The second speaker for the school of the Spirit was Pastor Cyril Yerifor. The topic of his teaching was Faith with a Good Conscience.
1Timothy 1:17-19
He started by asking the question, what is faith?
Pastor Yerifor explained that a lot of people use words without knowing their meaning. Some of those words commonly used without a real understanding of their meaning include ‘fundamentalist’ and ‘corruption’.
Narrating how he used to live a boring Christian life or routine Sunday service attendance without a real understanding of what he was doing. He attended church because he was told it was good and his experience every Sunday morning only lasted till Sunday afternoon and he would return to his life on Monday morning. He learnt about faith from his friend, Pastor Inyang Okutinyang and discovered that the Christian life was really about walking with God.
The text taken from the book of Timothy, explains that Timothy and every Christian is engaged in warfare, albeit a spiritual one. What is the instrument with which we wage this war? Verse 18 of the text explains that we wage war with those prophesies concerning us. These prophecies are personal and not about other people.
Nowadays, a lot of superstitious things go on in the name of spiritual warfare. However, the warfare we’re called to wage is by the prophecies concerning us, which is from the Word of God.
Verse 19 tells us that we must have a good conscience if we are not to make a shipwreck of our faith. As we listen to the Word, we must do so in the context of a good conscience.
To demonstrate, Rev. Cyril asked a couple of people in the audience if they believed he would give them a thousand dollars after the service, they both said no. He said they were right not to believe because he had not promised them the money. The same applies to our walk of faith. We often make declarations about a lot of things e.g. “I will get married this year, I will drive my jeep!”, but the question is, did God say so?
Pastor Cyril gave his personal definition of faith as, ”Faith is being fully persuaded that what the unseen God has said is true and will come to pass as He said it.”
What ruins faith is when you believe for something because of covetousness instead of God’s promises. It takes a good conscience to differentiate between what God said and personal desires. The reason why a lot of people suffer a shipwreck of their faith is because they do not wait for God to move.
You cannot tell God what to say or when to say what He wants to say. When walking with God, if you desire for example to get married in 2015, you cannot force God to say “2015 is the year of your marriage”.
Pastor Cyril recounted the story of Jeremiah and the children of Israel. They asked Jeremiah to seek God to know if they should stay in Israel or migrate to Egypt. All the while their mind was set on Egypt. Jeremiah enquired of God and was told to tell them to remain in Jerusalem but they refused and went to Egypt anyway i.e. once God’s will opposed theirs, they refused.
Sometimes people say they believe God for a thing, but in reality their desire is birthed from competition with another person. When you’re not operating out of a good conscience, you could press and press for something but you only end up hurting yourself.
Your conscience is your heart and the voice of your spirit. You cannot afford to have a defiled conscience.
There is no place faith doesn’t work, in the village, university, the city, all over the world, faith will never fail. Your faith can only be shipwrecked by a bad conscience.