Walking with God

And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him. GENESIS 5:24

Whitefield is remembered as a preacher of beginnings — of conviction, conversion and the new birth. But he cared just as much about what came after. A new birth is the start of a life, and a life must be lived. His sermon Walking with God, preached on the brief and mysterious record of Enoch, is his fullest account of that life, and it is one of the gentlest and most practical things he wrote.

What it means to walk with God

Whitefield begins by answering an objection: that God’s commands are impractical, contrary to flesh and blood. The life of Enoch, he says, is proof that they are not. Here was a man in a wicked generation who walked with God for three hundred years. What did that walking involve? Whitefield names four things.

First, it implies that the enmity of the heart against God has been taken away by the Spirit. By nature the carnal mind is not merely an enemy to God but enmity itself. Two cannot walk together while one hates the other.

Second, it implies that a person is actually reconciled to God through the righteousness and atonement of Christ.

Can two walk together, except they be agreed? AMOS 3:3

Third, it implies a settled, abiding communion with God — the Holy Spirit dwelling in the heart not like a traveller who stays for a night but as a resident who makes His home there.

Fourth, it implies progress. Walking, says Whitefield, supposes forward motion. A person who walks may move slowly, but he goes forward. So those who walk with God go from strength to strength and are changed into Christ’s image from glory to glory.

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 CORINTHIANS 3:18

Seven means

The heart of the sermon is Whitefield’s account of the means by which believers keep up their walk with God. There are seven, and they make a sensible rule of life.

The first is reading God’s word. The second is secret prayer, which he calls “the very breath of the new creature,” the fan that keeps the spark of holy fire alive and raises it into a flame. The neglect of secret prayer, he warns, has been the door to many spiritual diseases.

The third is meditation. Whitefield quotes Luther’s saying that prayer, reading, temptation and meditation make a minister, and adds that they make a Christian too. “Meditation to the soul, is the same as digestion to the body.” Reading without reflection leaves the word unabsorbed.

This book of the law shall not depart out of thy mouth; but thou shalt meditate therein day and night. JOSHUA 1:8

The fourth is watching the ways of God’s providence. If the hairs of our head are numbered, nothing happens by accident. “Every cross has a call in it,” says Whitefield, and every providence carries a lesson for those who attend to it.

The fifth is watching the motions of the Spirit within, and giving oneself to be led by Him as a little child gives its hand to a parent.

The sixth is keeping to God’s ordinances — public worship, the sacrament, the preaching of the word — which he calls conduit pipes through which God conveys His grace.

The seventh is keeping company with those who walk with God. The first Christians kept their first love by continuing in fellowship with one another. Those who would walk with God should choose their companions accordingly.

He that walketh with wise men shall be wise: but a companion of fools shall be destroyed. PROVERBS 13:20

Why it is worth it

Whitefield then gives three motives. Walking with God is honourable: if we would think it a great honour to be admitted to an earthly king’s council, how much more to walk with the King of kings. It is pleasant: he quotes the dying words of Matthew Henry, that a life spent in communion with God is the pleasantest life in the world. And it ends in heaven. He quotes Bishop Beveridge: though the way is narrow, it is not long, and though the gate is strait, it opens into everlasting life.

He answers the objection that those who walk with God are often mocked and afflicted. Yes, he says, but the world’s scorn is no measure of honour, and there are inward joys the world knows nothing of.

Where care is needed

Whitefield’s seven means are wise and time-tested, but they can be turned into a checklist, and a checklist can become a new covenant of works. Whitefield himself, before his conversion, had kept a far stricter rule than this and found no peace in it. The means are not the walk. They are the ways by which a person who has already been reconciled to God keeps company with Him. Their value lies in the Person they lead to.

It is fair to add that Whitefield did not always keep his own counsel well. His relentless travelling left little room for the stillness and meditation he recommends, and his friends worried that he gave himself too little rest. A walk is a pace that can be kept for a lifetime. Some believers need to hear that as much as they need to hear the call to diligence.

A long walk home

The phrase that sums up Enoch’s life is also the phrase that sums up his death: he was not, for God took him. After three hundred years of walking with God, the walk simply continued out of this world into the next. That, says Whitefield, is the end of every walker with God. The daily pace, the ordinary means, the steady company, all lead home.

Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the LORD. PSALM 119:1

FOR REFLECTION AND ACTION

1. Of Whitefield’s seven means — Scripture, secret prayer, meditation, attention to providence, attention to the Spirit, the ordinances, and godly company — which is weakest in your life? Choose one to strengthen this month.

2. Set aside a fixed time for secret prayer each day this week, and guard it.

3. After reading Scripture, spend five minutes turning one verse over in your mind. Let meditation do its digesting work.

4. Think of a recent trouble. Ask what call God may be sounding in it.

5. Consider your closest companions. Do they help you walk with God? Seek out one person who does.

A PRAYER

Lord God, Enoch walked with You, and You took him home. I want to walk with You too.

Thank You that through Christ the enmity is gone and I am reconciled to You. Now let me keep company with You day by day.

Teach me to read, to pray, to meditate and to watch for Your hand in all that happens. Give me companions who walk with You.

Keep me moving forward, however slowly, until my walk ends in Your presence. Amen.