By Stephen Leonard

“Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” Genesis 5:24

You have heard people say when someone dies by accident or disease, while yet relatively young, even middle age, that they were taken away “in the prime of life” when they as yet had so much to give.
We could say, in this popular sense of thinking, that Enoch was taken by God at a time he would have lived quite a few more years. After all, Enoch was the father of Methuselah, the man who lived longest on the earth. The genes said Enoch would live a long time. Why would God do that? Why would he cut Enoch’s life on the fallen earth short? Enoch was such a committed righteous man, obviously a very great man, he could have done so much more for the people on this sin-filled earth. Why take him away so soon?
Because the perfect mind of God makes no mistakes! God knows what He’s about. Whatever He does is perfectly right. Count on it!
Enoch was not the only man to enter eternity without dying. Elijah never crossed that river either. The rest of us all traverse the valley of the shadow of death. Still, a number of believers are described in Scripture as ones who closely walked with God in their life.
Noah was described just this way. He did so, like Enoch, when the whole world stood against him, mocking and scoffing as he pursued doing what God asked him to do; in this case, building an ark on dry ground with no visible means to float it. Noah was, in the eyes of the world, building a dry-dock ship. He was fully intent on pleasing God with all the means God had given him, despite being considered by so many as simply crazy.
Adam walked intimately with God in the Garden before succumbing to Eve’s request and then freely choosing to live no longer as one who agreed with Him in everything. As it says in Amos 3:3, “Can two walk together unless they agree?”
Moses was one who walked with God, as was King David, a man who was described as a man after God’s own heart. Jesus’ Apostles, such as Peter, Paul, and John, were willing, eventually, to truly walk wholly with God till they were martyred or died.
What does it mean “to walk with God?” After all, God is invisible, except for Jesus, who is not now with us in His body, meanwhile man has his body. How then does man walk so closely with God? Because he walks in God’s real spiritual presence! God is not distant to any of His saints in Scripture. Neither is He to any who walk with Him today by faith.
Walking with God refers to having a oneness of mind and purpose with Him. Following the same path; seeing the world out of the same eyes; having senses, though God’s are all knowing and all powerful compared with man’s finiteness, yet instinctively and wholly agreeing with Him. God’s truth is your truth. God’s enemies, your enemies. God’s goals, your goals. Two peas in a pod; except one is Creator and one is creature.
Whatever God says, thinks, decides, you as His walking companion perfectly agree with Him; for you hunger after the things of God. You hang on His words. Drink in His truth. Savor His delicacies. You see God as He really is and love Him for every single bit of who He is. You either have God for who He is, or you die, and you are no more.
If you want to walk with anyone at all, walk with God. He is the only one who will always be beside you at every moment; God is omnipresent. Where you are, God will be. None other can ever provide you this. Walk step by step with the one and only God!

Encouragement

“So shall no part of day or night from sacredness be free: but all my life, in ev’ry step, be fellowship with thee.”
(6th verse of Horatius Bonar’s hymn, “Fill Thou My Life, O Lord My God,” 1866)

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