Don’t Just Believe in God

Rick Christman · Tidal Church Moncton · September 21, 2025 · The Way of Jesus series

Rick Christman centres on Jesus' words "Follow Me" to Philip in John 1:43, inviting everyone to be a follower rather than an observer. He shares how a life of following Jesus grows through prayer, Scripture, the Holy Spirit and relationships.

More from Rick Christman · The The Way of Jesus series

Topics: Prayer, Identity, Discipleship

Transcript

[0:00] So who is Rick Christman? Right? Some people are saying Christman, and, you know, so I did pay extra for that name, but I was told I couldn't say Christman. It has to stick with the Christman thing 'cause it makes me sound too spiritual. Ha ha ha ha. That was supposed to be funny. I'm Rick Christman. I'm one of four. My mother had some kind of fascination with R's. It's Ricky, Randy, Rhonda, and Rochelle. We were all born. I'm the oldest. We were all born before I was six years old. So we are close in age as well as relationally. And we all grew up in a great state of Ohio. Didn't stay there after I was 18. Grew up on a beef cattle farm, beef cattle and sheep. And one of the things that I wanted to do was to go into agriculture.

[0:46] That's what I knew and love working with, beef cattle, especially in sheep, but also being able to work in the crops end of things. And so I was going to Ohio State University, and my mother had never graduated from high school. My dad graduated from high school, but was a laborer all of his life. And worked his way up to be an operator at a natural gas firm. So I was the first one to go to college, and I thought I wanted to go to Ohio State, and my mom got it in her mind. It was the end of my senior year that I needed to go to Bible college. That wasn't what I had in mind. I wasn't going to Bible college. In fact, I told her. So, and she said to me, in return to that response, was kind of a snarky response. I'm not going to a Bible college.

[1:32] She said, "I'm not asking you, I'm telling you." And my dad got into that conversation for whatever reason, I have no idea. But looking back, I know it was God at work. And I went to Bible college and I graduated from there with a call to ministry on my life. And that was a powerful transformation. God got ahold of my life in a way that He hasn't let go. And He's ministering in me and through me, and I'm thankful for what God has done. I met my wife while I was in college, Cheryl Lynn. We have three grown children. We've got eight grandchildren. And just thankful for what God is doing and seeing His hand at work in my life and in the life of my family. Doesn't mean everything's perfect, doesn't mean everything is rosy.

[2:17] In fact, what I have found, even as a believer, that life is kind of messy, right? So y'all have perfect lives here in Moncton, huh? All right. Well, where I came from, life was pretty messy. Even as believers, things can be kind of messy, right? All right, you're gonna sit on me a little bit. I'll get you going here. Life can be messy. It just is, and things can happen. And things we didn't plan on, things that we didn't anticipate. Wasn't how we, in fact, I've often had this conversation with God, especially early in my walk with the Lord. Lord, if You just follow this plan, it'd be a great plan. Anybody ever do that? Oh, I just saw one hand. Really?

[3:04] Nobody has ever tried to say, "God, I've got a plan for You." Right? My life would be perfect if You would just fill in the blank. Oh, yeah. God's never really listened to that plan. I don't know why, but He, but I've given it to Him several times. And it's interesting because when I look back on my life and I watch how God has unfolded my life, I've seen how the details came together in a way that I couldn't even begin to have imagined. And I've seen God's hand at work in my life in ways that I'm amazed. And I say, "God, how in the world, in fact, how in the world does a farm..." Boy, I grew up in a little town of about 250 people. You wouldn't even know it. It didn't even have a stoplight, maybe a stop sign.

[3:54] I can't even remember. How does a kid like that end up in academia and going through the channels as God has used me over the years? How does that happen? That if you knew my life, you knew my story, you'd say, "Yeah, I agree with you. I don't know how that happened," but God is able to do exceedingly, abundantly more than we can ask or think. And I'm so grateful for that, that God can use you. God can use me in ways that I never thought possible. And I can share story and I love to tell stories, but I could share story after story of how God has intervened in my wife and I's life and helped us in our work of ministry.

