You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal With It Quotes

“Obedience to God always, always, beautifies. It always adds dimension and fullness, which are the results of living how we were meant to live. Our greatest potential will be found in our greatest obedience.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal With It

“None of these is the biblical approach. Here’s the good news: the way we can know that we are doing what we are supposed to be doing is actually very simple. Are you obeying God? Are you honoring Him? Are you being content and rejoicing in your lot? Congratulations! You have tremendous purpose and clarity and calling.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“But God did not save us because we were so valuable. We have value because He saved us.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“Faithfulness does not feel like what it is accomplishing. We have gotten so consumed with feelings needing to be pleasant that we have discarded the generally unpleasant feelings of faithfulness. It doesn’t feel good, so it cannot be good. But discarding the feelings of faithfulness discards the fruits of it.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“When all my life is oriented around glorifying God, I see the value and glory and joy in the little. I see the Creator of all things in the details of my life. His presence there makes nothing little.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“Do you want to be conformed to the image of Christ? Let the Word do it to you. Do you want to overcome the world the flesh and the devil? Let the Word of God and the faithful worship of Him equip you. Do you want to be equipped for every good work? The Word of God will do that for you; the preaching of the Word will strengthen you. Do you want to overcome fear? The Word of God will do that in you.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“Jesus Christ came to this earth, struggled, suffered, and died so that you might die. Let that sink in. It was not His death that gave you life—His death gave you death in Him. But what happened after His death? His victory over death. The resurrection. Jesus Christ died so that you might die, and He lives so that you might live. Your life in Christ is what happens after your death in Him.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“But there is no need for the enemy to be winning in your daily life, because he has lost your eternal life.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“We Christians need to stop thinking of our feelings as insights.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“We are naturally full of instincts and desires that are contrary to what God wants us doing. That means that those things are something to obey with, not something to obey around.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“When Christians who know their value in Christ and their place in this one great narrative face such things, they can still see the glory in it. The humbling in your little story connects directly to the humbling of Christ for your salvation. Your small victories declare His great ones - your victory over fussiness at your children connects to His victory over death. Your death, when it comes, will only be the beginning of eternal life. Your death could come in your prime, or before your prime, and you would be no less you in Christ. Your story would be no smaller, your value unaffected. You could die in infancy and be no less important. You will still live eternally in Christ and need have no fear of the grave.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal With It

