A few brave souls are God-walkers. They walk with the Almighty. Should you ever meet one, you’ll never be the same.
Enoch was a God-walker. The Bible says, “Enoch walked with God three hundred years.”1 The same is true of every God-walker. They’re in it for the long haul. This distinguishes them from wannabes, who take a few steps and then turn back. God-walkers stay the course. It doesn’t matter how tough it gets. They keep on walking.
This was the case with Noah. The Bible says, “Noah walked with God.”2 He did so in a world much like our own. “The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great on the earth, and that every inclination of the thoughts of the human heart was only evil all the time.”3 It didn’t stop Noah. He walked with God when no one else did.
God-walkers are God-like, for step by step they are “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.”4 That’s what makes them so different from other people. They live separated, holy lives, for they follow the God who said, “Be holy, because I am holy.”5
God-walkers aren’t perfect, mind you. Sometimes they stumble. Sometimes they fall. King David was such a man. God said, “I have found David the son of Jesse, a man after My heart, who will do all My will.”6 Not long after, David fell flat on his face. He took another man’s wife and had him killed. God sent a prophet to rebuke David, saying, “Why did you despise the word of the Lord by doing what is evil in his eyes?”7 David repented, confessed his sin, got up, and started walking again. Read the Psalms, and you will know that David was a God-walker.
Elijah was also a God-walker. Kings feared him. After one of his greatest victory, however, Elijah fell apart. “I have had enough,” he told God. “Take my life.”8 God encouraged Elijah in “a gentle whisper.”9 Like David, Elijah got up and started walking.
God-walkers are God-like, for step by step they are “being transformed into the same image from glory to glory.”
Occasionally, God-walkers get spirited away. That’s what happened to Elijah. One day, a chariot swooped down from heaven, scooped him up, and he was gone. The same thing happened to Enoch. The Bible says, “Enoch walked with God, and then he disappeared because God took him away.”10 The Bible says Enoch “obtained the witness that before his being taken up he was pleasing to God.”11 Someday, Christ is going to come in the clouds and whisk all God-walkers up into heaven. These are men and women of whom “the world was not worthy.”12
Of course, the only perfect God-walker was the Lord Jesus. God declared Him such, saying, “This is my beloved Son, in whom I have found my delight.”13 His walk with the Father was like none other, such that He could say, “I am in the Father, and the Father is in Me.”14 At the end of His life, His final steps on earth completed, God took Him up. “He was lifted up while they were looking on, and a cloud received Him out of their sight.”15
Are there God-walkers on earth today? There are, but don’t expect one to come up to you and say, “Hey, look at me. I’m a God-walker.” Jesus said, “Whoever exalts himself shall be humbled; and whoever humbles himself shall be exalted.”16
So, how might you spot a God-walker? Look for someone like Jesus, someone who walks “in the same manner as he walked,”17 and who touches others the way he did. Jesus promises the person who believes in Him that “rivers of living water”18 shall flow “from his innermost being.”19 Find a person like that, and you’ve found a God-walker.
Amy Carmichael (1867-1951) was such a person. For 55 years, she served in India, helping girls and young women escape sexual slavery. Read Carmichael’s poetry, and you will know that she walked with God.
Jim Elliot (1930-1956) was also a God-walker. He was martyred at age 28 while trying to tell primitive tribal people in Ecuador about the Lord. I had a friend who met him briefly and said there was nothing special about him. After Elliot’s death, my friend read his published diary. Then he knew. Jim Elliot had walked with God.
Maybe someday you’ll meet a God-walker. Should you be so privileged, you will be changed forever.
Maybe someday you’ll be a God-walker. Why not? Has not Jesus invited all of us to walk with Him, saying, “Follow me”20? Is this not what God desires most from us? The prophet Micah writes:
He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?21
James G. McCarthy – Guest Contributor
James G. McCarthy is an instructor in the Discipleship Intern Training Program (theditp.com) and the author of several books on the Christian faith, including The Gospel According to Rome.
1. Genesis 5:22 NASB; 2. Genesis 6:9 NASB; 3. Genesis 6:5 NIV; 4. 2 Corinthians 3:18 NASB; 5. 1 Peter 1:16 NIV; 6. Acts 13:22 NASB; 7. 2 Samuel 12:9 NIV; 8. 1 Kings 18:4 NASB; 9. 1 Kings 19:12 NIV; 10. Genesis 5:24 NET; 11. Hebrews 11:5 NASB; 12. Hebrews 11:37 NASB; 13. Matthew 3:17 NWT (J. N. Darby); 14. John 14:11 NASB; 15. Acts 1:9 NASB; 16. Matthew 23:12 NASB; 17. 1 John 2:6 NASB; 18. John 7:38 NASB; 19. John 7:38 NASB; 20. John 1:43 NASB; 21. Micah 6:8 NKJ