[4:40] I pastored for 21 years. I've been in higher ed. There was overlap for 20 years since 2005. I've been in higher education and just watching how God has ministered in and through me and how He has ministered to me and helped me to grow in my faith and see the hand of God. There are moments when I just didn't know. And in desperation, I would say to God, "Lord, You've gotta lead me through this moment. You've gotta lead me through this moment. I have no idea what You're doing." But you know what I found? And I think if you've been a believer for very long, you can say this with me, is that God never fails me. He has never failed me. I didn't have the details, but that didn't mean God didn't have the details.

[5:26] And I didn't always understand. But God always, always understood. If you have your Bibles this morning and you'd like to follow along, there's a passage, actually just one verse. And in that one verse, two words, it's in John chapter 1 and verse 43, and it's the last two words. And Jesus is talking to Philip and He says these two words, "Follow Me, follow Me." Those are pretty powerful words. You go back into the Greek and you and you try to get really what Jesus was saying in those two words, it's powerful.

[6:14] And if you're a new believer here today, you know that something has happened, right? Something has happened in your life. There's a transformation taking place. If you've been in your faith for many years, you know that that transformation, it takes time, but it happens. And God is able to do, as I said earlier, exceedingly, abundantly more than you ask or think. He's able to work in our lives. But it's a journey, right? It's a journey following Jesus. In fact, I was, as I was putting the sermon together, and can I just be transparent with you for a moment, okay? All right. Just wanna make sure I have your permission. So Pastor Jeremy, this is not his fault. I just wanna put that disclaimer on the screen.

[7:00] This is not Pastor Jeremy's fault, period. In June, in July, He asked me to come and speak in September. It seemed like so long away, you know, that September? That's great. I prepare ahead of time. I'm always ready. And I sent him my sermon last, he wanted to have my sermon notes. So Wednesday or Thursday, I sent my PowerPoint to him so that he would have it so they could do the branding and so forth. I woke up Friday morning really early to a quick thought. I didn't prepare the right sermon. Now, if you've never had to prepare a sermon before, it's not just getting up in front of people and just saying words. I like to be fully prepared to share my thoughts and to be, and to come prepared in a way that will at least be pleasing to the Lord in some capacity.

[7:56] And I woke up and realized I sent him the wrong sermon. Not only had I sent him the wrong sermon, but I had the wrong sermon altogether. And so yesterday, guess what I did? And so this morning, the poor souls in the first service, they got the first rendition of that new sermon. So you're getting the second version of that sermon. So you can pray for me, I'm being transparent because this was not the avenue that I was going down. The Lord had a different plan. I could spiritualize it and say God changed my mind. But it wasn't that at all. Rick forgot something. And so I had to spend my Saturday preparing for this morning's sermon. But what I wanna share with you this morning, and using those two words, is that God is calling that out to every one of us, every one of us to follow Him.

[8:43] Now, when you think about following somebody, right? As I was preparing the sermon, I was thinking about how do you equate what it means to really follow Jesus? Number of years ago, my wife and I, we did a tour. We went through Ireland, and then we went through Wales and gotta see all the John Wesley places and went to his house. And then we went to the place where he preached in London. And so as we're going, we're in this tour bus, right? We spent 10 days in a tour bus, and as we were going along, the tour guide would say all these different places. And literally the Friday night before Prince Harry and Meghan got married, we drove right past Windsor Castle and the Queen's flag that I couldn't point it out to you to save my life at this point, but the tour guide said, do you see the Queen's flag?

[9:39] It's waving. She is actually on premises there at Windsor Castle. So that's as much as I got to see. I got to go and tour the Tower of London, just all the different things that we got to see. But we were on a guided tour, right? You ever, anybody ever been on a guided tour? They're fun, right? Maybe underwhelming in some cases, but most generally, they're informative that it's an experience. You go on this guided tour and you have somebody, you're on an air-conditioned, love this air-conditioned bus, has a restroom in the back, padded seats, big window. You can sleep or not. You can look out the window, they're telling you all this information. It's a great experience, at least in part, especially as I get older, it's more and more, you know.

