Enoch Walked With God # 3

Enoch Walked With God # 3

2. We must pray the prayer of faith and "pray without ceasing." Prayer is the Christian life. It is impossible for the soul to be spiritually alive and active without fervent and believing prayer. Prayer has more influence on the sanctification of the soul than all other ordinances. It is going directly to God to receive the life-giving Spirit according to an absolute and often repeated promise. "Ask, and it shall be given you; seek, and you shall find; knock, and it shall be opened unto you. For everyone that asks receives, and he that seeks finds, and to him that knocks it shall be opened. If a son shall ask bread of any of you that is a father, will he give him a stone? or if he ask a fish, will he for a fish give him a serpent? or if he shall ask an egg, will he offer him a scorpion? If you then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto your children, how much more shall your heavenly Father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him." This is decisive if any language can be. The promise is absolute, and there must be an unwavering belief in the promise in order to give the application success. "If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God, who gives to all men liberally and upbraids not, and it shall be given him. But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering; for he that wavers is like a wave of the sea driven with the wind and tossed. For let not that man think that he shall receive any thing of the Lord." But the faith inculcated is not a belief in my goodness, but in God's truth. It is a firm unwavering, confident belief that God will "give the Holy Spirit to those who ask Him" aright. This strong confidence in God's truth may be exercised whatever doubts we have of our own goodness or election. If we are troubled on these points it ought not to keep us back. We may leave them to be decided afterwards, and go right to God with unlimited confidence in His truth and consequent willingness to hear the cries of all who sincerely seek Him. This was the faith of Enoch - "Before his translation he had this testimony that he pleased God. But without faith it is impossible to please Him: for he that comes to God must believe what? He must believe that God is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him." The only faith demanded is to "believe" in God, "that he is, and that he is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him."

3. We must watch. In that most trying moment when the powers of hell were let loose upon the suffering Saviour, He gave His disciples no other direction than this, "Watch and pray that you enter not into temptation." 

Secondly, watch another enemy greater than this - watch your own heart. Keep an attentive eye upon the movements of corruption within you; otherwise some evils will gather too much strength for you to resist; others will work unseen, and go in to form your character unknown to yourselves.

Thirdly, watch the motions of the Spirit upon minds. Sometimes the Spirit whispers an invitation to prayer or divine contemplation. If the suggestion is followed we may find the duties easy and pleasant, and the effect lasting. But perhaps we refuse to attend to the impulse. The consequence is, our hearts grow cold and lifeless; and then though we may attempt to pray or mediate, we find no relish for it. It may be illustrated by a passage from the Song of Solomon - "I sleep, but my heart wakes: it is the voice of my Beloved that knocks, saying Open to me, my sister, my love, my dove, my undefiled; for my head is filled with dew and my locks with the drops of the night. My Beloved put in his hand by the hole of the door, and my affections were moved by him. I rose up to open to my Beloved, and my hands dropped with myrrh and my fingers, upon the handles of the lock. I opened to my Beloved, but my Beloved had withdrawn himself and was gone: my soul failed when I called him but he gave no answer." This is enough to confirm my idea of watching and obeying the first suggestion of the Spirit of Christ.

I have thus shown what it is to walk with God, the blessed consequences, and the means. May I not now urge upon you this delightful duty? It is what you owe to the blessed God, your Father and Saviour, who has astonished heaven by His kindness to you, and whose mercies, if you are not deceived, will hold you entranced to eternity. It is what you owe Him, and it will secure you a happy life, more than all the honors and wealth of the world. It is heaven begun below. Do you wish to be happy? Then place all your cares to walk with God. Enoch walked with God three hundred years. And he has never seen cause to repent it.  We are apt to think that we are not expected to aim at the superior piety of ancient saints. But why paralyze every power by which a stuporous  mistake? Is not God worthy of obedience now as in the days of old? Have the increased displays of His mercy in the Gospel impaired His claims? Has the affecting scene of Calvary rendered His less lovely in the eyes of sinners? Or are the happy consequences of a walk with God worn out by time? What honor so great as to be the companion and son and favorite of Him who owns all the treasures of the universe? What better society can be found than Enoch had? Does any valuable consideration move us, or any ingenuous motive? O let us never cease to walk with God!

~Edward Griffin~

(The End)