Walking With God

When Enoch had lived 65 years, he became the father of Methuselah. After he became the father of Methuselah, Enoch walked faithfully with God 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away.

Genesis 5:21-24

Twice it is recorded of Enoch the supremely important thing about this man: he walked with God. But it's also recorded that he didn't always walk with God. For the first 65 years of his life, his life was no different than those around him, and then suddenly a change occurred. There came a circumstance which caused him to turn right around. And for the next 300 years it's recorded of him, as the supreme value of his life, that he walked with God. This does not mean that God appeared to him in any form at all, or that he saw him in any visible way, or that he took walks with such an incarnated personality. It simply means exactly what it means when we say of someone today, What a godly person, he walks with God.

It meant that Enoch was going in the same direction that God is going. When you walk with somebody, you must go in the same direction that they're going. What direction is God going in? God is always unhesitatingly moving in the direction against sin, contrary to evil in human life. This is because the deepest fact about God is that he's a God of love. His love, like a burning fire, is continually blazing out against anything that destroys, brutalizes, harms and blasts the humanity that He loves. If we walk with God, we will walk always against these things, against this principle of independence, this destroying principle of rebelliousness against a sense of dependency continually upon God. That's the direction God moves in human history.

When it's said of Enoch that he walked, it also meant that he kept step with God. For after all that's what a walk is, a series of steps. You can't walk by taking one step today, and another one six months from today, and then another one six months later. That's not a walk. A walk is a series of steps taken one succeeding another. We all know what it means to take a step toward God. But that's not a walk. A walk is a series of steps taken day, after day, after day, after day, with God. Therefore, any moving with God is a continual life of activity for God. It's taking on every responsibility that shows up before us, or as much as we can, at least. It's moving out to meet needs that are immediately before us.

Furthermore, for Enoch it meant that there was agreement with God. It's one thing to be in agreement with the divine direction of God through history, but to walk means to walk in step with another in which there's full agreement as to the particular step. There was no controversy between Enoch and God. Enoch wasn't agreeing to the general provision of God's moving, but actually resisting him in the immediate step. It meant the total collapse of all revolt against his will, and the cessation of any resistance to what he felt, this very day, God was wanting him to do. He kept in step.

Walking is exactly the activity to which we are called in the New Testament. Walk as children of light, Paul said. Walk worthy of God, walk in the Spirit, and you shall not fulfill the lusts of the flesh. This is the very thing we're called to do.

Father, my heart's desire is to walk with you. Teach me to keep in step with you.