[10:32] But that's not what God is calling us to. He's not calling us to a guided tour. Does that make sense? He's not asking us to load up on a tour bus and show us all those spiritual things at a distance. There's nothing wrong with tours, nothing wrong with guided tours, nothing wrong with experiencing those things. But as a believer, there's a tendency on my part to wanna have the guided tour, because I'm very comfortable with the guided tour, right? And anybody with me here, I'm being honest with you here, I enjoy guided tours. And if my spiritual experience was just that, well, that, that'd just be wonderful, right?

[11:23] No expectations, just sit back and take it all in. But that's not what Jesus Christ was calling Philip to. In fact, 13 distinct times in the New Testament, or especially in the Gospels, Jesus uses those words, follow Me, follow Me. He says it when He calls Matthew, He says it there in John 1. He says it again, whenever He is talking to the, what we call the rich young ruler, go sell everything you have and come follow Me. You see Him say it again in the last chapter of John, when He and John are having that, do you love Me discourse? And at the end of that, Peter looks behind and he sees John coming up behind Him.

[12:10] And Peter being Peter, he says, what about him? Jesus says, what about him? Now, this is Rick's translation. What about him? If he was to live until I return again, you know, that whole discourse? He says, Peter, you follow Me. There must be something very important about that phrase. Follow Me. Right? I mean, if it's mentioned, in fact, some would argue that it's actually mentioned 21, 22 times. But if you take away all the duplications, distinct times, 13 different times, that Jesus is using that phrase, follow Me. And I think it's important enough for us to notice what He's trying to say to His disciples when He is saying, follow Me.

[12:59] In fact, those words in the Greek, if you go back to it, literally means to accompany or to be a companion, to assist or helping in a task, to become a disciple, and being very vitally engaged in the teachings. And the mission of the one being followed has nothing to do with being an observer. It has everything to do with engaging in the journey with Jesus and what God is calling us as believers, new believers. And people have been in the faith for a long time. He's calling all of us to follow Him. He's calling you, He's calling me to be a follower, not an observer.

[13:45] So what happens after we say yes? What happens whenever we say, yes, Lord, I want to be Your disciple. As you know, you're going through the four chairs and that second chair is the next step of your faith of saying, not only do I want to just commit my life and to seek His forgiveness, commit my life to Jesus Christ, but I want to be a true follower, a true disciple of Jesus Christ. What does that entail? Well, lemme just share this with you. The first thing you have to understand is that Jesus is calling us in a way that we model who He is and what He has done. Six things you're gonna find, and I'm gonna go through them rather quickly here, but the first thing you find about Jesus Christ is that He was filled with the Holy Spirit.

[14:33] He had a Holy Spirit dependence. You and I, and this is something that has grown in my life over the years. One of the things that early in my faith and early in my ministry, I didn't fully appreciate or understand that God is in control, not Rick, that God is able to work in spite of Rick, that He's able to do things beyond what I can imagine. That He can fulfill things that He has set to do, not what I have set to do. And I can only be successful in my journey if I'm filled with the Holy Spirit. Jesus continually acted in the power of the Holy Spirit and taught His disciples to do the same. The second thing is that He engaged in the act of prayer.

[15:18] I won't ask you to say how many times a day you pray or how often you pray, But, you know, one of the things that I find about church, and having been a pastor for so many years, I found that it's so easy to talk about praying. Right? In fact, we even have days of prayer, you know, the National Day of Prayer. At least we do that in the States. I'm assuming Canadians have national days of prayer. We have those moments that we set aside. We talk about the importance of prayer. We find good Scriptures that talk about prayer. And that's what I find is so easy to do, is to talk about something but fail to actually engage in that. Right? And I think Jesus wants us to do far more than just say the words or talk about it, but to actually engage in prayer.

