WALKING WITH GOD God walked with Enoch Genesis 5:22-23
Gen. 5:22-23 22. And Enoch walked with God after he begat Methuselah three hundred years, and begat sons and daughters:
23.And all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty and five years:
Even though men began to call upon the name of the Lord in the early days (Genesis 4:26), Enoch was the first man to uncover the true delight of walking with God. He found something even Adam didn't experience. He pressed into God until he learned how to commune with God through every facet of life. To find that dimension of relationship certainly required an intense spiritual pursuit, and then when he found it, the Lord made a graphic statement by taking him up to heaven.
By taking Enoch up to glory, God wasn't trying to get us impressed with Enoch's piety. Nor was God saying, "If you get to be as spiritual as Enoch, you'll get taken up to heaven, too." This was a unique experience God used to emphasize a specific point. God's point was, "I love to walk with man! Enoch was the first man to truly walk with me, so I decided to highlight his example by doing something extraordinary with him. I took him up to paradise to underscore how much I value and desire a daily walking relationship with my chosen ones." Enoch's example continues to witness to all generations of the great zeal God has to walk with man.
God walked with Noah ..... Gen. 6:9 These are the generations of Noah: Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.
What does it mean to walk with God? There are several people described as “walking with God” in the Bible, beginning with Enoch in Genesis 5:24. Noah is also described as "a righteous man, blameless among the people of his time, and he walked faithfully with God (Genesis 6:9). Micah 6:8 gives us a glimpse into God's desire for us: "He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God." Walking with God is not an activity reserved for a select few. God desires all of His children to walk with Him.
When you walk with someone, say a friend, or your spouse, you walk in harmony with them You talk, laugh, listen, and share your hearts. Your attention is focused on this person to the exclusion of almost everything else, because your attention is on the one your walking with.
That is how it is when we walk with Godl
Walking with God is like that. When we enter into an intimate heart relationship with God through faith in His Son (Hebrews 10:22), He becomes our heart's greatest desire. Knowing Him, hearing His voice, sharing our hearts with Him, and seeking to please Him become our all-consuming focus. He becomes everything to us. Meeting with Him is not an activity reserved for Sunday morning. We live to fellowship with Him. A. W. Tozer states that the goal of every Christian should be to "live in a state of unbroken worship." This is only possible when we walk with God.
When the Bible speaks of "walking," it often refers to a lifestyle. We can walk in the ways of the world as well
Walking with God, is taking up our cross , and following Jesus daily, but we need His strength to help us live the Christian life.
(illustration) Do you remember when they had old-fashioned Sunday School picnics? I do. As I recall, it was back in the "olden days," as my kids would say, back before they had air-conditioning.
They said, "We'll all meet at Sycamore Lodge in Shelby Park at 4:30 on Saturday. You bring your supper and we'll furnish the iced tea.
But if you were like me, you came home at the last minute. When you got ready to pack your picnic, all you could find in the refrigerator was one dried up piece of baloney and just enough mustard in the bottom of the jar that you got it all over your knuckles trying to get to it. And just two slices of stale bread to go with it. So you made your baloney sandwich and wrapped it in an old brown bag and went to the picnic.
When it came time to eat, you sat at the end of a table and spread out your sandwich. But the folks who sat next to you brought a feast. The lady was a good cook and she had worked hard all day to get ready for the picnic. And she had fried chicken and baked beans and potato salad and homemade rolls and sliced tomatoes and pickles and olives and celery. And two big homemade chocolate pies to top it off. That's what they spread out there next to you while you sat with your baloney sandwich.
But they said to you, "Why don't we just put it all together?"
"No, I couldn't do that. I couldn't even think of it," you murmured in embarrassment, with one eye on the chicken.
"Oh, come on, there's plenty of chicken and plenty of pie and plenty of everything. And we just love baloney sandwiches. Let's just put it all together."
And so you did and there you sat, eating like a king when you came like a pauper
One day, is dawned on me that God had been saying just that sort of thing to me. "Why don't you take what you have and what you are, and I will take what I have and what I am, and we'll share it together." I began to see that when I put what I had and was and am and hope to be with what he is, I had stumbled upon the bargain of a lifetime.
I get to thinking sometimes, thinking of me sharing with God. When I think of how little I bring, and how much he brings and invites me to share, I know that I should be shouting to the house-tops, but I am so filled with awe and wonder that I can hardly speak. I know that I don't have enough love or faith or grace or mercy or wisdom, but he does. He has all of those things in abundance and he says, "Let's just put it all together."
Consecration, denial, sacrifice, commitment, and crosses were all kind of hard words to me until I saw them in the light of sharing. It isn't just a case of me kicking in what I have because God is the biggest kid in the neighborhood and he wants it all for himself. He is saying, "Everything that I possess is available to you. Everything that I am and can be to a person, I will be to you."
When I think about it like that, it really amuses me to see some-body running along through life hanging on to their dumb bag with that stale baloney sandwich in it saying, "God's not going to get my sandwich! No, sirree, this is mine!" Did you ever see anybody like that—so needy—just about half-starved to death yet hanging on for dear life. It's not that God needs, your sandwich. The fact is, you need his chicken.
Well, go ahead—eat your baloney sandwich, as long as you can. But when you can't stand its tastelessness or drabness any longer; when you get so tired of running your own life by yourself and doing it your way and figuring out all the answers with no one to help; when trying to accumulate, hold, grasp, and keep everything together in your own strength gets to be too big a load; when you begin to realize that by yourself you're never going to be able to fulfill your dreams, I hope you'll remember that it doesn't have to be that way.
You have been invited to something better, you know. You have been invited to share in the very being of God
We need God to help us live holy lives.
From the very beginning, God had a relationship with Adam and Eve that found them "walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Genesis 3:8). God created man for the enjoyment of a walking relationship that involved companionship, dialogue, intimacy, joint decision-making, mutual delight, and shared dominion. God longs to walk with you, which is why his arms of grace have been pulling you into a closer walk with him.
God wants a closer walk with us... just like the old hymn
I Come To The Garden Alone Hymn
I come to the garden alone
While the dew is still on the roses
And the voice I hear falling on my ear
The Son of God discloses.
Refrain
And He walks with me, and He talks with me,
And He tells me I am His own;
And the joy we share as we tarry there,
None other has ever known.
He speaks, and the sound of His voice,
Is so sweet the birds hush their singing,
And the melody that He gave to me
Within my heart is ringing.
And, in closing, wouldn't you love to have a closer walk with Him?
I am weak but Thou art strong
Jesus keep me from all wrong
I'll be satisfied as long
As I walk, let me walk close to Thee
Just a closer walk with Thee
Grant it Jesus, is my plea
Daily walking close to Thee
Let it be dear Lord, let it be
When my feeble life is over
Time for me will be no more
Guide me gently, safely over
To Thy kingdom shore, to Thy shore
Just a closer walk with Thee
Grant it Jesus, is my plea
Daily walking close to Thee
Let it be dear Lord, let it be
