Attributes of Walking with God (Lent 14, 2023)

It’s perhaps easy to see
how walking with God before the fall of man was simpler. 
For Adam there were fewer temptations…
just the one big one. 

But Adam heard God’s voice with his own ears so perhaps that insulated him for who knows how much time post-creation?  Scripture is silent.  It may not have been so quick as Eve shows up and it all goes downhill from there.

Yet, even after the fall and sin’s result in our broken Image, there were people recorded for us in Scripture who walked with God.  Abraham was friends with God,and David had a heart after God’s own heart.

Were they perfect?  Absolutely not! 
But what qualities did God see?  Scripture says it is faith:

Hebrews 11:1 Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. 2 This is what the ancients were commended for…5 By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death: “He could not be found, because God had taken him away.” For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God. 6 And without faith it is impossible to please God, because anyone who comes to him must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who earnestly seek him.

Focus for Lent: Repent of unbelief and clothe yourself with faith.

Questions for further thought:

Read the rest of Hebrews 11 and see how many fallen people have yet walked with God by faith and pleased Him.  Was their outcome always happy? 

Hebrews 11: 37 They were put to death by stoning; they were sawed in two; they were killed by the sword. They went about in sheepskins and goatskins, destitute, persecuted and mistreated– 38 the world was not worthy of them. They wandered in deserts and mountains, living in caves and in holes in the ground. 39 These were all commended for their faith, yet none of them received what had been promised,

Do you ever feel like you stand alone when you stand with and for Christ?  What is the bigger picture that God and the angels see in the spiritual realm?

Scripture says that Enoch walked faithfully with God for 300 years but lived to 365 years. Don’t you wonder what his life was like for the first 65 years? Does it give you hope for your life?

Read Galatians 5:16-26.  What among these lists can you put off or put on?

Colossians 3 has another such list.  Colossians 3:14 “And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity.” How does love bind them all together in perfect unity?

Prayer: Help me to walk with You, Lord, keeping step with the Spirit.  I need You. I love You.  Be glorified in my life, Lord.  Amen.

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If you’re already signed up on my Home Page sidebar to receive posts, you’ll get the 2023 Lent Devotionals automatically. Or you can “Like” Seminary Gal on Facebook and they’ll be delivered to your Facebook news feed. If you haven’t signed up, today is a great day to do so. Advent and Lenten devotionals remain among my most popular offerings. You don’t want to miss this encounter with God to prepare your heart for Easter! Understanding that prior years’ devotionals continue to minister, you may want to have access to a full series ahead of time:

• Lent 2013 looked at The Letter to the Romans: Paul’s Masterpiece to reclaim foundations of our Christian heritage and began February 13, 2013.
•  A very special and ever popular offering was Lent 2014’s Be Still and Know that I AM God  which can be obtained through the archives beginning in March 2014. 
• Lent 2015 began on February 18, 2015 with a series entitled With Christ in the Upper Room: Final Preparations.  We explored what is often called “The Upper Room Discourse” found in John chapters 13-17. 
• ReKindle, the Lent 2016 series, began on February 10, 2016 and encouraged us to rekindle our spiritual lives.
• Light: There’s Nothing Like It was the 2017 Lent series and explored this metaphor often used to portray Christ.  It is archived beginning March 1, 2017.
• Lent 2018, we explored the questions of Pi and Chi (the Greek letter beginning the word Christos, which means Christ, Messiah, the Anointed One). We asked and answered the questions “Why?” from the movie Life of Pi as we discovered the uniqueness of Jesus Christ in a world of many faiths.
• Lent 2019 gave us a deeper window into Easter “More to the Easter Story” since we miss so much when we rely only on a superficial understanding of the work of Christ. These devotionals are archived beginning March 6, 2019.
• Our Lent 2020 devotional series offered prayer points surrounding “Be Thou My Vision” and were aimed at helping us to see God for who He is. The full set of devotionals are archived beginning February 26, 2020.
• The theme for 2021 Lent Devotionals was how to live between two worlds while waiting for Christ’s return. Into the gap between the City of Man and its fixation upon sin and the City of God with its demand for holiness, two words minister peace: But God. Praise God for His intervention! They are archived beginning February 17, 2021.
• Last year’s devotionals, Revelation in 40 offered 40 vignettes, scenes, concepts, and thoughts to inspire us to read the Book of Revelation as it is written and to go deeper. They are archived beginning March 2, 2022.