Enoch: Walking with God
Hebrews 11:5-6
By faith Enoch was taken away, so that he wouldn’t see death, and he was not found, because God translated him. For he has had testimony given to him that before his translation he had been well pleasing to God. Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to him, for he who comes to God must believe that he exists, and that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.
World English Bible
Walking is the slowest way to travel, which is exactly why it’s the best way to know someone. You can’t walk with a person and stay strangers. The pace forces conversation, shared silence, a thousand small adjustments to each other’s stride. So when Genesis sums up Enoch’s entire life in one phrase (he walked with God), it is describing not an achievement but a companionship. Sixty-five years plus three hundred more of matching his steps to God’s, in a generation walking hard the other way.
Then comes the strangest commute in the Old Testament: “he was not found, because God translated him.” No deathbed, no grave, no obituary. The friendship simply continued without interruption. As one old preacher imagined it, they had walked so far together that God said, “We’re closer to My house than yours. Come home with Me.” Hebrews tells us what stood behind the miracle: “before his translation he had been well pleasing to God.” Enoch’s translation wasn’t a stunt; it was the natural last step of a long walk.
And then the writer turns from biography to principle, and it lands on us: “Without faith it is impossible to be well pleasing to him.” Impossible: not difficult, not rare. Strip everything else away and the life that pleases God requires two convictions. First, “that he exists”: not as a doctrine you’d affirm on a survey, but as a presence you actually reckon with hour by hour. Plenty of us believe in God the way we believe in distant galaxies: real, but irrelevant to today’s schedule. Second, “that he is a rewarder of those who seek him.” You must believe not only that God is there, but that He is good, that seeking Him is never wasted motion. And what is the reward? Not chiefly comfort or success. The reward of seeking God is God. Enoch sought a companion and gained His company forever.
Here is the quiet challenge of this passage: walking with God is gloriously ordinary. It is not reserved for mystics. It is one day of seeking, then another, then another, until the steps become a life, and the life becomes a homecoming.
Reflect
- Does God function in my actual day as a present companion I walk with, or as a distant fact I affirm and then ignore?
- Do I genuinely believe God rewards those who seek Him, and does my calendar show any evidence of that belief?
- If my generation, like Enoch’s, is walking hard in the other direction, what would it cost me to keep step with God instead, and am I willing?
Pray
Ask God to turn your belief in His existence from a survey answer into an hour-by-hour awareness of His company. Confess the stretches of your week you walk entirely alone, as though He weren’t there. Then seek Him deliberately today (not for what He gives, but for who He is), and thank Him that the reward of seeking God is God Himself.