Walking With God
Scripture: Amos 3:3; Hebrews 11:1-6; Genesis 5:21-24
There is a song I love titled “Walk With Me.” The song says, “Walk with me Lord, walk with me. Walk with me Lord, walk with me. While I am on this, tedious journey, I want Jesus, to walk with me.” The song also includes verses about Jesus holding our hand, being our guide and walking with us in the midst of our trials. There are several versions of this song and I like them all. If you just listen to the song, it would appear that the person is asking the Lord to walk with them on “their” journey, as if they are in control and they are inviting the Lord to assist them. But I hear it differently. Let me share this story to help you understand what I hear with this song and why I love it. A few weeks ago my granddaughter was at our home and she wanted to go to the lower level to be with Nikki. We have taught her that she can only go down there with someone else and she had to hold the rails as she went. I told her she could go, thinking that she would just hold the rail and go down and be with Nikki. But my granddaughter came over to me, stuck out her hand and said, “You have to come with me and hold my hand.” She wanted me to hold her hand as she went down the stairs. She could have gone alone and just held the rails, but she wanted me with her. This is what I hear with this song. I do not want to walk alone so I am asking the Lord to walk with me – to guide me which turns into me walking with Him. The title of my message this morning is “Walking With God.”
Do you remember the first time you took a walk with the person you had fallen in love with? Do you remember the first time you held their hand and experienced the feeling of electricity flowing through you as you held the hand of the one you loved? What about your memories of walking with your parent(s) when you were a child? Remember how they took your hand so that you did not run out in traffic? If you have children of your own, I know you have experienced times when you have been walking with them and they grabbed your hand when they felt fear. Their holding your hand provided the sense of peace, calm and security that they needed in that situation. In each of these situations each person made the decision to walk alongside the other person. In order for us to walk with someone there are three things that must eventually be agreed on. First, before the walk can even happen, each person must be in agreement that they want the other person in their presence and walking alongside of them. Secondly, and this can be decided before or during the walk, there must be agreement on where they are going. And finally, once the destination is decided, they must agree on the route they will take to get there. Without there being agreement on these three things the walk will not necessarily be successful.
Before I go further into the message, if you are walking with God, I want you to consider “how” you are walking with Him. For example, when two adults choose to walk side by side, they are on equal footings and either can make the decision as to where they are going and how they will get there. But this is not the case when an adult is walking with a toddler. When an adult is walking with a toddler, the adult is the one that controls the walk. The adult decides on both the destination and the route to get there. Now along the way the toddler might put up a fuss or attempt to fight against where they are going, but in the end it’s the adult who ensures that the destination is reached. The behavior of the toddler is normal because the child is just acting like a toddler acts. However, as the toddler becomes a pre-teen, they learn to walk alongside the adult without fighting against the route or the final destination. What’s the difference between the toddler and the preteen: both are acting according to their age and maturity. So what is my point? My point is we cannot walk alongside of God as His equal; we walk alongside of Him as a child would an adult. When we first receive salvation, we are that toddler that might pull against God because we do not know where He is leading us. However, as we grow and mature in His word, we begin to walk more in step with Him. As you think about your walk with God, how are you “attempting” to walk with Him? Are you trying to walk with Him as an adult with equal say; or as a toddler trying to go your own way; or as a preteen allowing God to lead? Now, keeping this in mind, turn with me to the third chapter of the book of Amos.
Amos 3:3 says, “Shall two walk together, except they have agreed?” In this verse “walk” implies that a decision has been made to be with the person and not just on a one time basis, but a decision to regularly spend quality time with them. Remember what Psalm 1:1 says? The first part of the verse says, “How blessed is the man who does not walk in the counsel of the wicked…..” This verse implies that the same decision had been made as it relates to who a person chooses to spend time with and be influenced by. The writer said that a person was blessed who “chose” not to walk in (be influenced by) the counsel of the ungodly. Our walking alongside of someone else requires that we are in agreement with them on some levels. When two individuals decide to walk together, they are doing so as a unit. They are walking as one having the same destination and route to get there. This is accomplished by agreement beforehand. Now this is important: you cannot walk in agreement with someone that you do not know! In order for some form of agreement to be established, communication has to take place that allows for both parties to get on the same page. For us to walk with God, He speaks His position to us through His Word, the Bible, and through the Holy Spirit to our spirits. Our responsibility, as it relates to walking with Him, is to get in alignment with Him – just as a toddler or preteen would get in alignment with an adult while out on a walk.
