Walk With God
Being a pastor as a life career, my father introduced me to his duties when I was still very young. He explained that one of his duties was conducting Bible studies. I remember once when he was assigned to plant a church in a small village, that after relocating to that village, he organized a Bible study group. The meetings were held twice a week in the evening, in one of the villagers’ houses. I was 7 years old back then, and every time the group met, my father took me along with him. Since the location of the meeting was in a remote area where no proper road was available for any form transportation, my father and I always walked there and back. Besides, we didn’t have a vehicle of our own anyway.
I enjoyed being with my father during the Bible study time. I listened to the lesson and the Bible verses he explored and helped him to operate a small slide projector. Those things enabled me to memorize many Bible texts and increased my interest in following in my father’s footsteps to be a pastor someday.
It was usually after sundown by the time we finished with Bible studies, so we would walk home through a dark and quiet jungle. As a young boy, I should have felt afraid walking in the dark at night, but I didn’t because I WALKED with my father. I completely trusted that he would protect me from any attack that might occur along the way, and he made sure that I was safe during the journey. Sometimes he carried me and let me fall asleep in his arms. The next thing I would know, I was waking up in my bed in the morning. Those were remarkable and unforgettable experiences with my father.
In the Bible, we can read about a person who always WALKED WITH HIS “FATHER.” Enoch always WALKED WITH GOD; he had a close relationship with God; he trusted God as much as I trusted my father. Enoch’s relationship with God grew so intimate that eventually he was taken to heaven without experiencing death. Genesis 5:23, 24 says, “Altogether, Enoch lived a total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God; then he was no more, because God took him away” (NIV). So Enoch lived and WALKED WITH GOD for 365 long years.
What does it mean to “WALK WITH GOD”? It is to have an “abiding communion and fellowship with God.” Enoch was constantly in communion and fellowship with God. He made God first in all aspects of his life, so that he could overcome evil and temptations. Ellen White wrote, “Enoch had temptations as well as we. He was surrounded by society no more friendly to righteousness than is that which surrounds us. The atmosphere he breathed was tainted with sin and corruption, the same as ours, yet he lived a life of holiness. He was unsullied with the prevailing sins of the age in which he lived. So may we remain pure and uncorrupted. He was a representative of the saints who live amid the perils and corruptions of the last days. For his faithful obedience to God he was translated. So, also, the faithful, who are alive and remain, will be translated.”—The Faith I Live By, p. 350.
Ellen White praised Enoch in her writings in The Advent Review and Sabbath Herald, April 15, 1909: “How little is said of Enoch; how brief is his biography! Many volumes are written about Napoleon; much is said of Caesar and other great men of the world. Their exploits are recorded and sent through the length and breadth of the land; yet we have no evidence that these men honored God or that God honored them. Of Enoch it is recorded: ‘Enoch WALKED WITH GOD’ and he was not; for God took him” (emphasis supplied). What a priceless reward Enoch received from God for being faithful and always WALKING WITH HIM throughout his life.
What a beautiful example Enoch left for us to follow today: always WALK WITH GOD, abide in communion and fellowship with God, and faithfully be obedient to God’s will and commands. By so doing, we can be sure that someday we, too, will be taken to heaven, and we will meet Enoch and our FATHER GOD and spend eternity together. What a remarkable hope—which will become a reality very soon.
Hiskia Missah
Editor
