Daniel Montgomery > Quotes

“Social media has exploded our narcissism. “Facebragging” has become a new slang term for the way that social media has enabled us to shamelessly self-promote, self-congratulate, and generally make public fools of ourselves. As Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, authors of The Narcissism Epidemic, have pointed out, there’s a kind of democratization on the web, where everyone’s opinion has been elevated (or deflated) to a common level. Journalists who fight to present information with clarity and objectivity find themselves contradicted and shouted down by raging bloggers and commenters with no actual knowledge of whatever circumstance they may be reporting. Self-expression on the web has led to a sense of entitlement, a belief that “everybody’s opinion is just as valid as everyone else’s.”2 Andrew Keen refers to the phenomenon as “ignorance meets egoism, meets bad taste, meets mob rule.”3 It’s a world where the way up is to be louder, more flashy, more harsh and outspoken.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“...people who've been hit with the gospel respond naturally with radically changed lives and hearts. The church and the ministries of the church are gospel centered when they flow from hearts that are afire with wonder at the glory and grace of God, revealed in the person of Jesus.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“As Tim Keller once put it: The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and the freedom you have in the gospel—the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation. The Sabbath is a sign of the hope that we have in the world to come.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“Outrageous grace is God’s goodness that comes looking for you when you have nothing but a middle finger flipped in the face of God to offer in return. It’s a farmer paying a full day’s wages to a crew of deadbeat day laborers with only a single hour punched on their time cards (Matthew 20:1 – 16). It’s a man marrying an abandoned woman and then refusing to forsake his covenant with her when she turns out to be a whore (Ezekiel 16:8 – 63; Hosea 1:1 — 3:5). It’s the insanity of a shepherd who puts ninety-nine sheep at risk to rescue the single lamb that’s too stupid to stay with the flock (Luke 15:1 – 7). It’s the love of a father who hands over his finest rings and robes to a young man who has squandered his inheritance on drunken binges with his fair-weather friends (Luke 15:11 – 32). It’s God’s choice to save a slave trader knowing full well that it would take a decade for this man to recognize the wretchedness of his ways. It’s one-way love that calls you into the kingdom not because you’ve been good but because God has chosen you and made you his own. And now he is chasing you to the ends of the earth to keep you as his child, and nothing in heaven or hell can ever stop him.”
― Daniel Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“Becoming like Jesus means taking on his character, his way of looking at the world, his way of loving and interacting with others. It means cultivating a relationship with God like Jesus’s own—one of intimacy, depth, and care. It means living a life that’s at war with evil’s grip on the world around us, and that certainly includes the sin in our lives, but to make sin management primary in the Christian life misses the point of the gospel. Our sins are paid for, past, present, and future, and in that freedom we can be transformed.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“Today, just as in Jesus’s day, greatness means power, position. It means people serving me, and Jesus says a resounding, “No!” As an old Puritan prayer says so eloquently, we need to learn to pray: Let me learn by paradox that the way down is the way up, that to be low is to be high, that the broken heart is the healed heart, that the contrite spirit is the rejoicing spirit, that the repenting soul is the victorious soul, that to have nothing is to possess all, that to bear the cross is to wear the crown.9”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“The gospel is the greatest underdog story ever told.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“The gospel invites us into a different way of living and being, not to prove or earn, but to enjoy.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“Some false gods are made of wood. Some are bank accounts. Some are in our mirrors. False worship isn’t limited to a few moments of slavish action toward a physical thing; it’s a whole life apart from Jesus, an outpouring wasted on false kingdoms and false gods, even if that god is ourselves.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“When we encounter the gospel, we’re fundamentally changed.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“It may require some new words, but as missiologist Ed Stetzer has said, if Christians can learn to order at Starbucks, they can probably learn to handle some theological language.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“As Tim Keller once put it: The purpose of Sabbath is not simply to rejuvenate yourself in order to do more production, nor is it the pursuit of pleasure. The purpose of Sabbath is to enjoy your God, life in general, what you have accomplished in the world through his help, and the freedom you have in the gospel—the freedom from slavery to any material object or human expectation. The Sabbath is a sign of the hope that we have in the world to come.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“The gospel frees us from the search for significance in the things we do. It compels us to a life of love and forgiveness, and invites us to experience the blessing of serving others. It’s the way life was meant to”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey

“To repent means to turn away from something and to turn toward something else. It means a reshaping of our mindset, a new way of looking at the world. It means rethinking our way of thinking and being and doing.”
― Daniel Montgomery, Faithmapping: A Gospel Atlas for Your Spiritual Journey