[16:04] And it doesn't have to. As a new believer, my prayers were pretty ugly, right? They weren't amazing. I would never want to record them. In fact, when I train young pastors, I say, learn to write your prayers. Learn to write your prayers. You learn how to pray by writing your prayers because you become focused on what it means to actually pray. Journal your prayers, write your prayers, say your prayers. The disciples realize that they said, "Jesus, teach us to pray." Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be Thy name. Thy kingdom come, Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.

[16:50] For Thine is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. Amen. Teach us to pray. That should be my prayer. In fact, it has been, Teach me to pray. Lord, if you were at Beulah Camp this year, you gotta hear Steve DeNeff. He said, every day you should ask the Lord, what do You want me to know? And what do You want me to do? Lord, what do You want me to know? What do You want me to do? It's powerful. Jesus also challenged and demonstrated for us the importance of God's Word. You know, I have found really funny story how his pastoring, and I say her name because she's going on to be with the Lord.

[17:37] But Juah Robbins had been sick, and I went to visit her at her home and her daughter was there with her. And she said, "Mom, tell the pastor how many times you read the Bible through." Now this is gonna sound amazing to you, but she was an older, older lady, and I had to take her at her word. She said, "I've read the Bible through 123 times." Is that amazing to anybody? Oh, I thought, that's pretty amazing, right? Cover to cover, 123 times. And then her daughter looks at me and says, "Pastor, how many times you read the Bible through?" Well, all I could say is, I know I haven't read it through 123 times, but I've made it a mission to read the Bible through constantly. So I'm always on a mission of reading the Bible. Through the last six or seven years I've been leading businessmen through the Bible.

[18:26] We take 22 months. We start chronologically, we start in Genesis, work all the way through Revelation, because I believe that we can't possibly obey something if we don't know it. That's like the law, right? I'm not saying the Bible is our law, but it's what is our guide. But if we don't know the law, we can't obey it. If we don't know God's Word, we can't obey it. We can't live in the principles of God's Word if we don't read it. Somebody say, I mean, that feels like good preaching, I don't know. But we have to engage in the act of reading God's Word. We have to engage in the act of praying. Jesus was obedient to the Father. He exalted the Father in everything that He did, and He developed intentional relationships. And if we're gonna be successful in our lives as Christians, we have to have those intentional relationships that will help guide us, people that have been in the faith mentoring and they're holding us accountable.

[19:22] If we're not willing to do that, we're gonna falter, we're gonna fall. There's gonna be something happening in our life, and we're gonna wonder why. And I believe those relationships are so important. So as new believers, and I have to hurry along here, but as new believers, there's, as I said earlier, life can be messy, right? And as a new believer, my life was a mess. It was quite messy. But what I had to learn, the first thing I had to learn was my identity in Christ, right? I had to learn my identity. I, Rick Christman, am a believer and a follower of Jesus Christ. Can you say that with me? Just use your name. I, your name, am a follower and believer in Jesus Christ.

[20:07] Amen. I'm a follower and believer in Jesus Christ. Not only do I have to know my identity, but I have to learn to walk. I remember teaching my children to walk, helping them along. They would sort of holding my finger eventually. They didn't want to hold my finger. They wanted to prove that they could do it on their own. Right? Remember one time my youngest son, or my oldest son rather, was in his walker. I'm not, I said this earlier, I don't know that those were even legal anymore. This was back in the eighties when those kinds of little things were allowable. And he was using this walker and, or not walker, but, what do you call those things?

[20:55] Anybody? They're like, they use their feet and kind of go wherever I'm supposed to be watching him like a new father. You know, I didn't pay much attention at all. And looked down and we're on getting ready to go to church. And he has taken a plant and he has eaten the plant. Not only the plant, but everything, the dirt and everything. He was a mess. My wife come out, she was mortified. I don't even think we got to go to church that night because he was eating what he shouldn't have been eating. Right? Learned to walk on their own. Learn to talk, learn to be self-feeders on the Word. These are all important parts of who we are as believers.