“The command to be constantly glorifying our God is essentially a command to be living in constant joy, with constant clarity of purpose and constant pleasures forevermore.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“Jesus Christ came to this earth, struggled, suffered, and died so that you might die. Let that sink in. It was not His death that gave you life—His death gave you death in Him. But what happened after His death? His victory over death. The resurrection. Jesus Christ died so that you might die, and He lives so that you might live. Your life in Christ is what happens after your death in Him. There will be no resolution to these struggles in your life if you do not willingly give your self-fashioned identity to Christ that it might die. It will die anyway, so let it be in Him. And when you live, it will be in Him, too. Friends, there is no hope for you that is not Jesus. There is nothing interesting about you if it is not resurrected in Him. There is nothing defining about you that cannot live in Christ. Your selfishness is dead. Your lust is dead. Your need to be unique is dead. Your envy, greed, obsessions, guilts—they are all dead. Dead and gone in Christ. Stop trying to tidy them up and make them mean something, because they never will. Total submission to Christ is total life in Christ. This is because without dying in Him you cannot live in Him. When you submit your life to Him fully, you can live in Him, fully. There is no going halfsies with death for Christians. You can’t try to keep living the life that should have died in Christ. You can’t arrange all your little ideas about yourself in some compatible way with your idea of Christ. Let Him have it all—what remains after that death is only life. You are no longer the author of your own identities, but rather you live in the Author and He lives in you.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“having a hard time. Imagine it crying to itself, saying, “I don’t know what to do anymore! I don’t feel useful. I don’t feel beautiful. I just sit here in the darkness all the time with no purpose, no goals, no identity. I feel useless, adrift. No one cares about me or wants me to be anything special.” What if someone could say to the moon, “Look to the sun! Just do what you were made for! Reflect the glory! Look to the sun while you go on your journey and your face will be bright! You are beautiful when you are oriented to the sun. You are purposeful when you are oriented to the sun. You are needed when you are oriented to the sun. You were made to be oriented to the sun!” Now imagine the moon saying something like, “Oh, that? That seems sort of unrelated. Why would that help me? What does that have to do with anything? I mean, I know it is there, but it has always been there. It doesn’t have anything to do with the way I am feeling right now. It just seems like pointless platitudes. It doesn’t really feel like you are listening to me.” On a fundamental level, we were”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“This longing to do something important that would matter is just another form of unbelief. Every Christian is always in the middle of the spiritual action, whether being faithful as a mother at home nursing babies, as a single person pursuing their studies, as a missionary, as a worker at the local laundromat, as a CEO, or as a janitor. You are always in the midst of your own most important spiritual work. Your hands are always full of God’s seeds, if you will just plant them.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“eat an apple and enjoy the crunch and the taste, and even the sound of a bite snapping off. But we do not continue to evaluate what the apple is doing for us once it is out of sight, nor do we tell it where to go and what to do. This is the kind of simple joy we need to have in coming to the Word. Eat your Bible. Read the Word. Don’t try to direct the Word about what you want it to do to you. How could you anyway? Come to this table that your Father has prepared. Pull up a chair and eat. Eat and eat again. Come back tomorrow and eat some more. Sometimes you won’t understand what you read, but eat it anyway in joy and gratitude, and it will change you anyway.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“Humans are on the move. We are becoming either one thing or another. We are becoming more Christlike or becoming more worldly. We are either becoming what we were made to be, becoming the truest version of ourselves in our obedience to God, or we are becoming more and more deformed by pursuing and revering anything other than God. We are either hiding from God and being ruined, or running to God and being transformed. There is no middle road—no way of staying uncommitted and unchanging. There is no way of being for a human that is not a way of changing. We even age in our sleep.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“You cannot have resurrection living without the death before it. You cannot have the death of Christ for your sins and then continue to live in them and value them. They are no longer your defining feature. They are no longer your story. They are no longer part of your identity. That old man, to you, is dead. “That you put off, concerning your former conduct, the old man which grows corrupt according to the deceitful lusts, and be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and that you put on the new man which was created according to God, in true righteousness and holiness” (Eph. 4:22).”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“When you are in Christ, you can see your Self (in all its worthlessness) and still laugh with joy. You know the story. This miserable horrible little self has been shown the exceeding riches of grace and kindness. This little mass of death and horror has died in Christ, and in Christ is being raised. All the joy, beauty, and soul-crushing glory in the story of this world begins with the ugly worthlessness of fallen sinners, and hinges on the turning point of all of history, “But God.” But God did not accept death for us. But God would not leave us dead in our sins. But God, because of His great love. But God, who is rich in mercy. But God, who alone is worthy. But God, who is in Heaven. But God, who is perfect, and holy, and wise. But God looked on you in your horrifying filth, and He gave your filth to Christ. But God gave Christ to you, so that you, in Christ Jesus, can yet live. But God intervened with the blood and body of His Son given for you. But God pulled you away from the devil and his lies, and gives you truth.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“hate to say the obvious, but we should not want to be spiritual cowards, growing in our ability to dodge conviction bullets. Girl, you need to do a lot more than wash your face. This mess is bigger than you can handle, and it’s not even cute.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“as Christian women, we have to look directly at our salvation in an honest manner. We have to see, acknowledge, believe, and rejoice over the death of self.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“Stop trying to be true to yourselves, people! Hell is full of the true-to-self crowd! Be true to Christ! Let it all go! You are in good hands! It is far sweeter, more fun, and more interesting to die in Christ than to live to the self.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“Obedience to God always, always, beautifies. It always adds dimension and fullness, which are the results of living how we were meant to live. Our greatest potential will be found in our greatest obedience. We will not be losing ourselves in obedience but gaining our true selves. God is the One with the blueprints after all. We think that obedience is going to give us the short shrift, but it is actually the plan for our success and thriving. Obedience will not flatten us.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“But if you have not been around Christians who are confident in their belonging, sincere in their faith, honest about their sin, and joyful in their outlook, then I want to tell you about it—because it is a glorious thing! And it belongs to you.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“This side of the grave there will never be perfection. But there can be great joy. And hope. And honesty. And laughter. And purpose. And delight.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“Christians believe that the value of life begins at conception because that is when God creates a unique human life. A unique human life has unique human value. It does not need to do anything to have value. The value is found in what God did by creating it. Sartre believed that you were nothing until you did something; we believe you are nothing until God does something.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“When you remove the role of the active Creator from the discussion, you are left with a bunch of human component parts that have no direction and make no sense. Everyone knows that something much bigger is going on here, but the worldly philosophers will act like fools while trying to avoid God and His image in His creation.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“Come to this table that your Father has prepared. Pull up a chair and eat. Eat and eat again. Come back tomorrow and eat some more. Sometimes you won’t understand what you read, but eat it anyway in joy and gratitude, and it will change you anyway. The very act of eating the Word of God is an act of defining obedience. The Word is alive, and it knows what to do with you even when you don’t know what to do with it.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“You don’t need to love yourself, you need to love your Maker! Who made your body capable of bearing life? Who made it stretch to its fullest and leave behind the tiger stripes of fruitfulness? Praise Him!”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It

“We live in an age that has a deep love of the individual, but we are a lonely and disconnected people, trying to find out who we are. But when you know that you are part of the body of Christ, you can easily look around you to see who you are. This is you. The body of Christ is all over and it is manifestly knowable. There is no shortage of information. There is more here to find out than you can absorb in a lifetime.”
― Rachel Jankovic, You Who? Why You Matter and How to Deal with It