Gen 5.23 Enoch walked with God for 300 years and had other sons and daughters. Altogether, Enoch lived at total of 365 years. Enoch walked faithfully with God: then he was no more because God took him.
As I have prayed on daily walks, it has often been the case that significant ideas and changes have come to my life. I remember walking around one of the lakes at Ashburnham Place in Sussex in 1977, while at a New Year’s conference, that God spoke to me about asking Di to marry me. I followed it through a few weeks later and that decision totally changed my life. She said yes.
I remember on another occasion going for a walk in Stroud when I had been asked to give up my job to lead a church and move house. As I walked, I felt God say. ‘Don’t shrink back – with me you can do it.’
Walking and having fellowship with God have been an important part of my Christian devotion. Being outside and seeing his creation as well as getting that much needed exercise, work well for me when it comes to praying and listening to God.
This verse from Genesis speaks about Enoch faithfully walking with God and then being taken. These were days when people lived much longer. He is one of very few characters in the Bible that didn’t die, but just went up to be with God. That seems a wonderful way to finish life. What seems special about his life was that he walked with God and continued to do so all through his life. The verse might mean that he went through his life each day fellowshipping and communicating with God, but I like to think he physically walked and found time to communicate with God on a regular basis and this is what he is commended for.
At the beginning of the year many people make new years resolutions and sometimes they keep to them. I’d like to suggest that walking regularly and praying for God to bless our families, our neighbourhoods and town as well as listening to what he says could become a regular part of our daily or at least weekly devotion and Christian discipline. My regular prayer as I walk my two miles most mornings is that God would give us strategies that will see our fellowship grow and increase in number over this year. It would be a blessing to know that others are having a go at doing the same. I am not saying that this is the only way to connect with God, but it is the way that works for me.
I’d like it to be said about my life when I go, ‘He walked faithfully with God and he made a difference’.
