Colin Peckham emphasizes the price of revival, highlighting the sacrifices and burnt offerings required for true spiritual awakening. He shares stories of individuals who had to make difficult decisions, such as confessing past wrongdoings or giving up prestigious positions, in order to align themselves with God's will. Peckham warns against opposing revival when it challenges personal comforts or desires that contradict God's plan, stressing the importance of surrendering all aspects of life, including reputation, relationships, possessions, and time, on the altar of sacrifice. He underscores the necessity for spiritual leaders to bear the burden of intercession and weeping before God, seeking His presence and power to break hardened hearts and bring about true transformation.

"Now when Solomon had made an end of praying, the fire of God came down from heaven, and consumed the burnt offering and the sacrifices." The price of revival is the burnt offering and the sacrifices. There is a price to pay. There are sacrifices. Our reputation has to go sometimes. When we are regarded as one of the most spiritual people around, and we know we have to confess something and we have to get rid of it, then there is a big fight. In the Canadian Revival in 1970-72, there was a young man who had a Master’s Degree and his job hung on his degree. Then came the revival. There he stood: "What must I do, because I cheated to get this degree?" Eventually he paid the price. He wrote a letter to the university and he sent back the Master’s. He wrote a letter to his employers and said, "I’m sorry, but I no longer have this degree; therefore, I can no longer hold this job." He lost his job, but he got right with God. There are people who pray for revival, and when it comes they will oppose it because it cuts across things they hold dear but which are contrary to God’s will, and they don’t want to give them up. They say, "Oh, this is just sensationalism; this is emotionalism. Nonsense...nonsense. It’s not revival." And they will oppose the work of God. It’s a sign spoken against. I was once preaching at a place, and it was the hardest campaign I ever worked in my life. Nothing much happened. After the last meeting I went to the house of the man who had been with me on the platform through the week, sitting there, introducing me, singing, leading the worship, etc. He had gone to his house already, and I went to say goodby as I was leaving early the next morning. I knocked on the door. He saw who it was and said, "Hang on, I’m coming." He came out and he sat in my car, and he started to weep, and he wept for half an hour. He said, "Do you know why you’ve been having a hard time? I am living in sin, and she comes every night into the congregation and sits in front of me and looks up and laughs at me throughout the meeting." Here am I all week on my face before God, crying out, "God, what’s happening? Why is there no break? What’s the matter with the spirit? There’s a terrible spirit in this place. Lord, please, is there something in me?" and I’m looking inside and saying, "Please, God, cleanse my heart." All the time it was him. I don’t take anything for granted anymore. May God have mercy on us all and keep us pure. There’s a moral price to pay. And there’s a social price. There are friendships that have to be given up. There are children who have to be placed on the altar. I remember a man who attended about thirty years of conventions and he rejoiced every year to see the young people standing for the missionary hymn and giving themselves to the work of the Lord. Wonderful! Wonderful! Then his daughter stood up. Oh, it got too close to the bone. "Ah, my daughter! My daughter going to the mission field? No!" He nearly had a heart attack. They had to rush his son, who was a doctor, two hundred miles through the night to attend to the father. He saved his life. But she said, "Daddy, Abraham gave up Isaac." "Yes, but Isaac wasn’t like my daughter." Children have to be placed on the altar. Parents have to be placed on the altar. Friends have to be placed on the altar. Possessions have to be placed on the altar. Time has to be placed on the altar. Sometimes it is easy to write out a check, but to give yourself, to actually give yourself is a price. John Calvin said, "I give Thee all. I keep back nothing for myself." And so we say before God, "The dearest idol I have known, what’er that idol be, help me to tear it from my heart, and worship only Thee." For the fire to fall on your congregation, pastor, it must fall on you. You must know the pain-filled fellowship of the pierced hand. You must know what it means to weep in the secret place. Remember that wonderful advice that was given in Joel: "Give not Thine heritage to reproach, that the heathen should rule over them: wherefore should they say among the people, Where is their God?" So "Let the priests, the ministers of the Lord, weep between the porch and the altar" (Joel 2:17). They weren’t weeping in the presence of the nation of Israel. They were weeping in the presence of their own people--the priests, the ministers, let them weep, let them bear the burden. Let them say, "Lord, don’t let the heathen cast Thy name out." My friend, that kind of burden is absolutely essential. There is a spiritual price. We cannot afford to have ordinary meetings. We cannot depend upon our ability or on our charm or our theology or our training or our oratory or our human ability or our rapport with people or people’s respect. We cannot afford to depend upon our theological training or our good library or our keen mind. We cannot afford to stand on those things because those things are not going to break a person’s heart. What we need to have is a word from the Lord, a word which enters into their hearts. For that to happen, we have to break. That’s the spiritual price. I call it my "agony time." I was at the camp of which I spoke earlier, when we prayed in the morning and prayed in the afternoon and preached at night. We went through that week on one occasion, and it was Friday. They were good meetings, lots of people coming; the place was packed out. There was good fellowship and people appreciated the meetings, but there was no break, and my heart was breaking. I walked along the huge cement strip that they had there, and I walked and walked and eventually found a building that they had almost demolished but they had left one wall standing. I got behind that wall and I leaned on the wall and I sobbed and sobbed and sobbed. It broke my heart. "Lord, we need Your presence. We need the glory. We need the breaking presence of God. We need the power of the Almighty that breaks the hearts of these people. They’ve heard the Gospel so many times; they’ve heard the truth so many times. We need the melting power of God in our midst. Come, God, come!" It broke my heart that day. I went back and preached that night, and God came to that convention in a wonderful way. You’ve got to pay the price. Not many people are willing to pay the price. And because they don’t pay it, their ministry becomes ordinary--good, biblical, but ordinary. The dynamic, the fire, the glory, the power are absent. There is good teaching, but they know nothing of the wind...the breath...the breaking. We’ve got to have that. Once you have touched that, you are spoiled for everything else.