downpour...chapter 1...

"Revival begins here: with a profound awareness of God's absolute holiness, our absolute sinfulness, and our complete inability to bridge the divide that separates us. Revival always begins with God reaching down to us--not in a trickle of blessing, but in a deluge of Himself that covers our past and welcomes us to begin again" (p18).

"The call to return to the Lord begins with the recognition that some things have to go" (p21).

"...there is no downpour without returning and there is no returning without repentance" (p22).

"If you want to experience a downpour of God's mercy, you have to come back to the place where the water flowed before" (p22).

"Everyone is converted by faith at a moment of time in some sort of crisis...'As you received Christ Jesus the Lord', Paul declares in Colossians 2:6, 'so walk in him.' The crises are not supposed to be left in the rearview mirror as we begin to grow in Christ. There needs to be a regular interval of turning and returning to the Lord where the chords of commitment that bind our hearts to His are tightened up again" (p24).

"Take it from me, if you've known Christ for three or four years, you probably need another crisis" (p25).

"When we talk of personal revival, we envision a passionate pursuit of the knowledge of the Lord" (p31).

"Pressing on to know the Lord means waking up and giving that pursuit everything you have" (p31).

"Why does God approve pain's intrusion into our personal experience? God is trying to bring about another crisis...Whatever the particular point of pain is, the circumstance you would most change, the unwanted source of shock and sadness that you beg God to reverse or sesolve...God has a purpose for that pain. And it will not go away until the reason for its arrival has been completed in you. Worse, when God has finished His work in that part of your life, He will move on to another area He wants to change in you. God is relentless in His pursuit of us. His love is not a pampering love; it's a perfecting love. The pathway to revival is through pain" (p34).

"God would rather see you anywhere else than living in rebellion and resistance to His will. Once you come to the cross of Christ, God's will for you is your sanctification. If you're not advancing in that process, God will take you to some awful places so that His purposes in you might be accomplished" (p38).

"God would rather see us in a world of hurt than not be the prize of our highest affections. God is willing to do whatever it takes to bring us to that level of relationship" (p39).