Faith Conference Abuja 2026 | Day 1 | 1st Session by Apostle Emmanuel Iren: MP3 Download & Sermon Notes

A Generation That Seeks God

You are here not just individually but corporately. There is what God wants to do for individuals and there is what God is doing corporately — with you as a generation. You are representing a generation. The Bible says he gives some apostles and prophets and pastors and evangelists and teachers for the perfecting of the saints for the work of the ministry. God is here to prepare you for what He is going to do in your generation.

Psalm 24:6: This is Jacob — the generation of those who seek Him, who seek His face.

Jesus said, when the Son of Man returns, will He find faith? It means faith can disappear in a whole generation. It can be missing. But we are here to declare something prophetic.

The Language of Faith

The entrance of the word gives light and understanding to the simple. In this meeting, we are going to do a lot of teaching. Don't just wait for a word of knowledge. Wait for the word. The word of God gives you capital to build consistently what God wants to do in your life.

The language of faith. You can call it Faith 101.

When Jesus came to the world in the incarnation, He claimed to be from above. He talked like someone who was not from here, repeatedly. You see when you see somebody who is not from your country, one of the first ways you tell is by their accent or even by their language. And so one way to spot somebody who is not from your side of the world is the way they speak.

Jesus exemplified the language of faith. When people died on two occasions, He instead said they were sleeping. That is a language. When the disciples thought He was talking about Lazarus taking a nap, He had to step down the vocabulary and say: "He is dead." There was nothing with which they were to be fed, but for five loaves — and Jesus tells a disciple: "Feed them." That is a language. Jesus says: "I am the bread come down from heaven. Except you eat My flesh and drink My blood, you have no life in you." That is a language. Faith has a language.

As a believer in Christ Jesus, God expects you to speak the language of faith.

Two Kinds of Sight

There are many metaphors for people who are not in Christ. The Bible calls them lost. Your boss at the office may have career goals, a nice car, expensive wristwatches. You can learn a lot from that person career-wise. But when it comes to the quality of that person's spirit — if he is not in Christ — the Bible calls him blind.

How is it that in Genesis, the Bible says their eyes were opened, and then throughout the rest of the Bible it says they are blind? Two different contexts.

The serpent said: For God knows that in the day you eat of it, your eyes will be opened and you will be like God. And when they ate — did their eyes open? Yes, the Bible says their eyes were opened. They ran to hide themselves because for the first time they noticed their nakedness.

The serpent didn't lie about the eyes being opened. But what happened in that garden is that the moment their natural eyes were opened, their spiritual eyes closed. 2 Corinthians 5:7: For we walk by faith and not by sight. God designed man to operate in the world dominantly by the eyes of his spirit, not by the natural. So when their natural eyes were opened, their spiritual eyes were closed.

They are carnally alive — observing lying vanities, seeing that they are naked. And they are spiritually blind.

Your Speech Reveals What You Are Eating

God said to Adam: Where are you? Now, if you follow the Bible's narrative literally, it means God couldn't see them — they were hiding. But even if God couldn't see them, He could notice something about them by the way they spoke.

The moment Adam said, "I am naked, so I hid myself" — God said: Who told you that you are naked? Have you eaten of the tree I told you not to eat of? By your speech I can know what you have eaten. By your speech I can know the diet you are living on. By your speech I can know the type of sight with which you approach life.

On this side of heaven, we walk by faith and not by sight — not by sensory perception. It means we approach the same situations differently. We are not of the night, we are of the day. It shows in the way we handle challenges. A believer who walks in a carnal way has forgotten. Such a person has been set apart but is approaching life as if they are still lost.