Good morning.
Let us read a few scriptures.
Enoch lived sixty-five years, and begot Methuselah.
And after he begot Methuselah, Enoch walked with God three hundred years, and had sons and daughters.
So all the days of Enoch were three hundred sixty-five years.
And Enoch walked with God; and he was not, for God took him.
He hath showed thee, O man, what is good;
And what doth the Lord require of thee,
But to do justly, and to love mercy,
And to walk humbly with thy God?
By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death;
And he was not found, because God translated him:
For before his translation he hath had witness borne to him that he had been well-pleasing unto God.
And without faith it is impossible to be well-pleasing unto Him;
For he that cometh to God must believe that He is,
And that He is a rewarder of them that seek after Him.
For he endured, as seeing Him who is invisible.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, we want to thank You for that little thing Jack said: “My father was an alcoholic, but Jesus redeemed him.” Lord, we thank You that You are a God who redeems.
When I think about Genesis, this is generations after Adam sinned. Yet here You are: You have people who are lost, and You redeem. Lord, we are grateful. We are grateful that You are a redeeming God.
Lord, we ask this morning that You would speak to us the things that are on Your heart, and make them real by the Holy Spirit. We know that You have things on Your heart that You want to speak to us in this time.
Not that this is merely something specific for this time, but in another way, it is specific, Lord, because You are speaking to us. That is what we want. We do not want anything else but to have a witness to Your voice from Your Word, and from that witness, that we may walk fresh with You.
We ask this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
All right, brothers and sisters, you can see from these verses that the thing on my heart is this—I do not want to call it an idea—but this desire of God to walk with man; not merely for God to walk with man, but for man to walk with God.
I think that is the thing that is really on God’s heart for this time—for this time in our lives and for the time in which we live. But even if things in our world were not as they are, it would still be His desire.
This is the whole reason for His redeeming us. He has redeemed us so that we can walk with Him. That is His heart’s desire.
One of the other verses I chose was from Micah. I will speak more about Micah the next time I am asked to share. But when it says, “What does the Lord require of thee?” I think of job requirements: you have got to do this, this, and this.
Yet that Hebrew word can also be translated, “What does the Lord seek?” He has shown thee, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord seek in man? This is what He seeks.
Now, brothers and sisters, the bottom line of that verse in Micah is not merely to do justly and to love mercy. The bottom line is to walk humbly with your God. That is the sum total of everything.
That is not to say that the other things are not important, but the sum total of these things is that we walk with God. We walk humbly with Him because we know Who He is.
This is what God is seeking in the time in which we are living: He is seeking for men to walk with Him.
If you look at Enoch and at the story of Genesis, after man sinned, you had Abel. Something was revealed to Abel: the Lord wanted a sacrifice—not the work of Abel’s hands, but the life of another. Abel offered to God a pleasing sacrifice.
Then, during the time of Seth, it says that men began to call upon the name of the Lord. That is a wonderful thing—calling upon the name of the Lord.
Generally, though, when do we call upon the name of the Lord? “Help! Lord, help me.” I am not saying that is a bad thing, because sometimes that awakens us to the Lord.
But that is not the whole desire God has for us. Yes, He wants us to have the sacrifice that pleases Him, and He wants us to call upon His name. But He wants more than an acknowledgment of Who He is. He wants us to walk with Him.
Now, what does it mean to walk with God? I do not want to reduce it to something religious.
It is not that if I do certain things, then I am walking with God. If I have a quiet time, then I am walking with God. If I have a quiet time every day, then I am walking with God.
Oh, wait, wait, wait. No, wait. That is not enough. If I have a quiet time and I go to Sunday meeting, that means I am walking with God. No, no, no, no. Wait, wait—let us add the prayer meeting. If I am doing these things, then I am walking with God.
I want to say that you can do those things and not walk with God.
Sometimes that is the way we think: “I am doing the things I am supposed to do as a Christian, and that is what satisfies God.” I was raised Catholic. You take the sacraments, and God is pleased with you. That is all you need to do.
You take the sacraments, make sure you go to Mass on Sunday—if not every day—make sure you take communion, and make sure you go to confession at least every three weeks. You do those things, and you think that makes you right with God.
But Hebrews tells us that walking with God is what pleases Him. Enoch had this testimony: he pleased God. How did he please Him? He pleased Him by walking with Him. That is what Genesis tells us.
To walk with God is like walking with another person in whom you are interested. I notice that I said interested in.
