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Walking With God

by Chris Simmons

We are “required” to “walk…with God.” We read in Micah 6:8, “He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the LORD require of you but to do justice, to love kindness, and to walk humbly with your God?” There are examples in scriptures of those who “walked with God.” Of Noah we read, “Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his time; Noah walked with God” (Genesis 6:9). Enoch also “walked with God” and we are told that “God took him” (Genesis 5:24). Abraham and Isaac walked with God (Genesis 48:15) and David was said to have “walked before” God (I Kings 3:6). But what does it mean to walk with God and what must we focus on in order to be successful in doing so?

To speak of our “walk” is to speak of “the whole round of the activities of the individual life” (Vine's Expository Dictionary of Biblical Words). Therefore, to “walk with God” is to conduct the “whole round of the activities of our individual life” with, before and consistent with God and His revealed will. To be successful in “walking with God,” we need to live our life with the following perspectives.

Living with the constant perspective that we have all come from God and that God, as our Creator, has all authority and dominion over us. Isaiah expressed this thought well in Isaiah 64:8, “But now, O LORD, Thou art our Father, we are the clay, and Thou our potter; and all of us are the work of Thy hand.” When we live our lives cognizant of the fact that we are simply the “work of (God’s) hand,” we will live lives in continual submission to His inherent authority and dominion over us. When David, who walked with God, reflected on the fact that he had been made by the hands of God and that God had “fashioned” him, then he concluded “give me understanding, that I may learn Thy commandments” (Psalms 119:73). When Paul observed the city of Athens and their altar to “the unknown God,” Paul taught them of the one true God “who made the world and all things in it” and who “gives to all life and breath and all things” and then leads us all to the conclusion of our responsibility as created beings of the one true God to “seek God” and His will and our need to “repent.” This same principle, that the one who has been created owes a life of submission and labor for the one who created him, is applied to those in the church as stated by Paul in Ephesians 2:10, “For we are His workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand, that we should walk in them.” We will walk with God when we daily remember that He is the Potter and that we are the clay.

Living daily with the constant perspective that we live life continually in the presence of God. There is a link between failing to recognize God as our creator and failing to live life with the knowledge of His presence. Isaiah wrote in Isaiah 29:15-16, “Woe to those who deeply hide their plans from the LORD, and whose deeds are done in a dark place, and they say, ‘Who sees us?’ or ‘Who knows us?’ You turn things around! Shall the potter be considered as equal with the clay, that what is made should say to its maker, ‘He did not make me’; or what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘He has no understanding’?” In contrast to the attitude that says “who sees us?” is the attitude expressed by David who understood that he continually lived his life in the presence of God. Psalms 139:1-3, 7, “O LORD, Thou hast searched me and known me. Thou dost know when I sit down and when I rise up; Thou dost understand my thought from afar. Thou dost scrutinize my path and my lying down, and art intimately acquainted with all my ways … Where can I go from Thy Spirit? Or where can I flee from Thy presence?” David had learned his lesson from his sin with Bathsheba. Nathan the prophet said of David’s sin, “Indeed you did it secretly, but I will do this thing before all Israel, and under the sun” (II Samuel 12:12). When David wrote Psalms 139, he understood that nothing that man does is done in secret.

Others who expressed this understanding of the fact that we daily live in the presence of God include Jeremiah who wrote, “But Thou knowest me, O LORD; Thou seest me; and Thou dost examine my heart's attitude toward Thee” (Jeremiah. 12:3). Those who walk with God live with the understanding that God sees and knows our hearts each day. Job stated in Job 34:21-25, “For His eyes are upon the ways of a man, and He sees all his steps. There is no darkness or deep shadow where the workers of iniquity may hide themselves. For He does not need to consider a man further, that he should go before God in judgment. He breaks in pieces mighty men without inquiry, and sets others in their place. Therefore He knows their works, and He overthrows them in the night, and they are crushed.” Solomon stated, “For the ways of a man are before the eyes of the LORD, and He watches all his paths” (Proverbs 5:21).

Finally, living with a continuing passion to be with God. Those who walk with God live life always longing to be with Him. Paul so longed to be with God that he expressed the attitude that to “depart and be with Christ” would be “very much better.” “For to me, to live is Christ, and to die is gain. But if I am to live on in the flesh, this will mean fruitful labor for me; and I do not know which to choose. But I am hard-pressed from both directions, having the desire to depart and be with Christ, for that is very much better” (Philippians 1:21-23). Those who walk with God center their hope on living in such a manner that they might be able to be where Christ is. John 14:1-3, “Let not your heart be troubled; believe in God, believe also in Me. In My Father's house are many dwelling places; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you to Myself; that where I am, there you may be also.” The one who walks with God lives with the understanding that we are sojourners while we are upon earth and that our true home and citizenship are in heaven (cf., Philippians 3:20-21). Paul wrote, “Therefore, being always of good courage, and knowing that while we are at home in the body we are absent from the Lord – for we walk by faith, not by sight – we are of good courage, I say, and prefer rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord. Therefore also we have as our ambition, whether at home or absent, to be pleasing to Him. For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, that each one may be recompensed for his deeds in the body, according to what he has done, whether good or bad” (II Corinthians 5:6-10). The daily desire to be with God brings with it the need to always be “pleasing to Him.”

Would that God be able to say of all of us when are days are complete that we “walked with God.”

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