PROOF Quotes

“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

“God’s salvation is a gift. We were nothing but corpses on the run from God’s reign. But God, in his grace, chased us down, overcame our resistance, and began to heal our sin-infected will. His grace gives us hearts of compassion, love for neighbors and friends, and it empowers us with boldness to share the message of redemption. God’s grace is an overcoming grace.”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“What matters most in life isn’t anything that you have done or can do. It’s what God chooses to do for you through Jesus Christ.”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“The grace of the sovereign God has never waited for us to make the first move. Forbidden fruit was still fresh on our first parents’ lips when God stepped into the Garden of Eden and lavished undeserved favor on them. At the very moment when Adam and Eve deserved death that never ends, God clothed them with the skin of a beast and promised them a Son whose triumph would grind the serpent’s skull into the ground (Genesis 3:15, 21).”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“Once we see that our salvation has never depended on anything we do, we have nothing to fear and nothing to prove. God in Christ has already provided every proof we need to be acquitted of every charge against us.”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“Bait-and-switch grace is just one more expression of human religion that tries to add effort and earning to God’s finished work. It’s grace with strings attached, and grace with strings attached isn’t really grace at all (Romans 11:6; Galatians 2:15 – 21).”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“By grace, God helps those who not only can’t help themselves, they don’t even want to. By grace, what goes around stops at the foot of the cross, never to come around again.”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“What left a mark No longer stings Because grace makes beauty Out of ugly things. U2, “Grace”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“Trust him. And when you have done that, you are living the life of grace. No matter what happens to you in the course of that trusting — no matter how many waverings you may have, no matter how many suspicions that you have bought a poke with no pig in it, no matter how much heaviness and sadness your lapses, vices, indispositions, and bratty whining may cause you — you believe simply that Somebody Else, by his death and resurrection, has made it all right, and you just say thank you and shut up. The whole slop-closet full of mildewed performances (which is all you have to offer) is simply your death; it is Jesus who is your life. . . . At the very worst, all you can be is dead — and for him who is the Resurrection and the Life, that just makes you his cup of tea.19”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“that’s not based on anything we have done, can do, or might do.17 It’s not even a reward that God hands out to those who happen to choose him (Romans 9:16). It’s God’s wonderful acceptance of us not because we have”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“of praise in the faces around you. When you fall short of others’ expectations, you replay your failures again and again. On your better days, your successes almost seem to balance your screwups. On your darker days, you suspect that your shortcomings have forever skewed everyone’s opinion of you — even God’s — and you wonder what it will take to regain God’s good”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“We are willing to “buy any recipe for salvation as long as it leaves the responsibility for”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“buried somewhere deep inside their souls. When God found them hiding in the garden, they were clutching clumps of leaves against their groins and blaming everyone but themselves for their failure. God’s sovereign grace blossomed in that new-fallen garden for the same reason grace fills people’s lives today. The untamed God gives undeserved mercy to unresponsive sinners. God shows grace, not due to any human deed or desire, but”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“the tame ‘God’ they’ve made up in their heads based on what they want God to be like. They keep the real God out of their consciousness. If they did become conscious of him, in all his holiness and power, they would hate him.”4 GREG F”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“the gospel of grace can never be reduced to a doctrine that demands more human doing. The gospel of grace is a divine declaration that Jesus Christ has already secured all that’s required to turn zombie corpses into chosen children. The only right response to such a glorious announcement is to discard every concern about what you must do, to cling desperately to what Christ has already done, and to call everyone around you to cling to Christ with you.”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace

“Christianity is not a religion; it is the proclamation of the end of religion. Religion is a human activity dedicated to the job of reconciling God to humanity and humanity to itself. The gospel, however — the good news of our Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ — is the astonishing announcement that God has done the whole work of reconciliation without a scrap of human assistance.”14 ROBERT FARRAR CAPON”
― Dan Montgomery, PROOF: Finding Freedom through the Intoxicating Joy of Irresistible Grace