Can I Walk with God?

It is a thought that comes to many readers of the Bible, usually quietly: Enoch walked with God and was taken straight to heaven — could I ever walk with God like that? The question deserves an honest answer, and the answer is better than most people expect. But to see it clearly we have to put two men side by side — because Scripture says the very same thing about both of them, and then does two very different things with them.

Two men, one sentence

“And Enoch walked with God: and he was not; for God took him.” — Genesis 5:24
“Noah was a just man and perfect in his generations, and Noah walked with God.” — Genesis 6:9

That phrase — walked with God — is used of only these two men before the flood. Enoch, “the seventh from Adam” (Jude 14), walked with God three hundred years (Genesis 5:22) and then simply was not, “for God took him.” The New Testament fills in what that means: “By faith Enoch was translated that he should not see death… for before his translation he had this testimony, that he pleased God” (Hebrews 11:5). He did not die. God took him home.

Noah walked with God too — the identical words. And yet God did not take Noah. He left him on the earth, told him to build an ark, and brought him through the most terrible judgment the world had yet seen. Same walk. Two completely different outcomes. Why?

Same walk, two callings

The difference was never in the quality of the walk. It was in the calling. God had a different work for each man, and the destiny fit the work.

Enoch was taken before the judgment. He was translated out of the world before the flood ever came — removed from the scene of wrath before it fell. Many readers down the centuries have seen in that a picture of something God promises His people: to be gathered to Himself before the day of wrath (see The Rapture). “God hath not appointed us to wrath” (1 Thessalonians 5:9). Enoch is the first man in the Bible to be caught up to God without dying — a quiet foreshadow, long before the words were written, of “caught up… to meet the Lord in the air” (1 Thessalonians 4:17).

Noah was kept through the judgment. God did not spare him the flood; He preserved him in the middle of it. And there was a reason only Noah could serve: through him ran the whole human line — the thread that would carry forward to Abraham, to David, and at last to Christ Himself (Luke 3:36 traces Jesus’ lineage straight through Noah’s son Shem). Had God taken Noah as He took Enoch, the line of promise would have been cut off. So Noah’s staying was not a lesser blessing — it was a mercy to every person who would ever be born, and to you. He was the man God kept so that the Savior could come.

Enoch was taken, and it was mercy. Noah was left, and it was mercy. One walk; two services; both the kindness of God.

So the question “why Enoch and not Noah?” has a gentle answer. It was never reward versus punishment. It was two men who both pleased God, each given the destiny that fit the work God had for him. The walk is what God asks of us; what He does with a life that walks with Him is His to decide, and it is always good.

What does it mean to “walk with God”?

Notice what the phrase does not say. It does not say Enoch worked miracles, or led a nation, or wrote a book. It says he walked — a plain, steady, daily word. Walking is not a single heroic leap; it is one ordinary step after another, in the same direction, for a long time. That is the whole secret, and it is within reach.

“Can two walk together, except they be agreed?” — Amos 3:3

To walk with God is simply to come into agreement with Him and keep company with Him — to want what He wants, to go where He goes, day after day. Scripture draws the picture from several sides:

• Walk humbly. “What doth the LORD require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (Micah 6:8).
• Walk in the Spirit. “Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lust of the flesh” (Galatians 5:16).
• Walk in the light. “If we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship one with another” (1 John 1:7).
• Walk as He walked. “He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also so to walk, even as he walked” (1 John 2:6).
• Walk in newness of life. “Like as Christ was raised up from the dead… even so we also should walk in newness of life” (Romans 6:4).

None of that is reserved for a spiritual elite. It is held out to anyone. In fact, Enoch is placed in the Bible precisely as an example: “without faith it is impossible to please him… he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him” (Hebrews 11:6). The same chapter that remembers Enoch invites you into his kind of faith.

Especially now — “as the days of Noah”

There is a reason this question presses in so hard right now. Jesus Himself reached back to this exact moment — Enoch’s world, Noah’s flood — to describe the time just before His return:

“But as the days of Noe were, so shall also the coming of the Son of man be. For as in the days that were before the flood they were eating and drinking, marrying and giving in marriage, until the day that Noe entered into the ark, and knew not until the flood came, and took them all away; so shall also the coming of the Son of man be.” — Matthew 24:37-39

The danger in Noah’s day was not only wickedness — it was distraction. Ordinary life rolled on, and the people “knew not until the flood came.” Jesus says the last days will have the same texture: busy, comfortable, unaware. And standing right there at the edge of that flood are our two men — one taken up before it fell, one carried safely through it. That is not an accident of the story. It is a picture God left on purpose, and Jesus points straight at it. The “days of Noah” are held up as a warning and as a comfort: judgment is real, but so is the God who takes His own and keeps His own. (See Signs of the End Times and The Rapture.)

Which is exactly why the walk is not a luxury to get to someday. If these are “the days of Noah,” then the question — Can I walk with God? — is the most practical question you can ask. Noah’s neighbors had the same chance he had and let the days drift by. The difference was not that Noah was spared the warning; it was that he walked while there was time to walk.

So — can you walk with God? Yes.

Here is the plain answer to the question in the title: yes, you can. Not because you are a second Enoch, but because of what God has done to make the walk possible for ordinary people. Enoch walked with God who was beside him. Under the new covenant God offers something even nearer — to come and dwell in you by His Spirit, so that the walk is no longer you straining toward a distant God, but God Himself keeping step inside your life.

“I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” — 2 Corinthians 6:16

That is the difference the gift of the Spirit makes. The walk stops being a lonely discipline and becomes a shared life. And that gift is not earned by heroics — it is received. It begins the way the whole church began, on the day the Spirit was first poured out:

“Repent, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost.” — Acts 2:38

Repent — turn, and come into agreement with Him (for “can two walk together, except they be agreed?”). Be baptized in His name — your old life buried, so you can “walk in newness of life.” Receive His Spirit — and the One who walked with Enoch now walks in you. That is where Enoch’s walk is opened to anyone who will take the first step. (See The New Birth.)