From Love Wins

Quotes from Love Wins by Rob Bell

He's alive in death, but in profound torment, because he's living with the realities of not properly dying the kind of death that actually leads a person into the only kind of life that's worth living.

...

Third, the cross and resurrection are personal. This cosmic event has everything to do with how every single one of us lives every single day. It is a pattern, a rhythm, a practice, a reality rooted in the elemental realities of creation, extending to the very vitality of our soul.

When we say yes to God, when we open ourselves to Jesus's living giving act on the cross, we enter into a way of life. He is the source, the strength, the example and the assurance that this pattern of death and rebirth is the way into the only kind of life that actually sustains and inspires.

He promises that life will flow to us in thousands of small ways as we die to our egos, our pride, our need to be right, our self sufficiency, our rebellion and our stubborn insistence that we deserve to get our way. When we cling with white knuckles to our sins and our hostility we're like a tree that won't let it's leaves go. There can't be a spring if we're still stuck in the fall.
     Lose your life and find it, he says.
     That's how the world works
     That's how the soul works
     That's how life works when you're dying to live.