Walking with God

Our relationship with God is likened in the Bible to walking with God. Right at the earliest time in humanity there was at least one, Enoch, who “walked with God” (Genesis 5.24). In fact the New Testament uses the idea of walking to depict one’s way of life. For example, there are the unbelievers who “walk in darkness” (John 8.12); indeed, Paul describes them as walking “in the futility of their minds” before they came to know the Lord. Subsequently, they who “are light in the Lord. Walk as children of light” (Ephesians 4.17, 5.8).

This theme, recurring through the bible, teaches us something important: the Christian life is not just believing some facts or doctrines, nor just in practicing some religious acts. It involves maintaining a relationship with the Lord: walking with him means sharing our lives with him, talking to him about everything that worries us, asking his help in all kinds of situations. 

This is both a blessing and a challenge. To share our lives with Jesus is the way we show our love and attachment to him as our loving Saviour. It’s a way of speaking of our intimate prayer life. If you ever go for a solitary walk, that’s an opportunity to literally walk with God, opening up your heart to him, sharing your joys, your sorrows, your temptations, and your plans with him. It can be a time to offload your burdens, to entrust your difficulties into God’s hands, and to renew your confidence in his promises to help you.

But there is a challenge here too. 1 John 1.6, 7 points this up: “If we say we have fellowship with him while we walk in darkness, we lie and do not practice the truth”. But in verse 7 he adds “if we walk in the light, we have fellowship with one another” and with God himself. He goes on to encourage his readers to confess their sins to God, for as we keep close to God in our walk, we need to be cleansed of any deviations from the right path. So walking with God, keeping up a living relationship with him, will keep us from erring into sinful behaviours.

Here is a verse that is worth memorising : Paul, writing to converts in Colossians 2.6,7, exhorts them: “As you received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving”. This reminds us of how we started out on the Christian walk – we “received Christ” as our saviour and Lord. So we keep on, becoming more established in the faith, and growing in our obedience to our Lord.

To other believers he wrote similarly, “as you received from us how you ought to walk and to please God, just as you are doing, … do so more and more” (1 Thessalonians 4.1). Let’s learn to maintain an open and clear relationship with the one who loved us and gave himself for us, and is now living within us by his Spirit. So we will become more and more like him, so as to “walk in the same way in which he walked” (1 John 2.6).

Clive Every-Clayton