Walk With God… How often we hear the phrase, but how often does it roll off our tongue without a full understanding of what it means, what it entails, what it requires?

I’ve been giving a lot of thought about Walking With God lately, asking my self some difficult and hard questions. Walk With God Ministries began over 30 years ago and learning about how to walk with Him and sharing that with His bride has been our focus. But lately I have been asking myself and asking the Lord if I really understand what that means. As He has been doing for the past couple of years, He is answering me through His Word… in the Old Testament. It seems that I have had more of who He is and who I am revealed to me in the pages between Genesis and Malachi than ever before. What He showed me the other morning was so simple and yet it was like a whole new revelation… all from the lips of a farmer who was called out of his field to deliver a message to Israel. It was a simple question whose answer sits at the foundation of whether or not we are truly Walking With God

Amos 3:3 “Can two walk together, unless they are agreed?”

It’s pretty obvious that the key to the answer is found in the last word… agreed. In the Hebrew, they are agreed is no adu, which comes from the root word yaad, that means “met.” If two people are going to walk together they first have to meet, otherwise their walk can never begin. Simple, yes? Well not so simple if we look at some of the additional meanings that word invokes here; to engage, to summon, to assemble. If we are to have a successful walk with Jesus we have to come together at a starting place and agree upon a shared destination. Think about that for a moment. We are walking with Him with our eyes fixed on a specific destination, we are not wandering aimlessly through this life like Israel did in the wilderness.

Israel had been called as God’s chosen wife, as His family, to walk with Him as His people; an example of Himself to the world. To begin that walk He extricated the nation from the bondage of Egypt and took them to Sinai where He revealed Himself to them and began to develop them into a holy nation. He began that process by revealing the terms of walking with Him in His covenant with them and His commandments. He clearly set forth their destination, the Promised Land. But their walk was about more than just the destination, it was about developing a consistent relationship, a companionship, with Him. And that was only going to happen if they shared His destination and continued to walk with Him.

That admonition we need to take to heart!

Israel was to walk with Him in His statutes and in His commandments in humility, being attentive to His Word and responsive to His commands. That meant they had to walk at a “shared pace” with Him, never running ahead or lagging behind but keeping pace with Him every day, always moving ahead to their shared destination. It was their watchword…

Isa 30:21 And thine ears shall hear a word behind thee, saying, This is the way, walk ye in it, when ye turn to the right hand, and when ye turn to the left. 

There is a more detailed discussion of this in my book The Foundations of Faith on page 13.

Israel had her starting place at Sinai, where she met God. We had our starting place at the Cross where we met Jesus. John Bunyan, the author of Pilgrim’s Progress, never forgot that starting place: “I was made to see, again and again, that God an my soul were friends by His blood; yea I saw that the justice of God and my sinful soul cold embrace and kiss each other, through His blood. This was a good day to me; I hope I shall never forget it.”

But that was Israel’s problem, they forgot, which was the root of all their trials and the judgments that God brought upon them. That is a problem for many of the bride of Christ today. We have allowed the “things of this world” to overshadow our walk and our pace has faltered and our vision of our destination has faded. We need to reflect on the words of Paul that remind us of the walk that we were created to share…

Eph 4:1-2 … walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called, 2 With all lowliness and meekness, with longsuffering, forbearing one another in love; 

2 Cor 5:7 … walk by faith, not by sight

Gal 5:16 … walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfill the lust of the flesh

        Eph 5:2 … walk in love, as Christ also hath loved us 

Eph 5:8… walk as children of light

And perhaps the verse that ties it all together for us…

Col 2:6-7 As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: 7 Rooted and built up in him, and established in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving.

As it was for John, so it should be for us. We need to walk in the light of His Word, His truth, and that means being open and honest with Him each and every day as well as with each other. From the beginning of our walk at the Cross we are to walk in the light of His presence, the presence of the Holy Spirit within us who sets our destination, sets our pace, and guides us into His footsteps. If we are to stay on course we are going to need to make those mid-course corrections that He gives us, which means confession and forgiveness each and every day. It means His grace.

How’s your walk? Is it consistent with your talk? James Sammis understood the secret to a successful walk when he penned his wonderful hymn… Trust and Obey

When we walk with the Lord
In the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way;
While we do His good will,
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.

That is exactly what Israel refused to do. They stopped walking with God, they stopped meeting Him every morning, and that resulted in their wandering aimlessly through life, which ultimately led to their turning to other gods. We can’t let that happen to us… To Not Walk is Not an Option for the bride of Christ.