We must understand and get it settled in our hearts that God requires us to come into agreement with Him and not the opposite – Him coming into agreement with what we want to do. Amos says two cannot walk together if there is no agreement. We must come into agreement with God in order to walk with Him. We must come into agreement with Him in order for Him to do what He wants to do for us. Unlike our personal relationships where each person willingly makes compromises in order to form an agreement, when it comes to our relationship with God, we are to come into agreement with Him. There is no compromising, no give and take, which I will explain in more detail later. God has a standard and it is our responsibility to learn it, know it, accept it and then live by it (obey it and walk in it). Turn with me to Hebrews chapter eleven. We will be looking at the first six verses.
“(1) Now faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (2) For by it the men of old gained approval. (3) By faith we understand that the worlds were prepared by the word of God, so that what is seen was not made out of things which are visible. (4) By faith Abel offered to God a better sacrifice than Cain, through which he obtained the testimony that he was righteous, God testifying about his gifts, and through faith, though he is dead, he still speaks. (5) By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God. (6) And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for he who comes to God must believe that He is and that He is a rewarder of those who seek Him.” (Hebrews 11:1-6) We are very familiar with this chapter in the Bible. We know that faith is required to walk with God and to please Him. But I want us to look at what was recorded in verse five about Enoch. It says, “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he would not see death; and he was not found because God took him up; for he obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.” Now let’s see what was recorded about him in the book of Jude.
Jude 14-15 says, “It was also about these men that Enoch, in the seventh generation from Adam, prophesied, saying, ‘Behold, the Lord came with many thousands of His holy ones, (15) to execute judgment upon all, and to convict all the ungodly of all their ungodly deeds which they have done in an ungodly way, and of all the harsh things which ungodly sinners have spoken against Him.’” (Jude 14-15) Jude says that Enoch was a prophet and that he prophesied to the Children of Israel on behalf of God. The writer of Hebrews said that because he pleased God, God took him. Now turn with me to Genesis chapter five and we will see how he pleased God. Genesis 5:21-24 says, “(21) Enoch lived sixty-five years, and became the father of Methuselah. (22) Then Enoch walked with God three hundred years after he became the father of Methuselah, and he had other sons and daughters. (23) So all the days of Enoch were three hundred and sixty-five years. (24) Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.” (Genesis 5:21-24) In these verses twice it says that “Enoch walked with God…” Although these verses did not use the word faith, they record that because Enoch walked with God and pleased Him, God took Him. That my friend is a testimony!!! Enoch, by faith, came into agreement with God and made the decision to walk with Him. He walked with God in such a way that he pleased God and God took him. Enoch did not see physical death as we know it but his life was a testimony that he walked with and pleased God. Let’s examine some additional Scriptures that justifies why we should have a desire to walk with God.
Psalm 32:8-9 says, “I will instruct you and teach you in the way which you should go; I will counsel you with My eye upon you. Do not be as the horse or as the mule which have no understanding, whose trappings include bit and bridle to hold them in check, otherwise they will not come near you.” And Psalm 37:23-24 says, “(23) The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and He delights in his way. (24) When he falls, he shall not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the One who holds his hand.” In these verses we have a promise. David recognized that God has promised to walk with us, counsel us, guide us and keep us from falling when we choose to walk in the steps He has established for us. Many would like to walk like the toddler, pulling at God’s hand to go the route they would like to go and taking God with them. However, God has said that when we choose to walk with Him, our steps are already laid out before us – God has already established them! When we choose to walk with Him we freely choose to give up some of our freedom so that we can yield to Him. Now what is the benefit of choosing to walk alongside of God? He tells us in Jeremiah 29:11. It says, “For I know the plans that I have for you,’ declares the LORD, ‘plans for welfare and not for calamity to give you a future and a hope.’” I know it seems like I keep covering the same Scriptures week after week and I am. Why you ask? Because it is the repeating of hearing and reading God’s Word that helps us to implant it in our hearts. It is only as we implant His word in our hearts that we are able to make the conscious choice to walk with God without pulling at Him to go where we want to go. And understand this: if we are not walking with God, He cannot reveal to us His plans for us. Some Christians will spend their lives here not knowing what God wanted them to do while they were here. Walking with God is the first step to knowing what He desires for us.
Another reason we should have for choosing to walk with God versus in our own counsel or the counsel of other men and women is because God does not think like we do and His ways are not our ways. Isaiah 55:8-9 says, “(8) For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. (9) ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts.” We cannot imagine or come close to measuring how God thinks about us according to how we think about ourselves. In the Old Testament when anything was promised, the Jews would reason about its validity and looked at all the surrounding circumstances which could affect the promise. Once they did this, consulting their own brains, they decided if what was being promised could be fulfilled. This is why we see the continuous rebellion when God delivered them out of Egypt. They tried to determine if God could fulfill the promise based on “their” understanding of how things work. They applied God’s ability to provide and deliver to their own abilities to do so. If they couldn’t do something then neither could God. However, whatever they could do, they were able to believe that God could do the same. If we think about this as it relates to walking with God, it would be like a pre-teen telling the adult “I do not know how to get there so since I do not know, then you cannot know either.” Does this make any kind of sense? Absolutely not, but people today still believe this way. God reproved the Children of Israel and showed how ridiculous they acted. He told them that His thoughts were as remote from their thoughts as heaven is from the earth. Now think about this, while we know that we do not think like God, we do not consider that this is also true with how we think about and see ourselves in light of how God sees us through the blood of His Son. If God thinks about what is true, wise and good then it makes sense that when we choose to walk alongside of Him we can know God's thoughts about our situations from a viewpoint of what is true, wise and overall good. Our thoughts are blinded by prejudice, colored by passion, limited by ignorance, broken, fragmentary, and perverted. God's thoughts are clear and perfect as truth which is why we choose to walk alongside of Him.
