Walking with God

As many of you know I have been in Hebrews for the better part of this year and have stalled out many times to think and dwell in certain areas, well here I am again, stuck in a section of Hebrews chapter 11 that has totally gripped me and caused me to wrestle with a lot of my own issues and ask some tough questions of myself. You may know Hebrews 11 as the "Hall of Faith" a compilation of ordinary men and women whose actions and belief in God the Father and the coming Son propelled them to extraordinary things. And they have been given to us as a cloud of witnesses to encourage us and challenge us. Well one man has really peaked my interest, and that man is Enoch.

Hebrews 11:5-6, tells us this about Enoch; "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. And without faith it is impossible to please Him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that He exists and that He rewards those who seek Him."

Now maybe you are not familiar with the story of Enoch, so here is his Old Testament blurb; Genesis 5:21-24-"When Enoch had lived 65 years, he fathered Methuselah. 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."

That is a crazy story, right? Here is a guy who walked so closely with God that one day God just took him off the face of the earth and into heaven, I think we can all agree this doesn't happen very often right? So what does this mean for us today? Because let's be honest most of us are not going to go home this way. What is Enoch telling us, how is he witnessing to us?

The chief end of Enoch's life was to glorify God, this pushed Enoch to walk with a tremendous amount of faith, that God was right there. We see two things from his life as mentioned in verse 6 of Hebrew 5: The first, faith must have an object, you must have straight who He really is, who is God and who is Jesus? And second, faith must also turn to God as the one who saves, this is not a works based salvation, but one that finds it's total dependency of Christ, and His work on the cross.

To please God, means to make much of Him, to seek Him for life, forgiveness, and a relationship, it is a walk with God. And like Enoch we will not taste death, this earthly shell will, but not the eternal soul, because Christ has overcome the grave. May we today walk with God.

LOVE GOD LOVE PEOPLE