My wife, Cathe, likes to go on long walks with her friends. She tells me she’s going on a walk, and then she returns three hours later.
“That was a very long walk,” I’ll say.
“Well, we got coffee, and then it was lunch time.”
I think instead of saying that she’s going on a walk, she should say she’s going on a talk. Just call it what it is.
The Bible tells us about a fascinating man named Enoch who walked with God. We read about him in Genesis 5:22, 24, which says:
“After he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters. … And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.”
Also, Hebrews 11:5 tells us:
“By faith, Enoch was taken away so that he did not see death, ‘and was not found, because God had taken him;’ for before he was taken he had this testimony, that he pleased God.”
Enoch was taken, meaning that one day he was taking a walk with the Lord and was caught up to glory. He experienced what we might describe as a solo rapture. He was caught up by himself to meet the Lord in heaven.
Maybe God said, “Hey, buddy, we’re closer to my house than yours. Why don’t you come home with me?”
Enoch lived in a time that we might describe as the last days. However, his last days were the days before the Great Flood. Enoch was a last-days believer in the sense that it was a time before God’s judgment on Earth.
“In those days people were so wicked that God said of them, ‘I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing—all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them’” —Genesis 6:7
Enoch lived a godly life in an ungodly time. So how did he do it?
He walked with God.
But what does it mean to walk with God? Simply put, walking with God means cooperating with God. To walk with God means that you’re in harmony with God. It means communicating with him, speaking to him, and hearing from him. Just as my wife goes on a “talk” with her friends, we need to go on a “talk” with God. The objective is to spend time together, to open our hearts to him. It’s all about communication.
In fact, we find a key Scripture verse in Amos 3:3 about what it means to walk with God: “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?”
To walk with God means to get in sync with him, to be in rhythm with him, to keep pace with him. You could compare it to singing. If someone goes off pitch, we notice it, don’t we? We’re aware when harmonies aren’t right. It kind of catches the ear.
In the same way, being in sync with God is being in harmony with God. To walk with God is to say, “Lord, wherever you’re going, I want to go with you.” We find the idea of walking with God a number of times in the New Testament. For example, 1 John 1:7 says:
“But if we walk in the light as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanses us from all sin.”
Colossians 2:6 says, “As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him.” And 1 John 2:6 says, “He who says he abides in him ought himself also to walk just as he walked.”
Galatians 5:6 reminds us to walk in the Spirit, and we won’t fulfill the lust of flesh, while Romans 13:13 says:
“Let us walk properly, as in the day, not in revelry and drunkenness, not in lewdness and lust, not in strife and envy.”
If you want to walk with God, then you need to make time for him every day. And if you’re spending time reading the Bible and spending time praying, it will change the things that you want in life. You’ll find yourself asking God for the things that he wants for you rather than the things you merely want for yourself.
Are you walking with God? That’s what I encourage you to do in the coming year. Simply walk with him.
Notice the Bible doesn’t say that Enoch sprinted with God. Rather, he walked with God. To walk speaks of making progress. You’re moving somewhere. It’s not as dramatic as running, but you’re moving in a certain direction.
Also notice that Enoch lived a long life of 365 years. At the 150-year mark, he had made some progress, but I think he realized that he had a long way to go. Today we have even more spiritual resources available to us than Enoch had. Since Enoch’s day, Jesus Christ came and died for the sins of the world. And those who have put their faith in Christ have the Holy Spirit empowering them.
Unless you wait on God and worship God, you will never walk with God. And unless your world is changed, you never will change the world.
This article originally appeared on World Net Daily and Harvest.org and is reposted here by permission.