It is not just that I am walking along with someone else. I can walk with somebody and not even give them the time of day, or not acknowledge that they are walking with me, because I can be so caught up with myself and with the things I am thinking about.
But when we are walking with someone, the first thing is that we are aware that someone else is there. I am aware of the presence of another.
It is not enough merely to be aware. We are also to be conversant with Him. By conversant, I do not mean merely conversant on my part.
I can be walking with someone, and all I am doing is yakking and yakking and yakking. That poor person has to be the soundboard for whatever I am yakking about. But conversant means there is two-way conversation.
That is what walking is: an awareness that Someone is with us. Someone is accompanying you. Accompanying you means that He is walking with you. He is your company, and you are aware of Him and conversant with Him.
The first few dates I had with my wife were walks—partly because I was a teacher and did not have a lot of money to take her places.
But those walks were a place where my wife and I became acquainted with one another. I began to know who she was, and she began to know who I was.
I could have taken her to a movie. Movies were cheaper at that time. But what do you do in a movie? You are quiet, you are looking at something else, and there is no interaction.
I could have taken her to dinner, but you would be too self-conscious about dropping something or eating with your mouth open and showing what you have chewed.
But when you walk with somebody, you are conversant, and there is a going between.
This is the subject I will share about the next couple of times: walking with God. I believe this is the testimony God wants in His people in this day. He wants the testimony that these people walk with God.
He wants people to know that we are walking with God.
That is what was displayed in the last days, because Enoch lived in the last days, did he not? Here is our example of living in the last days.
As I have looked at Scripture—and I am not a Bible scholar—there are only two people I know of who are said to have walked with God. They are both in the Old Testament, and both were at this time: Enoch and Noah.
In Genesis 6, it says Noah walked with God. No one else. To me, it was eye-opening to think that they were the ones in the last days.
“My coming will be like the days of Noah.” In the days of Noah, you had all these other things going on, but you had one who was walking with God. It is incredible to think of that.
This is the testimony I believe God wants displayed in His people in the last days.
The ministries of the Pittman boys, Kenny and Jeffrey, have been about fellowship. Fellowship is sharing with God, and walking with God can be seen, in one way, as fellowship with God.
So I think God is speaking at this time. If you have three people coming up and saying there is something about fellowship, something about walking with God, maybe God is trying to speak to us. Maybe this is the Word of God for us at this time.
My intention is not to tell you, “This is how you walk with God.” This will not be a how-to message: do these things, and you are walking with God.
It is like little children. How do little children learn to walk? First, they observe others doing it. Then they learn to walk on their own.
They may have something that helps them walk. I remember my oldest daughter, Katie. My sister gave her a little shopping-cart toy, and that was the day she learned to walk. She pushed that thing all over the lawn, and then she let go.
Then she was into a whole other realm of life, where she was going to be getting into a lot of things.
It is not that you need me to tell you how to walk, because the Holy Spirit is going to do that. I do not want to take away anything the Holy Spirit is going to teach by saying, “This is the way you do it,” and not giving Him His place.
The Holy Spirit has His place in our walking with God, and we need to know that place. We will speak about that at some other time.
In the next few times, I want to speak about the whys, the whats, and the where of walking. Today, I want to focus on the why.
This is not, “Why should I walk with God?” That would be scolding you, would it not? God is not scolding you.
I want to concentrate on why God desires me to walk with Him. That is more important: God desires me to walk with Him.
I think many of us look at walking with God as a duty, rather than as God’s desire for us. We are trying to please Him without recognizing that He has already demonstrated His pleasure toward us because He redeemed us.
He redeemed us. That shows us right there that He is pleased with us. To further please Him, He now wants us to walk with Him.
God is not seeking, as we walk with Him, to expose us and say, “This is where you are wrong. You have a flaw in your character here. This has to be dealt with.”
He is not out to point out our shortcomings. Rather, He would have us become acquainted with Him—to know Him in His person.
When He asks us to walk with Him, He is really saying, “I am letting you in. I am letting you into something no one else has been able to get into. I am letting you in to be with Me.”
He brings us in behind the curtain. He brings us into His house. He brings us into His space.
He brings us into His space in order to show us something of Himself—to allow us to know and see something of Who He is.
I am not talking about something theological, such as the attributes of God: that He is omniscient, omnipotent, almighty, and all those things.
Those things can become so great and so theological that we lose the picture that God is knowable. But He wants us to know Him in His person.
