Preached by Chris Broom, 1/31/2010

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Jeremy Mandley (center) Is Baptized!

The nation recently celebrated Martin Luther King Jr’s Birthday and we can all remember the line from his famous speach: “I have a dream.” Do you have a dream today? In his speach, Martin Luther also said that if you don’t have anything worth dying for in your life, than you don’t really have anything worth living for. Too many people out there today do not have a dream… but here at the Chicago International Christian Church we have many dreams.

Luke 8:22-25 – What do you believe?

4 STAGES OF FAITH

STAGE 1 Chaos: Genesis 1:1-2
- The beginning of anything is formless and empty
- Maybe this is where your faith is today
- Like an infant, in this stage, a person is not committed to any set of beliefs, only committed to self
- This is where our world is at. This is why there is rape, murder, etc.
- Even in many churches peoples’ faith is in chaos… they go to church, put on a good face, but live Mon-Sat like the rest of the world

How do we get out of chaos? 1 Corinthians 11:1 | Hebrews 13:7
- Find someone who has faith and imitate it
- As leaders, we must be good examples and not hypocrites

STAGE 2 Conformity:
- This may sound bad, but it depends what you are conforming to, if it is good or bad
- What are you imitating?
- In this stage, a person becomes committed to a certain set of beliefs
- This stage of faith is a starting point, but won’t get you through when trouble comes
- Like a grade school child, in this stage, a person is concerned with the what (not the why) of the beliefs

Deep troubles will rock your faith. Ephesians 6:10-20
- Need to put on the full armor of God
- This leads to the next stage

STAGE 3 Questioning:
- Like a teenager, a person in this stage is questioning the status quo
- Questions are good, but where do you get the answers?
- Do you believe there is a God and the Bible is his word?
- Whatever your answer, do you believe that based on studying the Bible or based on your feelings?

This is an awkward stage… we don’t stay here long.
- Either rebel and go back to choas
- Give up and go back to conformity
- Or go on to maturity (stage 4)
- The only way to go forward is to find a someone already in stage 4 that can help you. Someone you can ask your questions.

STAGE 4 Conviction: 1 Thessalonians 1:2-10
- Our dream is to build a church of spiritually mature men & women of deep conviction

Categories: Sermons
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