[21:41] And then there's the potty training, right? I said life was messy. The importance of confession and repentance and messing up and seeking God's forgiveness. That's why I think it's so important to have somebody who joins you on this journey. I read this, heard this some time ago, but babies are untrained at one end and undisciplined at the other. But here's what I think happens so often that even mature Christians are still, after many years of serving God, are still untrained at one end and undisciplined at the other. And I just threw that in for extra. So, the principles for ministry. So you're new in your faith.

[22:26] These are all the things that happened in our journey, things that we experience. But we want to grow, right? We don't want to stay babes in Christ forever. In fact, Paul challenges us with that. You know, you still want to drink the milk of the Word, but you really need to get into the meat. So as we grow and as we develop and as we are discipled, we begin to understand what it means to be a believer. What it means to really follow Christ, what it means to connect with other people who don't know Him, how to share our testimony, how to share our faith. And here's what I have found. First, last four things I wanna share with you. First, without immediate nurture, new Christians can easily fall away. We have to connect and we have to help them connect. If we wanna see them be successful in their journey, we've gotta be willing to do that.

[23:13] Investing in them. They need personalized attention on the basics of the Christian life. We've gotta help them get into the Word. We've gotta help them pray. We've gotta share time with them, invest in the lives of those who are new believers. The third thing is that we must not ever, ever forget their identity in Christ, who they are. This can't be overstated. They need to understand who they are in Jesus Christ. You, I need to understand who I am in Jesus Christ. My identity is in Him. And then the last thing I wanna share with you is that spiritual children need a family.

[24:02] I don't know how important family is to you, but next to my relationship with Jesus Christ, my family is the most important thing in my life. And I understand what it means when we get together. There is no greater experience than being able to pass on to my grandchildren the understanding of who they are, that they are by name or by lineage, Christmans. Now you say, well, that doesn't mean anything to me. Well, it doesn't, but it means something to me. It means something to them, hopefully in time, that they are a part of that family, that if they need something, they can come, they can ask Grandpa for something. If they have a problem, they can share that with me, that I'll be glad to share that wisdom with them.

[24:52] That sense of family, that sense of relationship is so important in my family, in my relationship with my children, my wife, my kids, that I would give my entire life for them, investing in them and giving them, that's what the church is, right? That's who we are as a body of believers. We want, I want my kids to be successful. I've invested in my children. I want my grandkids to be successful. I've invested in my children. My oldest grandson gets ready to graduate this year. I have invested my everything in my kids because I believe in them and my grandkids, because I want them to have a successful future. And I would do anything to help them. But I know that as a body of believers, we'll do the same for those around us, for those who are new in their faith.

[25:44] That's the kind of relationship we build with those who are new in their faith, so that they can have a strong relationship with Jesus Christ. Our connection with each other should reveal to us that relationship that we have, that that vertical relationship that we have with Jesus Christ. And being able to connect with each other helps us to fully appreciate and even to understand better what it means to have a relationship with Jesus Christ. Amen. Would you bow your heads with me just for a moment, please. Heavenly Father, we just pause at this moment. We thank You for Your many, many blessings.

[26:31] We thank You for Your kindness. Thank You for this body of believers who have come together, Lord, as a time to nurture and be nurtured, as a time to share, as a time to offer. I pray, Your God, that You would bless each one here. You know where we are in our faith. You know if on this continuum of being a believer, there are some here, Lord, who are new, maybe even some who are pre-Christian, who have never accepted You as their Lord and Savior. And then there's those who have just newly accepted You. And then there's people here that have been believers for many, many years, and then there's everybody in between. Lord, You know what we need every day? You know what we need? And I pray, Your God, that on this journey, we would embrace those who can give us the guidance and the wisdom.

[27:19] Help us to understand Your Word, to spend time in prayer with us. I pray, Your God, that You would add every discipler, every small group, every ministry of this church. Lord, would You bless it? Would You multiply it? Would You use it for the building and the strengthening of Your kingdom throughout the Moncton and in the regional New Brunswick area? Lord, I pray that You would be honored, that You'd be glorified by all that's accomplished. And we ask all these things in the name of Your Son, Jesus Christ. And everybody said, amen.