The Secret of Walking with God
What does it mean to "walk with God"? It means several things. First, that the prevailing power of enmity in a person's heart has been taken away by the blessed Spirit of God. Secondly, that the person has actually been reconciled to God the Father. Thirdly, that the person has an abiding communion and fellowship with God — what in Scripture is called "the Holy Spirit dwelling in us." Finally, walking with God implies our making progress in the divine life. Walking requires progressive motion. But how does a Christian maintain such a walk with God?
To begin with, believers maintain their walk with God by reading His Word. "Search the Scriptures," says our blessed Lord, "for these are they that testify of me" (Jn 5:39). The psalmist tells us that God's Word was a "light unto his feet, and a lantern unto his paths" (Ps 119:105). The characteristic of a good man that "his delight is in the law of the Lord, and that he meditates on it day and night" (Ps 1:2). "Give yourself to the public reading of Scripture," says Paul to Timothy (I Tim 4:13). "This book of the law," says God to Joshua, "shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it" (Josh 1:8). “Whatever was written in earlier times was written for our instruction" (Rom 15:4). The word of God is "profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be adequate, equipped for every good work" (2 Tim. 3:16). If we ever think we are above our Bibles, we shall soon lie open to all manner of delusion, and be in great danger of making shipwreck of faith and a good conscience. This the apostle calls the "sword of the Spirit" (Eph 6:17).
Holy and frequent meditation is another blessed means of keeping up a believer's walk with God. Says Luther, "Prayer, reading, temptation, and meditation makes a minister." And they also make and perfect a Christian. Meditation is to the soul what digestion is to the body. David found it so, and therefore he was frequently employed in meditation, even in the night season. Meditation is a kind of silent prayer, whereby the soul is frequently (so to speak) carried out of itself to God. Through meditation, the soul is, to a degree beholds the face of our heavenly Father. None but those happy souls that have been accustomed to this divine practice can tell what a blessed promoter of the divine life meditation is. "While I was musing the fire burned," writes David (Ps 39:3). And while the believer is musing on the works and word of God, he frequently feels the fire of divine love kindle, so that he is obliged to speak with his tongue and tell of the loving-kindness of the Lord to his soul. Be frequent therefore in meditation, all you who desire to maintain a close and uniform walk with the highest God.
Those who would maintain a holy walk with God must walk with him in His commandments as well as in His providences. It is recorded of Zacharias and Elizabeth, that "they walked in all God's ordinance, as well as commandments, blameless" (Lk 1:6). All rightly informed Christians will look upon commandments, not as beggarly elements, but as so many conduit-pipes by which the infinitely condescending Jehovah conveys his grace to their souls. They will look upon them as children's bread, and as their highest privileges. Consequently, they will delight to visit the place where God's honor dwells — "Come, let us go up to the house of the Lord" (Ps 122:1).
If you would walk with God, you will associate and keep company with others who walk with Him. "My delight," says David, "is in them that do excel in virtue" (Ps 16:3). In his sight, they were the excellent ones of the earth. The early Christians kept up their vigor and first love by continuing in fellowship one with another. Writes Paul, “Forsake not the assembling of yourselves together (Heb 10:25). For how can one be warm alone? Did not the wisest of men say, "As iron sharpens iron, so does the countenance of a man sharpen his friend"? (Prv 27:17). So it is necessary for those who would walk with God to meet together when they can, in order to provoke one another to love and good works (Heb 10:24).
Even though men began to call upon the name of the Lord in the early days (Genesis 4:26), Enoch was the first man to uncover the true delight of walking with God. He found something even Adam didn't experience. He pressed into God until he learned how to commune with God through every facet of life. To find that dimension of relationship certainly required an intense spiritual pursuit, and then when he found it, the Lord made a graphic statement by taking him up to heaven.
By taking Enoch up to glory, God wasn't trying to get us impressed with Enoch's piety. Nor was God saying, "If you get to be as spiritual as Enoch, you'll get taken up to heaven, too." This was a unique experience God used to emphasize a specific point. God's point was, "I love to walk with a
man! Enoch was the first man to truly walk with me, so I decided to highlight his example by doing something extraordinary with him. I took him up to paradise to underscore how much I value and desire a daily walking relationship with my chosen ones." Enoch's example continues to witness to all generations of the great zeal God has to walk with man.
When we walk with God, we enter the dimension where God unfolds the secrets of his kingdom. These are the paths that the ancients trod before us. Noah knew the secret of walking with God (Genesis 6:9), as did Abraham (Genesis 24:40). Through Christ, you can explore the glorious riches of knowing God as they did—and to even a greater degree because of the Spirit which has been given to us!
God had a relationship with Adam and Eve that found them "walking in the garden in the cool of the day" (Genesis 3:8). God created man for the enjoyment of a walking relationship that involved companionship, dialogue, intimacy, joint decision-making, mutual delight, and shared dominion. God longs to walk with you, which is why his arms of grace have been pulling you into a closer walk with him.
Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him" (Gen 5:24). The original Hebrew meaning for walked implies that Enoch went to and fro with God, continually conversing with him and growing closer to him. In him, we see a new kind of believer. He walked arm in the arm every day with the Lord – the Lord was his very life — so much so that at the end of his life, he did not taste death but was translated out of life (Heb 11:5). Like Enoch, those who walk closely with God are translated out of Satan's reach — taken out of his kingdom of darkness and put into Christ's kingdom of light (Col 1:13).