He makes Himself relatable. In other words, He makes Himself comprehensible—not fully comprehended, but He enables us to comprehend something of Him that draws us closer and helps us go on and say, “Gee, I can know more.”
That is the idea of Him walking with us. He has opened the door to us. That is what redemption is all about. The door has been opened, and we are to come in.
That is what He desires. He does not force us to come in. He opens the door for us and leaves it to us.
Thankfully, He gives us His Holy Spirit to give us a little nudge here and there to help us. As we become aware that He is alongside us, He begins to open up more and more of Who He is.
I want to look at four things—not a comprehensive list—but things I have seen as I have looked back on my own life. These are ways God has opened the door for me.
Sometimes He opens up Who He is through nature.
The heavens declare the glory of God;
And the firmament showeth His handiwork.
Day unto day uttereth speech,
And night unto night showeth knowledge.
There is no speech nor language;
Their voice is not heard.
A lot of times we think that is for unbelievers. But no, that is for us also.
When I consider Thy heavens, the work of Thy fingers,
The moon and the stars, which Thou hast ordained;
What is man, that Thou art mindful of him?
And the son of man, that Thou visitest him?
When we see God, there can be a danger: we notice how little we are, and our focus becomes on us. But the Lord is trying to get us to focus on Him. “I want you to see Who I am.”
One thing I miss about my daughter who lives in Montana is that she and I were the nature people. I miss her saying, “Dad, come here now. Look at this sunset.” She was the one who shared that type of thing with me.
Nature is like somebody inviting you into their house. When someone invites you into their house, you get to see something about what they are like.
You see the arrangement of the table. Are they orderly? What kind of person are they? You see the art on the wall. What catches their attention? What do they appreciate?
When you see nature, you see God saying, “Look at what I have done.” You can hear Him saying, “This is good. This is good.”
Perhaps it is like going to a rich person’s house, because God is rich. Yet you might be self-conscious about bringing your children into a rich person’s house: “They are going to break something. They are going to mess something up.”
But God says, “It is all replaceable. You do not have to worry at all. These are the things I enjoy. These are the things I have made. They are not there to say, ‘Don’t touch this.’”
Do not feel that you cannot come in and enjoy Who He is because you are worried about what might happen. You are totally put at peace, because God says, “In My house, it is good. It is good. I want you to enjoy the goodness of it, because the goodness of it is Me.”
You cannot look at a sky—like a couple of days ago, with clouds gray on the bottom and immaculate white thunderheads above, with the blue mixed in—and not see a diversity of color, beauty, and difference.
You cannot look at a flower and not say the order of it is amazing. You can see even the order of animals. I was watching Blue Planet the other day, and you see the different types of animals and all the things God has made.
You get a picture of Who He is. He is so creative and so providing. In that household He has created, everything needed for all those animals is provided.
He says, “Consider the birds of the air.” They do not toil or spin. They are not out there looking for a job, because God feeds them. You get a whole new picture of God.
One way God shows us Who He is is through nature. We become sensitive to things. We are not all nature freaks, but every once in a while, even those of us who are not, see something and are blown away.
That is what it is with God. We see something of God, and it blows us away—not in the sense that we cannot stand it, but that we might know more, see more, and look at it forever. Of course, sometimes we are driving.
Another way He lets us in is through the Scriptures.
In Greek, there are three words for “word”: graphe, logos, and rhema.
Graphe is just the ink on the page—just words. Logos is conceptual: you get a concept and see the concept. Rhema is something for today.
Put another way, graphe is the written word—the ink on the page. Logos is the concept that brings understanding. Rhema is a word that leads you to action.
Graphe would be the word “mountain.” Logos would be a photograph of a mountain. Now I have an idea of the concept. I see the mountain, and I have the conceptual understanding of what a mountain is.
Rhema is like the red engine light in your car. When it comes on, you must act. It is like flashing red lights behind you. When you see those, you need to act.
I want to concentrate on going from graphe to logos. We read the Word, and a lot of us are just in graphe. We read it because that is what Christians do.
We have our devotional times and read our Scripture, but many times we do not even remember what we read by the end of the day. “What did you read today?” “Oh, I do not remember.”
But God brings us from graphe to logos. Sometimes He does it by bringing a Scripture right out so that it hits us in the face. We suddenly realize something in that Scripture.
Other times, there is a leading. We think about what we have read; we may study it; and suddenly something comes into focus. God is behind that.
