Throughout the bible, the life of ‘faith’ is often talked about as, ‘walking with the Lord’. In 2 Corinthians 5:7 Paul tells his Christian readers to remember that ‘we walk by faith not sight’, and that we ‘have as our ambition…….to be pleasing to Him’ RSV. Enoch was a man who ‘walked with God’ and was clearly so pleasing to God, as he walked ‘in faith’, that we are told God just ‘took him’. Genesis 5:22-24.
So how can we be sure that we are walking with God in a way that is pleasing to Him? What does it mean to ‘walk by faith and not by sight’? We can get a major clue from the prophet Amos, when he asks the rhetorical question, ‘Can two walk together, except they be agreed?’ Amos 3:3.AV. Agreeing with God, is then, a key to walking closely with Him.
When I was a student, I had a wonderful African Christian friend, who preferred to make her own delicious food, rather than eating in the canteen. On occasions she would invite me to join her, and I would. One day she got quite angry with me, because every time she invited me, I would reply- like a well brought up English person- something like, ‘Well thank you. That would be nice, but are you sure?’
She had finally had enough of my English ’politeness’, saying that she found it insulting, because it was throwing doubt on her integrity. That is to say, she wouldn’t have asked me if she didn’t mean that she wanted me to share the meal. She wasn’t just asking because she felt she had to. What she wanted to hear was my unequivocal ‘Thank you. That would be lovely’.
My ‘thank you’ would be my agreement with her, without expressing doubt, or needing additional reassurance. It would show that I believed her offer was genuine. My ‘thank you’ enabled us to ‘walk together’ as we ate. I expressed my faith in her offer, and then I received the meal. My ‘thank you’ also gave her the joy of my trust in her friendship.
I believe, that there is a longing in the heart of God, for a people who will walk with Him in agreement. And before you protest that you always ‘agree’ with God, just think how many times you have sought His reassurance that He loves you, that He’s still ‘O.K. with you. Or even that you haven’t wrecked His plans for you, today, or this year, already.
God wants us to ‘take for granted’ what He has already ‘granted’ us. Not taking Him for granted in a careless way, but in a faith filled way that expresses our trust in Him, and what He has said. So we are going to spend the next few blogs looking at some things, about which, we really need to ‘agree’ with God.
We want our faith to bring joy to His heart, and we are going to signal our agreement with Him, by our thanksgiving, for a few of the many things He has already granted us, His children. Things, about which, we often have unacknowledged doubts. This could be life changing!!!!