The secret place is not the destination; it is only the catalyst. It is designed of God to establish us in an intimate friendship with him that is walked out through the course of our everyday lives. The goal we're after is an everyday walk of unbroken communion with our Lord and friend.
Conviction is the thing that brought me to God in the first place by the feelings of “needing to get right with God.” Conviction of the Holy Spirit is what kept falling on me in the club. First, a feverish pitch of angst would pummel me. Not the typical kind of anxiety I often struggled with, mind you. This was panic-attack material; leaving me stricken by a nauseous trepidation at the thought of working the floor, talking to customers, or anything else. I felt too paralyzed by fear to even leave the dressing room. Next, a furious disdain for the industry would engulf my emotions. The ghetto girl inside me blazed with anger, she wanted to kick tail and take names. For things I’d seen, things I knew of, and things I ignorantly took part in; things like filth, and degradation, and outright injustice. I resented that I couldn’t pack my bags, head for the door, and never don that disgusting establishment again. Had I been able to I would have. But no, I felt trapped. I had to work.
Then, a resentfulness toward the men would enrage me, while a slew of disturbing images flashed in my head like a strobe light. I almost couldn’t take it. The perversion. The expectations. The beastly behaviors. The scores of married men. I wanted to scream, “Go home to your wife, you good-for-nothing loser!” Only I’d have added a few expletives back then, of course. Now I absolutely get it. I was feeling the conviction of God’s Spirit at my workplace. Conviction feels like guilt but is more than guilt; it’s the Spirit of God saying, “This is the way to go. Walk-in it.” He’s urging us to go to him. Right this second. Yes, you are guilty. But if you’ll go to him, talk to him about what’s going on, and own up to whatever you need to own up to, he will grace you, forgive you, cleanse you, and empower you with newfound strength, resolve, and the continued awareness of his leadership in your life. The hardest part was I had no way to logically resolve this mess in my head. It made no sense, and I had no way of mentally contextualizing it. It was baffling. Nothing was powerful enough to relieve that heavy load of misery crashing down on me. Not a personal pep talk, not a shot of liquid courage, and not a drug either. The only relief was to pack my bags and head back home.
Conviction is feeling the drawing of God’s presence in your life to surrender to him in a particular way. Conviction is also the sorrow we feel when we fail to surrender to God. Conviction is a beautiful gift from God that draws on our emotions for the sole purpose of bringing us back to where we belong: In the presence of God. Drenched in a wonder for God. Allowing his Spirit to purify us. Once he saturates us, he sets us free to run forth by lighting up our world for his fame and people’s highest longing.
For a person who has believed in Jesus Christ concerning God’s gift of eternal life, living a personally satisfying life that also pleases God is far from automatic. The wise professor Hodges created and crafted for us a beautiful tapestry and useful primer of spiritual living that itself displays a measure of the wisdom, pleasure, and glory of the Person of God as intimately known by this book’s author.
(1) The resurrection life of Jesus Christ who is in us who have believed, (2) transforms our minds (=hearts) by means of His Spirit, (3) so that God’s life in us is displayed (=glorified) through us in our daily decisions and directions, (4) resulting from an honest heart (=mind) deliberately facing the light of the truth of God’s Messiah revealed in His written Word, (5) that we speak to God about in reference to our experience,(6) whose glory we are invited to regularly pursue as a process with an intentional focus (mindset) on all we can discover in and about God’s Son alive in us.
Repentance is getting raw honest with God. Talking to him about what we’re feeling. Hiding nothing. Withholding nothing. Throwing our guts up before God and getting the whole rotten mess out before him. Repentance is how God cleanses the deepest places of our soul. It’s also how he ushers forth the power of his Holy Spirit to transform our lowly selves into the likeness of His Son, Jesus Christ. Bypassing a lifestyle of true repentance before God will quench the Holy Spirit’s available power from manifesting itself in our daily lives. Repentance keeps our house of worship (our bodies) clean and usable for God and his kingdom. If we want to stay aware and sensitive to God each day, living a lifestyle of repentance before him is vital. Repentance is taking full responsibility for every thought, action, word, misdeed, and all areas of pride, self-reliance, ways we’ve not heeded God’s conviction, or lack obeying Christ.
Having a teachable heart is vital for knowing God more, for keeping what we’ve already attained in him, and for actively engaging with God from day to day—even being used by him. Having a teachable disposition before God not only blesses him, it allows him to use us in greater measures. Why is this so? Because the one who has a teachable heart is yielding to his conviction by surrendering themselves fully; plus, they are showing signs of great humility and obviously yielding in repentance before him too. Those who are teachable get to enjoy the secret things of God because they’ve proven themselves trustworthy enough to share his heart with. When we walk with God, his ways are not like our ways. We must yield to his leadership, his way of doing things, him calling the shots and us simply following. But oh when we follow. This is where the “more” is found.
Intercession is living in a place of open dialogue with God for you and for others. Where conviction draws us to God, intercession keeps us before God. It positions him in the most prominent place for everything pertaining to life, to godliness, to his will and work in our lives, as well as his will and work in others. If a crisis comes up and we turn to God in prayers, calling on him to act, throwing the situation and circumstances before him, that’s intercession. Intercession is more than the simple act of praying but it’s throwing all things before him and calling on Him to move, to act, to intervene, and to respond. Intercession is not about having polished and primed prayers for others to be impressed by. Intercession is living a humble life before God, welcoming him into every area of our lives and the lives we are bringing before him, and keeping our ear to his chest to hear his heartbeat. Intercession is not just praying; it’s listening for his plans, purposes, and areas where he is inviting us to join him in the work he has in mind and desires to do.