It is not our great intellect doing this. God is drawing out the desire to know Him, because He has put that desire in us. The life of Christ is in us, and Christ desires His Father. The Spirit in us desires to show Him to us.
I want to show you something natural and then something more spiritual. Do you know what a coach is?
When I was in high school, I played basketball. Our coach was Coach Porter—just Coach Porter. But when he was a young guy, he played basketball too, at UCLA.
Now, you are all Southerners, so you really do not appreciate UCLA. Between 1964 and 1975, UCLA won the NCAA championship ten times. One time, they won seven in a row.
Their coach was John Wooden, known as the Wizard of Westwood. Coach Porter played for John Wooden in 1953. If you asked him what team that was, he would say, “The team that didn’t win.”
He was captain of the 1953 team. When he was my coach, he was around thirty-nine or forty. He coached me for three years, starting when I was a sophomore on varsity.
This was around the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s, when we were getting rebellious. I remember Coach Porter was really upset with the way I dressed one time when I came to school, and he really let me have it.
But in 1970, he did something for us: he took us to a UCLA practice. He let us watch the Bruins play during their run of seven championships in a row.
The first thing that happened was that Coach Wooden—the icon—looked up and saw not us, but Coach Porter. He called him by his first name: “Barry. Barry Porter. Barry.”
We could have dropped dead right there. This icon of coaching knew our coach by his first name.
It was as if—and I mean this reverently—the Lord were unveiling His Son to Peter. All of a sudden, our estimation of who Barry Porter was went through the roof.
We were an okay team, but it put a whole other spring in our step about how we approached our practices, because of who we were practicing for.
It was as if Coach Porter, to us, was John Wooden. We looked at him differently. There was a whole new respect for this meek man who did not really raise his voice.
We had a great team that year. We won twenty-seven in a row, and then lost in the quarterfinals. We never got to be champions, but it was as if we were the UCLA Bruins that year.
The reason I tell you that is to put it in a different place. There is a Scripture in Malachi 1:14 where the Lord says to His people, “I am a great King.”
A lot of times, when we look at God, the word “God” becomes so generic that it has almost lost its meaning.
His people were saying, in effect, “What have You done for us lately?” But the Lord says through the prophet, “I am a great King.”
It was as if they did not know. He said, “I can tell you do not know that because of what you offer Me. You offer Me the blind and the lame. You have no idea of Who I am.”
So He has to come out and say it. He lets them in to see Who He is: “I am a great King.”
Was this to make them knuckle under? No. It was to say, “You need to see Who I really am. You have to see Me as I am if you want to honor Me.”
The Lord wants the honor of His people. He wants us to honor Him for Who He is—not merely for what He can do or for His power, but for Who He is. He is a great King.
Coach Porter was simply Coach Porter to us. But when we saw his relationship with Coach Wooden, it changed us. It changed how we viewed him and what we were doing.
Practice was no longer merely “practice”—as Allen Iverson said, “Practice, man. It’s just practice.” No, we had a whole new appreciation of practice because we were doing the same drills John Wooden had his teams do.
We were running the same offense and using the same press. All of a sudden it was like, “This is right. This can only be right.”
We found ourselves placing ourselves under someone because we saw something great that we had not recognized before.
In Malachi, God is saying, “It is not enough that I remain generic. I do not want you in a place where I am only generic. I want you to see Who I am.”
As you see Who He is, you adapt yourself to Who He is. You change. You are transformed by what you see of Him afresh, because graphe becomes logos.
God uses His Word all the time to show Who He is. That is what this whole Book is about. In this Book is God. If you look for Him, you will find Him.
Is that not what it says in Hebrews 11:6? He is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. I want to look for God in the Word.
A third way God shows us something of Who He is is through our experiences in life.
We may not know something about God at the time, but when we look back, we have a chance to see God in our lives. Then we begin to understand Who God is because we see how He acted in our lives.
Sometimes we do not see it because we are too close; we are not far enough away. But as we get further and further away, we look back and say, “Oh, I did not see that before.”
Now I have not merely a new appreciation, but a new revelation of Who God is because I have seen Him in my life.
In Genesis 49, Jacob was blessing his sons. One of the things he said was, “From thence is the shepherd, the stone of Israel.”
Where did Jacob get this idea that God was a shepherd?
You have to remember that this was toward the end of Jacob’s life. Even when he went before Pharaoh, he said, “Few and evil have been the days of the years of my life.”
