Walking with God

 Walking with God

Enoch lived 365 years, walking in close fellowship with God. Then one day he disappeared, because God took him.

GENESIS 5.23-24

It was by faith that Enoch was taken up to heaven without dying — “he disappeared, because God took him.” For before he was taken up, he was known as a person who pleased God. And it is impossible to please God without faith. Anyone who wants to come to him must believe that God exists and that he rewards those who sincerely seek him.

HEBREWS 11:5-6

Some families have a family Bible or other keepsake that traces the lives of their grandparents and great-grandparents. They can read the birth dates and death dates of their family members going back many generations.

Genesis has a long list of descendants from Adam to Noah, where we read over and over that so-and-so lived X number of years. Until we get to Enoch. It doesn’t say that Enoch lived three hundred sixty-five years, it says Enoch walked with God three hundred sixty-five years. So evidently there’s a big difference between walking with God and merely living.

When we read of someone who “walked with God,” someone who “pleased God,” we tend to dismiss it as a possibility only for an elite superspiritual few — people who lived in Bible times. To be recognised as one who pleases God can seem out of our reach, can’t it?

God does not require great acts of faith or some over-the-top commitment to service. He simply wants to walk with you day by day. He wants to begin and end the day with you; he wants you to be aware of his presence every moment in between. He wants us to walk with him in faith, simply and consistently, by talking with him, listening to him, and sharing our lives with him. He wants us to walk in step with him, not run ahead of him or drag our feet in doing what he has called us to do. And as we diligently seek him, he is pleased.