In biblical and modern history, a few brave souls have chosen to walk with the Almighty. Meeting people like this can make a lasting impact upon us.
Enoch was one. The Bible says, “Enoch walked with God three hundred years.”1 He did not take a few steps and then turn back. He was in it for the long haul. He stayed the course no matter how tough it got. He kept on walking with His Lord.
Noah was another.2 He did so in a world much like our own. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”3 He walked with God when no one else did.
As we choose to walk with God we become more like Christ.4 That’s makes us different from other people, living separated, holy lives, following the God who said, “Be holy, because I am holy.”5
Those who desire to walk with the Lord still sometimes stumble and may even fall. King David was such a man. Reading the Psalms reveals that David walked with God. God said, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who will do all My will.”6 Not long after, David fell flat on his face. He took another man’s wife and had him killed. God sent a prophet to rebuke David, saying, “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes?”7 David repented, confessed his sin, got up, and started walking again.
Elijah, walking with God most of his life, also temporarily stumbled. After one of his greatest victories, Elijah fell apart. “I have had enough,” he told God. “Take my life.”8 God encouraged Elijah in “a gentle whisper.”9 Like David, Elijah got up and started walking again.
One day, a chariot swooped down from heaven, scooped him up, and he was gone. The same thing happened to Enoch. The Bible says, “Enoch walked with God, and then he disappeared because God took him away.”10 The Bible says Enoch “obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”11 Someday, Christ is going to come in the clouds and whisk all believers up into heaven. These are men and women of whom “the world was not worthy.”12
Of course, the only one who perfectly walked with God was the Lord Jesus. God declared Him such, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight.”13 His walk with the Father was like none other, such that He could say, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me.”14 At the end of His life, His final steps on earth completed, God took Him up. “He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.”15
What about today? Are there any who still walk with God? Look for someone like Jesus, someone who walks “in the same manner as he walked,”17 and who touches others the way He did. Jesus promises the person who believes in Him that “rivers of living water shall flow from his innermost being.”18
Amy Carmichael (1867-1951) was such a person. For 55 years, she served in India, helping girls and young women escape sexual slavery. Read Carmichael’s poetry, and you will know that she walked with God.
Jim Elliot (1927-1956) was another. He was martyred at the age of twenty-eight while trying to tell primitive tribal people in Ecuador about the Lord. I had a friend who met him briefly and said there was nothing special about him. After Elliot’s death, my friend read his published diary. Then he knew that he had walked with God.
Has not Jesus invited all of us to walk with Him, saying, “Follow me?”19 Is this not what God desires most from us? The prophet Micah writes: “He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?”20
Endnotes:
1. Genesis 5:22 NASB
2. Genesis 6:9 NASB
3. Genesis 6:5 NIV
4. 2 Corinthians 3:18 NASB
5. 1 Peter 1:16 NIV
6. Acts 13:22 NASB
7. 2 Samuel 12:9 NIV
8. 1 Kings 18:4 NASB
9. 1 Kings 19:12 NIV
10. Genesis 5:24 NET
11. Hebrews 11:5 NASB
12. Hebrews 11:37 NASB
13. Matthew 3:17 NWT (J. N. Darby)
14. John 14:11 NASB
15. Acts 1:9 NASB
16. Matthew 23:12 NASB
17. 1 John 2:6 NASB
18. John 7:38 NASB
19. John 1:43 NASB
20. Micah 6:8 NKJ