But now he looks back over his life and says, “What do I see? I see that God has shepherded me. He has been my Shepherd.”
Jacob himself was a shepherd, but he was not merely saying, “God is like me.” As he looked back at his life, he saw the twists and turns.
If you have studied Genesis, you can see the Lord guiding and shepherding Jacob’s life all the way through. Jacob was a conniver, so where did God lead him? To another conniver.
It was as if God said, “Jacob, I want you to look at yourself. But you cannot see yourself in you, so I am bringing someone just like you. It will be like looking in a mirror.”
Jacob left Bethel and went to Shechem. He came back to Bethel. He sent out his sons, and then he came to Egypt. All the way through it, you see the Lord guiding and shepherding his life.
David understood this too. Almost everybody in the literate world knows Psalm 23. You go to a funeral, and you find Psalm 23 there.
David’s understanding was not merely because he had been a shepherd. He could look back. If you look through the latter part of 1 Samuel and all through 2 Samuel, you see what David means: “I have seen You shepherding me. I have seen You guiding me through my life in all these ways.”
I do not think David was a young man when he wrote Psalm 23. I think he wrote it after experience—after he had been king and after Saul had chased him. You do not know these things until you have been through them and discovered that God has been your Shepherd.
There is one thing in particular I want to consider from Psalm 23. We think of green pastures and still waters, and those are wonderful things. We have periods of rest.
But Psalm 23:4 says:
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil;
For Thou art with me.
Part of our journey is through the valley of the shadow of death. Really, our whole life is in the valley of the shadow of death. Death is ever before us.
A shadow is deceptive. I could stand behind a wall with the sun behind me, and my shadow could be projected out. You might think I was twenty feet tall and very wide. A shadow distorts.
To make a shadow, you stand in front of light. Something is blocking the light from coming through, and then you have a distortion.
David says, “I go through the valley of the shadow of death.” He does not say, “I stay in the valley of the shadow of death.” He says, “I go through it.”
He sees the distortions. He is faced with them, and they are threatening. Yet he says, “I will fear no evil.”
That does not mean, “I will face no evil.” It does not mean that I will not be touched by evil.
Evil is not merely something demonic. In Scripture, evil can be calamity, destruction, loss, or that which leads to calamity, destruction, or loss.
David says, “Evil might touch me, but I fear no evil.”
Before David went to Goliath in 1 Samuel 17, Saul questioned whether he had been tested. David spoke about protecting his sheep, and he said that when the lion or bear had his sheep in its mouth, he went after it.
Brothers and sisters, sometimes we are in the mouth of a lion. We are in the mouth of a bear. The teeth are in us. We may be shaken around a little bit.
But the whole idea is this: “I will fear no evil.”
I think of brothers and sisters in Afghanistan who are facing death. Evil forces may come, but that does not mean they will not die. Yet once I am dead, I am with the Lord, and I do not need to fear judgment in that way. I am totally free from that.
He leads me through the valley. Why would He have us know Him in this way—as this Shepherd, so that we fear no evil?
It means that whatever happens in the ups and downs of life, with all the tribulations we may face, Jesus said, “In the world ye have tribulation.” You are going to have it.
But He also said, “Be of good cheer; I have overcome the world.” You are going to face these things, but the whole idea is this: I will fear no evil. Why? Because I am walking with my Shepherd.
A lot of times we do not feel that we are walking with a Shepherd. But when we look back over our lives, we can say, “The Lord was with me.”
It is like that syrupy “Footprints” thing. There was only one set of footprints. “Where were You then?” “Those are My footprints. I was carrying you.”
The whole idea is that He is with me. Because I can look back and see that He was with me through the valley of the shadow of death—even in the lion’s mouth—when things come up the next time, what do I do? I trust Him.
I trust Him because I know He is with me. God is opening a curtain to us and saying, “You might think I am not there, but I am.”
“You might not see it now, but as you get further along, you are going to look back and see that I was with you and what I did in that.”
Many of us think, “God deserted me at this time.” Many young people ask, “Where was God when this was happening?” We are not far enough away yet to see what the Lord has done.
He has not completed something in our life. We need to get farther down the line, walking with Him, and realize, “Oh my goodness, I did not know. But now I do.”
Because I do, as things go on, I know He is with me whatever I am going through. I know He is with me, and I will fear no evil. We entrust ourselves to Him, and we are able to endure whatever trial comes.
The testimony that goes out from that is that we are at peace.
