Taking the Mystique Out of Walking With God.

Of all the "firsts" in the Bible, this is still astounding.  “Enoch walked with God after he fathered Methuselah 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Thus all the days of Enoch were 365 years. Enoch walked with God, and he was not, for God took him.” (Genesis 5:22–24, ESV).   This was an early description of someone who enjoyed a unique intimacy with God.

• Genesis 17:1 (ESV), ¹ When Abram was ninety-nine years old the Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, “I am God Almighty; walk before me, and be blameless,
• Genesis 24:40 (ESV), ⁴⁰ But he said to me, ‘The Lord, before whom I have walked, will send his angel with you and prosper your way. You shall take a wife for my son from my clan and from my father’s house.
• Genesis 48:15 (ESV), ¹⁵ And he blessed Joseph and said, “The God before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac walked, the God who has been my shepherd all my life long to this day,

"The double repetition of the phrase “walked with God” indicates Enoch was outstanding in this pious family." [1]  "The verb stem used signifies to walk about or to live, and the preposition denotes intimacy, fellowship." [2]   And not only was the intimacy a first, since the Fall of Adam, but the New Testament informs us: “By faith Enoch was taken up so that he should not see death, and he was not found, because God had taken him. Now before he was taken he was commended as having pleased God.” (Hebrews 11:5, ESV).  "The verb pleased (Gr euaresteō) is the Septuagint rendering of the Hebrew phrase “to walk with.” [3]

To walk with God, is to please God.  

“This is the message we have heard from him and proclaim to you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth. But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus his Son cleanses us from all sin.” (1 John 1:5–7, ESV)  

Father, the Apostle Paul casts this goal: “So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him.” (2 Corinthians 5:9, ESV).  What a great ambition, for us today,that everything we do, we do to bring great pleasure to God -- to delight Him.  Grant to us the grace of pleasing God but learning about Him.  Grant the courage to please Him, by not necessarily pleasing others.  Grant the mercy to please Him by dealing with our own sin.  By the power of the Spirit, for the sake of the Gospel grant a day that brings Christ much joy in us.   Amen. 

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1.  Wenham, G. J. (1998). Vol. 1: Genesis 1–15. Word Biblical Commentary (127). Dallas: Word, Incorporated.
2. KJV Bible Commentary. 1994 (E. E. Hindson & W. M. Kroll, Ed.) (28). Nashville: Thomas Nelson.
3. ibid, (2571).