Psalm 37:23 says, “The steps of a man are established by the Lord, and He delights in his way.” The steps of a good man are ordered (established) by the Lord. The word rendered “ordered/established” means to “stand erect; to set up; to found; to adjust, fit, direct.” The idea here is that everything we need which pertains to our journey here on earth is directed, ordered, fitted, or arranged by the Lord. This does not mean that we are robots or we are predestined to act a certain way. What this means is that when we yield and choose to walk alongside of God we come up under His divine guidance and control. It’s the choice we make to walk the way God wants us to in the steps that He has laid out before us. We can still choose to walk a different way, but if we want to experience what God has ordained for us, we need to walk with Him to the final destination. It’s like taking a child for a walk to the ice cream store without the child knowing the destination. The child might get tired and start complaining about turning around, but all of their tiredness disappears when you walk into the ice cream store. We have to choose to walk alongside of God without knowing every stop along the way. We walk by faith, not by sight.
Psalm 37:24 says, “When he falls, he shall not be hurled headlong, because the Lord is the One who holds his hand.” I do not want you to miss this. When we choose to walk with God, it does not mean that we will never mess up, trip and fall or experience unpleasant things in our lives. Just like when we are walking with a small child and they trip and fall – if we are holding their hands, we stop them from falling. If we are not holding their hands and they actually fall down, then we reach down and pick them up. When we choose to walk in the steps God has established for us, even when we trip and fall, we will not hit the ground face first because God is holding us. It does not say we will not trip up, it says that “when we fall” God has us. What does this tell us? There is security here. Our mistakes and failures are just that, mistakes and failures that God will help us to move beyond. By His grace and Holy Spirit He provides directions for our thoughts and affections. We have to choose to walk in the steps. He will not force us. God will make our way plain before us, both what we should do and what we may expect when we start to trust and walk alongside of Him. One last point, our God is as individualized as we are. His plan for you is not the same as His plan for me. As my grandfather used to say, “Aint God a wonderful God!” Yes He truly is!!!
I want you to leave here this morning knowing that when we choose to walk alongside of God we begin to understand how He thinks about us; His plan for us; and the steps He has laid out before us. It is our choice to walk alongside of Him. As I shared with you last week, He extended the offer for us to walk with Him through the blood of His Son Jesus. It is our choice to accept or reject His offer. If we accept His offer, we can walk a path that has been cleared for us. This is like walking a path along a hiking trail which has been cleared for hikers versus walking through a jungle with a blade cutting away the brush as you make your own path. That path requires physical work, strength, and knowledge of where you will end up. The path that God has laid before us has already been cleared so all we have to do is listen and walk. I am choosing to walk alongside of God. Yes there will be things that might tempt me to get off the path He has laid out for me, but I must focus to stay on track. I am choosing to walk with God as a toddler transforming into a preteen. The more I mature the less I am pulling at God to go my way. How are you walking with God?
Until next time, “The Lord bless you and keep you. May the Lord make His face shine on you and be gracious to you. May the Lord lift up His countenance on you and give you peace.” (Numbers 6:24-26)
(We are once again conducting live services on Sunday morning beginning at 9:15 a.m. We will continue to broadcast live on Facebook Live at 10:00 a.m.. Please tune in to "New Light Christian Fellowship Church" and like our page if you wish to watch our broadcast and be notified when we go live. If you are ever in the Kansas City, KS area, please come and worship with us at New Light Christian Fellowship, 15 N. 14th Street, Kansas City, KS 66102. We also have Thursday night Bible study at 7 p.m. via Zoom that you are also welcome to attend – please email me for the link. Also, for use of our social media, you can find us at newlightchristianfellowship on FB. To get our live stream services, please make sure you “like” and turn on notifications for our page so you can be notified when we are live streaming. We also have a church website and New Light Christian Fellowship YouTube channel for more of our content. If you would like to donate to our ministry you may do so through our website: newlightchristianfellowship.org by clicking on the PayPal or Cash App buttons. May God bless and keep you.)