That is one of the most wonderful things you can be in a trial: that people see you are at peace. It is not merely an outward calm. Inside, you may feel as if you are going a thousand ways. But an inner calm comes forth, and people say, “Why are you so calm? Why are you at peace?”
That becomes our testimony. The answer to why we are at peace becomes our witness to them as they see us go through the valley of the shadow of death, even as they go through it.
They see that I am walking with God through all of life’s valleys and peaks.
What shepherd quality did David see? Was it merely that God was leading? Was it that He was strong?
No. I think David saw that the Shepherd cared for him. That is something we lose sight of. We go through things, and we think God does not care.
What David is saying is, “I am going through this thing, and through going through it, I understand that God cares for me.”
One of the Lord’s last instructions in the Gospel was to Peter: “Care for My sheep.” That is God’s heart. God’s heart is to care for His sheep. He wants us to know that He cares for us.
The last thing is that God shows us something about Himself through a relationship that we realize we have.
Sometimes we do not recognize it at first, but then something happens and we realize that God is just what Jesus said He was: our Father.
What is the difference between a shepherd and a father? The shepherd does care for the sheep. But a father ransoms his children. A father will pay a ransom.
Why? Not merely because he cares for them, but because he loves them. You only pay a ransom for someone you love.
I am sorry, Jerry, but I would not pay a ransom for you. But for my daughters, I would pay whatever it takes because I love my daughters.
It is the same for us.
In Isaiah 43, He says, “I have called thee by thy name.” He says, “Fear not, Jacob, for I have redeemed thee.” Later, He says, “I have given Egypt as thy ransom.” He ransomed us.
When we speak about redemption, we tend to think only of what it means for us: we have been redeemed. But for the Father, it was a ransom. He had to ransom us.
This is the Father’s love. We find out that the Father loves us. Everything He brings into my life is out of a Father’s love.
We were studying Ephesians 5 through 6. In Ephesians 6:4, it speaks of a father nurturing his children. Fatherly love disciplines and nurtures. Everything comes through the love of my heavenly Father.
Everything He does for me is redemptive. It brings me closer to Him.
In closing, I think one problem—especially for younger believers, though perhaps for older believers as well—is that we are looking for things to do that will make us walk with God. We do not know how to walk with God.
How do we remedy this? How do we get around this? It is simple, really. You just go to God and tell Him.
You say, “Heavenly Father, I want to walk with You, and I do not know how. Show me.”
“I put my life and my path into Your hand. I do not know. I just know I should be reading the Word, and I should be doing this and other things. But Lord, I do not want merely to be doing them.”
“I want to give them back to You. Guide me into the place where the curtain is opened to me, where I see Who You are, and where I am able to discern these things about You and how You want me to walk with You.”
I think one of the most misunderstood verses is in Nehemiah, where it says, “The joy of the Lord is your strength.”
For a long time, I considered that to mean my joy in the Lord. But it is not. It is the joy of the Lord. It is His joy.
If we could realize His joy in having redeemed us so that we can walk with Him—if we could realize His joy in having us in His presence, and realize that even now He is by our side—it could revolutionize our lives.
It could revolutionize the way we look at Him. It could lead us to the place where it is not merely Him opening the door to us, but us opening the door to Him to come into our lives in a fuller way.
We allow Him to show Himself to us in a way that transforms us. This is what God is after. He wants us to walk with Him.
He does not merely want us to co-align. He wants us to know Him, and He wants our lives to be directed by what we know of Him. That is what He is after.
Let us pray.
Heavenly Father, You are mysterious. We admit—Lord, I admit—that we can study and study and still never really come to Who You are.
But we thank You, Lord, that You offer Yourself to us in this way. You offer us to come through the blood of Jesus to You, where You have separated from us everything that offends You, everything that is wrong.
Lord, imprint that on our minds and our hearts. We come to You saying that we do want to walk with You. We want to have the testimony that we are walking with You.
We want the testimony, even to ourselves, that You are with us. We want to be aware of You. We want to be conversant with You.
We want to be able to look back and see that You have been with us. We want You to open up the Word to us so that it jumps out and says, “This is Who I am.”
We want to come into Your house and be at peace. Lord, we want to know Your great love as our Father.
Lord, we are unable to get these things by ourselves, so we appeal to You. We appeal to You because You love us, and we appeal to You because You said that You want to walk with us.
Lord, we believe You are true. So we come to You and ask: help us to walk. In Jesus’ name, amen.