allows you to no longer live for yourself (p. 24).

The trials and suffering of your life offer you the opportunity to die, and sometimes they make you want to die. But suffering is senseless and so is the pain that goes along with it if it serves no other purpose than to destroy you….Will suffering destroy your hope and your faith, leaving you with nothing solid to stand on,, alone and empty, or will your suffering destroy the parts of your life that tie you to the things of this earth and keep your focus off the God of heaven? If you believe that death is the new life, then you have to know that you will face trials, you will suffer (p. 27).

By the process of dying to yourself and your old way of life, you are brought into a new creation, one that is not only a grain but also an entire tree filled with the fruit of righteousness (p. 33).

There is a death that comes that isn’t meant to destroy you but to destroy that in you which was never meant to replace the hand of God in your life (p. 33-34).

Down is the New Up

It’s from a lowly position of self-awareness and sin that we are saved because God reaches down and touches us in our need…..The bottom isn’t such a bad lace because it is only from the perspective of your own lowest point that you are able to see your sinfulness and need for a loving Savior and to be saved (p. 45).

The counterintuitive nature of taking last place is actually the remedy to all our anger, frustration, and bitterness (p. 43).

Self-loathing would not exist if we had replaced our own interests with God’s interests; but it does exist not solely because of our self-hatred, but because of the mostly subconscious notion that we are so significant that we ought to be doing better than we are, to be more successful than we are, to be thinner than we are, or to be in any way better than we have been. The deep-seated and camouflaged pride in us screams, “It’s all about me! My pain, my suffering, my stuff! And because of that all of my energy is going into fixing me, even through torture or starvation, punishment and hatred.” What happens is the punishment of self is really an elevation of self to the center of our minds (p. 55).

Complaint simply elevates the one who complains, making that person the assayer of all goodness and the authority on all badness (p. 62).

The whole world is turned upside down when you die young and determine to live for the one who died for you (p. 73).

Less is the New More

While stuff isn’t inherently evil, the position we give it in our hearts can be (p. 75).

For everything that we want more of there is an accompanying danger in the more. The danger really isn’t even with the stuff but the position that our hearts give the stuff (p. 78).

The less we allow ourselves to follow our desire and passion for the more of this world, for the more that sin offers, the more we have of God himself (p. 80).

As long as we continue to hoard the things God has given us, we keep those things from changing the lives of those around us (p. 82).

This saving of your life through the stuff you put into it is then turning away from God and his saving grace towards the saving grace of stuff. And this is the essence of idolatry (p. 84).

To deny yourself something, anything, even if it isn’t something bad for you is to teach yourself that you will not be controlled by your passions. Less is more because the continual practice of less keeps your wants from becoming your needs…. When less is offensive, when less makes you uncomfortable, God becomes less important than your need for more (p. 87).

We know the word “covet” is bad, but when we see something we really want, complain because we don’t have it, or do all we can to get it, we give it a completely different definition. “Need,” “deserve,” “meant for,” are the terms we use to define the desires of our hearts (p. 91).

Weak is the New Strong

It can be a horrible feeling, your own weakness, your own wretchedness, but it isn’t mean to be the end of hope but he end of you, and that comes when you surrender the idea that you can do it all in your own strength (p. 103).

In the moment when everything is stripped away, when the pit seems like it can’t get any deeper, when all you love is lost, then can you truly see heaven reaching down to grab your hand to pull you up (p. 109).

When you become so certain of your need for him that each moment you look to receive all that you require from him,  then waiting becomes the highlight of your day, the source of all your hope (p. 111).

Slavery is the New Freedom

When a man demands the freedom to make his own choices, to do whatever he pleases and to be subject to no one, he deceives himself into thinking that freedom is a possibility….the man devoted to freedom becomes a slave to whatever freedom he enjoys (p. 120).

The believer is no longer his own, so to demand freedom is to demand to be set free from God, free to be your own god or to find another that serves you better. This ends up being no freedom at all (p. 122).

To reject the freedom of Christ for the freedom of the world it to submit yourself again to the yoke of slavery (p. 122).

Slavery is the new freedom because slavery to God gives those of us who embrace it freedom from all other gods which express their hold on us in the form of struggles, addictions, fears, worries, and all other sins in our lives (p. 123).

…Here is the single most critical verse in the life of the sinner, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 8:1). This is the message of the gospel for a sinful world. And this is the slavery that freedom brings, freedom from the condemnation that ought to come from sin but doesn’t because of the blood of Jesus (p. 123).

The only man who is truly free is the one who not only believes that slavery to God is what is best for him, but who trusts his master enough to believe that he made arrangements for his complete freedom and not a partial freedom. You cannot be a part-time slave (p. 127).

Slavery empties itself of all its self-will and determines to please God and to crucify self. The life that doesn’t die to self denies the master, refusing to entrust itself as slave, and thereby misses out on freedom (p. 129).

Freedom is yours when you submit to the only slavery that you were meant to be under (p. 137).

Confession is the New Innocence

Without confession of guilt there is no innocence for the sinner (p. 139).

Our resistance to confession does two things: it keeps us from the forgiveness our sin needs, and it also calls God a liar because to fail to confess is to say “I have not sinned.” (p. 140).

Many times our confessions to God might be more statements we make to ourselves about being better next time and thankfulness that God is forgiving. They might never get to the heart of a confession that states the sin and accepts the responsibility for it (p. 145).

When you feel guilty after doing any of the things God forbids, then confession is your only exit (p. 148).

To refuse to be honest about our sin is to refuse to agree with God that there has never been and will never be a perfect person besides Jesus (p. 154).

Red is the New White

We have to beware the thinking that it was out of God’s kindness and love that he saved us. Certainly he is kind and he loves us, but it was out of the death of his Son that he saved us. We can’t rely on God’s kindness or love to gain us access to the throne; it is only through accepting the blood that we can be viewed as innocent and allowed entry (p. 165).

You must, in order to receive justification, believe that the blood is enough. You must die to the part of you that insists to do its part to participate in this salvation thing and to help out God (p. 168).

If you heart has a hard time believing justification by the blood, then consider killing the part of you that would argue against God’s gracious and necessary gift (p. 168).

For many of us, the sins of our past continue to haunt us, and we are unable to forget the terrible things we’ve done. We see Christ and then we look at ourselves and we cringe; how unholy are we, how ugly. But the point of the blood isn’t to keep you there; its to purify you from the stains of your sin, to move you forward. The blood is our bleach (p. 170).

Conclusion – But you can make today the turning point in your life – the point when you determine to completely bury yourself in Christ so deep that nothing can every really harm you again. When you do that…..there is no more death for you. It is all nothing but life. No one can kill you when you are already dead (p. 172-73).