
Episode #56
Preparation For Revival
Spurgeon opens by grounding the entire desire for revival in a single text β "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" β arguing that the church cannot expect God's accompanying Presence in any season of special effort unless she has first examined herself to ensure genuine agreement with God in four critical areas: the ultimate aim of Christian existence (God's glory rather than personal Heaven-getting or wealth-building), the preciousness of perishing souls (agreeing with God's own anguish over the lost), the means to be used (Christ crucified and the Spirit's power alone, with every member active rather than idle), and a complete renunciation of human boasting in any results that follow. He then delivers a searching warning about the disasters produced by revival without God's Presence: weariness and forced fervor replace genuine power, prayer is dishonored when no answer comes, a false excitement leaves the church worse than before, and the world is furnished with a ready argument against the gospel β while by contrast a church truly accompanied by God moves effortlessly like a ship with sails filled by a fair wind, produces genuine conversions, spreads blessing to other churches and nations, and is terrible to her enemies. He closes with a solemn self-examination checklist β asking each member privately whether pride, sloth, worldliness, covetousness, anger, or lust has broken agreement with God β and calls the whole congregation to sweep the house of every crumb of leaven before the feast begins, promising that if they do, God will walk with them and the revival they have longed for will be both genuine and glorious. A sermon delivered by Charles Spurgeon on October 30th, 1864.

