Enoch Walked with God

There are only three verses in Genesis to tell the life story of Enoch but they have lots of clues so we can understand him and the example he is to us.

Back in the days before the Great Flood, a lifespan was measured in hundreds of years. So Enoch was 65, a mere young man, when he fathered Methuselah, whose name means, "in his lifetime it [the foretold disaster] will come." Sure enough, Methuselah was still alive 969 years later when the flood came! For Enoch to name his first son like this must mean that he believed that prophecy.

Now Enoch lived another 300 years and had lots of sons and daughters after Methuselah, so he did not become a hermit or recluse, but he did have something that set him apart from others  He walked with God. I'm assuming he also talked with God, that is prayed, and it became a daily habit with Enoch.

From personal experience I know that you can't have this kind of intimate life with God for long before it grows more and more precious and you look forward to the daily interaction with your Lord and God. If Enoch kept it up for 300 years you and I can be sure he enjoyed the relationship!

God enjoyed it too. As Bible preachers and teachers like to say when telling about Enoch, we can easily imagine that one day God may have said, "You know, Enoch, we are closer to my place than yours. Why don't you come home with me to stay?" We get this from Genesis 5:24 where it says, " Enoch walked with God; then he was no more, because God took him away."

Since these Bible characters are written up in the Bible to be examples to us, what is the obvious lesson here?

Simply, that it is very good to have a regular habit of communing with God, and that God Himself loves to do that with us.

Like any good habit though, it may take a while to become regular with us, and for us to learn to hear and really connect with God. Since He is a Spirit, it means we must develop our spiritual ears and understanding, and we must learn to express ourselves to God, and believe that He hears and understands us perfectly.

The best starting point is His written Word, the Bible. God inspired others friends through the centuries, with whom He walked and talked regularly, and they wrote down what He told them to write. This means the Bible is inspired by God, and if we read and study it reverently it will come alive to us with the messages that God wants to communicate to us.

As a Spirit, God is able to hear all our thoughts and words, so we can respond to Him by speaking aloud or in our thoughts.

So that we will not be inhibited or shy, it is good to have this time with God in a private way. After a while we will learn to enjoy including other believers in small groups for a corporate kind of fellowship with God, but our true spiritual development and maturity depends on having lots of private times with God.

Often such quiet times with God are known as prayer or devotional times. I am trying to avoid those terms just now because they come loaded for some people with definitions and rules that can get in the way of understanding how to really connect with God. At the very root of it our "walk with God" is a spiritual relationship, where we are totally honest and as fully revealed as we are able before God, and where we let Him speak His truth to our hearts or spirits, and our minds. Our spirit may grasp His will first, but our minds need to get a handle on it too, so we will know how to respond and obey, or cooperate with God.

There is another meaning a fore-shadowing in Enoch's life of something that can happen to us. In the New Testament we have passages that indicate that Jesus, (one with God), will one day physically come to meet those of us who walk and talk with Him , and then turn around and take us to His Home in Heaven. Those left behind will talk to each other in amazement about our vanishing. As believers we often encourage each other now by referring to the rapture. It is nothing to be feared, but rather looked forward to with anticipation.

If you dread that time you are either not walking and talking with the Lord in a healthy relationship, or you don't fully understand this promise. Either case can be corrected, don't stay in despair. Ask for help or solutions to the problem.

My Theme of Friendships

My novel, Ruthe's Secret Roses, and this related site have a Friendship theme. By getting to know and follow around the heroine, Ruthe, you can learn a lot about friendships, and that there is one that is the golden key to enriching all your other friendships and making them more satisfying. The site is more like a perfumed poupouri of articles and pages on that theme, and I've started a series on the friendships we observe in the Bible and what practical insights we can gain for our own friendships by thinking about them

Visit the RoseBouquet for my weekly short articles about what is happening in my life, week-by-week.

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Are your friendships important to you? You'll want to read the first eight chapters of the book or order it in either softcover or e-book formats, Ruthe's Secret Roses.

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