Preached by Chris Broom, 9/21/2008

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Nikki de Barras (bottom row center) Gets Baptized!

Fall Faith Series, part 1: Faith Comes from Personal Conviction - Not Family Tradition - Outline

This Sunday was a really incredible day for our church. We just recently passed the 100 mark in our membership and at our service today, our attendance was 244. It has been so encouraging to see God’s miracles in front of our eyes here in Chicago and around the world. Last week Theresa and I had the priveledge of travelling to Washington DC for their inaugural church service in which they had 134 in attendance. One woman found a discarded invite on the ground and came out to church. Two people placed membership with the church that day, one was restored to Christ and two people were baptized (one from DC and one from the visiting Syracuse disciples)!

• Concett placed membership. Wanted to be a part of a church that believed in and practiced discipleship, a church that was unified and a church that would  Baptize the world.
• Christian placed membership. He had been baptized @ morehouse in Atlanta. He said the ministry there was zealous & passinate. When he came to Dc, the same zeal & passion was not there. He was planning to move back to Atlanta, and then he met Cassel on facebook. He called Andrew, and the rest is history.
• Herbert was restored to God. He was baptized at Howard in DC when there were 70 disciples at Howard alone. If someone missed church, out of love, they would go to their house to keep them from drifting. That wasn’t happening anymore and Herbert drifted away. He shared how, with no discipling, he became proud and sinful. He ended up at strip clubs, etc.
• Herbert, who was restored on Sunday shared how he remembered the day when he and some other disciples were sharing their faith on campus and met an athiest. One brother said, ”just bring him to church and he’ll make it!” That was where their faith was!
• That’s where our faith needs to be!

Romans 10:14-17 says, “Faith comes from hearing the message and how can they hear unless someone preaches to them and how can someone preach unless they are sent?” (When you hear the word preached it inspires you. We need to have A Fall That’s Full of Faith.)

Fall Faith Series:
Lesson 1. Faith Comes from Personal Conviction, not Family Tradition.

James 2:14-17 What good is it, my brothers, if a man claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save him? Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead.

• Faith is not just a loving attitude or religious feeling, but a Christian’s common conviction about Jesus and the doctrines concerning him.
• Why do you believe what you believe?
• Why do you go to the church you go to?
• Most people don’t go because they studied the word, gained conviction and faith about God’s church and decided this is it. They go cause that’s where grandma went.
• We don’t act that way with any other part of our life. When you have to make important decisions for your life, you don’t make a choice because of what someone else says, you have to know for yourself.
• I’m thankful to be married to Theresa. Theresa was in Boston. I had to borrow a car and drive five hours.  It was important to me. I didn’t choose her because there was no one else, so I took her, or cause she was close by, and in the right vicinity.  I didn ‘t choose her because mom said she was the girl. I had to find out for myself. I had to go out with her myself.
• Don’t go buy a house cause sme dude say that’s the house you need to buy.
• When it’s something important, we put in the time.
• When it comes to our faith, many just take whatever is put before them.
• Our faith must be built on what we believe, not what someone else believes.

We must know our Bibles.

• The book of job is not for employment.
• An epistle is not the wife of an apostle.
• Martin Luther King didn’t oppose the Catholic Church. (Martin Luther did.)
• Have you ever studied the Bible? (And I don’t mean read the Bible. We all started in Genesis, and quit.)
• Don’t let your pride get in the way.
• sit down with someone and let them apply the Bible to your life.
• You need to have a heart to do what is right, no matter what it takes.
• You need to say, “show me the way.” (That’s where you have to be if you want to go to heaven.)
• Don’t just go to church where you go to church because of Family Tradition. Study the Bible and gain deep convictions.

Mark 3:20-21 Then Jesus entered a house, and again a crowd gathered, so that he and his disciples were not even able to eat. When his family heard about this, they went to take charge of him, for they said, “He is out of his mind.”

• If it were up to Jesus’ family they would have set him on a different road.

Mark 3:31-35 Then Jesus’ mother and brothers arrived. Standing outside, they sent someone in to call him. A crowd was sitting around him, and they told him, “Your mother and brothers are outside looking for you.” “Who are my mother and my brothers?” he asked. Then he looked at those seated in a circle around him and said, “Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does God’s will is my brother and sister and mother.”

• Jesus took care of his mom and come Acts chapter one, his mom and brothers are counted in the number of believers.
• Jesus had personal conviction that didn’t come from his mother and brothers, but his FATHER in Heaven.
• Jesus mother and brothers were’nt in a position to teach Him, they needed Him to teach them.

Mark 10:28-30 Peter said to him, “We have left everything to follow you!” “I tell you the truth,” Jesus replied, “no one who has left home or brothers or sisters or mother or father or children or fields for me and the gospel will fail to receive a hundred times as much in this present age (homes, brothers, sisters, mothers, children and fields—and with them, persecutions) and in the age to come, eternal life.

• It costs alot to be a true Christian.
• Imagine our world if everyone obeyed the word of God?
• How different would our households be if we obeyed God?
• Jaheefa was met at UDC on Monday and 6 days later, at the inaugural, she was baptized. She shared how she was on the phone and a beautiful young girl came up and shared (Erica). She shared how her mom was not happy, but she was going to do it for herself & God.
• The Syracuse disciples baptized a young girl from Cornell University named Hope. Barb Johnson was instrumental in her studies. She was asked what she would do if Barb fell away? She cried. “These women are precious to me. Barb has become like a mom to me!”

Faith Comes from Personal Conviction, not Family Tradition.

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