Now Walk With God

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” Micah 6:8

My family used to be ancestor-worshippers. Barely five years old, I assisted my mother by carrying plates laden with food and fruits to serve and place them before the ornately framed photographs of my grandparents. We would burn incense and joss-sticks and pray to each grandparent in turn, asking for their blessings. This ritualistic performance of  worship at every Chinese New Year or the birthdays of the dearly departed served as a vivid reminder of the social-spiritual relationship and hierarchy between men and gods.

I became a Christian in my teenage years. Members of my family followed suit several years later. Naturally, we expunged the ancestor-worship routines from our lives, treating such practices as superstitious drivel. However, in discarding all practical rituals of worship and removing them from familial traditions, we missed a very illustrative manner to express our devotion. 

How do we worship? In the Old Testament, the prophet Micah asked a series of rhetorical questions (Micah 6:6-7): 

“With what shall I come before the LORD 

and bow down before the exalted God? 

Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, 

Shall I come before Him with yearling calves? 

Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, 

with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? 

Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, 

the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?”

Considering these questions allow us to be in the right frame of mind to reaffirm the appropriate relationship between the Creator God and His lowly servants. With some trepidation, we could respectfully ask, “What can I offer you God?”. To which, the real answer is, that there is nothing of any value we could give that would be adequate. 

The early Christians were willing to become martyrs. Even so, the offering our very lives would not be adequate. How can we find any proper offering in exchange for the gift of God’s Son, Jesus Christ?

Still, it is alright to approach God with these questions. These almost unanswerable questions will make us see our unworthiness and place all our achievements and possessions in their proper perspective. Perhaps the only appropriate response is not in considering what offering to bring or what sacrifices to make but to ask, “What do you require me to do?” The prophet Micah's answer was

“He has shown you, O mortal, what is good.

And what does the LORD require of you?

To act justly and to love mercy

and to walk humbly with your God.”

This invitation to walk with God is unbelievably gracious. There is a description of this walk with God in Genesis 3:8: “the sound of the Lord God as He was walking in the garden in the cool of the day”. The only two persons to have enjoyed such an experience in 'the cool of the day' and to have heard 'the sound of the Lord' were Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden. 

What a waste! Despite enjoying such blissfulness with God, Adam and Eve, in their pride, chose to disobey God and thus rob us of Eden. But now Jesus presents us with another opportunity to walk with God, 'Now Walk With God' 

On God's holy word I challenge you.

To give to the Lord your life anew, 

My friend, make your choice; he waits for you

For this is the moment of truth.

Now walk with God and he will be your dearest friend

Where'er you go; in everything you do

And may your life reflect His love to everyone

Now walk with God and He will walk with you.

  

What will the nature of this walk with God be?  I think it will be:

• A physical experience: a walk by the sea or in the woods, in touch with nature and to note the beauty of God's creation in the cool of the day.

• A prayerful experience: a walk that will be contemplative and inspiring; a respectful conversation and fellowship will ensue.

• A practical experience: a walk involving some form of ministry to others especially to the poor, needy and downtrodden.

Lionel

Updated the article which was first published on 1 January 2011

I Will Walk With God

'For I am the Lord your God who takes hold of your right hand and says to you,  Do not fear; I will help you' Isaiah 41:13

When I was in Pre-University Medicine class in Raffles Institution, we had an American Peace Corps volunteer who taught us literature. That was when I was introduced to the poetry of Robert Frost, one of whose famous poems is The Road Not Taken.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that made all the difference

This is a poem about options and choices. A traveler in a forest chanced upon a fork; a divergence and he had to make a choice. He chose the one less travelled. Years later he would reflect on this choice, which he said made all the difference. To be sure there was no indication in the poem whether the choice was better or worse, right or wrong, good or bad. If the fork presented a choice of life options, that decision shaped his life in one direction whereas the other path not chosen would have shaped it altogether differently.

The take home lesson I learnt from this poem is that we will be faced with a few life choices that will be game-changing. Around that time in school, I made my life-changing decision which was to ask Jesus to come into my life as my Saviour and Lord. I have not looked back ever since and have not travelled down another road.

All Christians would have made that choice. After the exodus from Egypt and just before they were to settle in the land of Canaan there was a decision for the people of Israel, a reckoning for them. For forty years they were migrating across the wilderness and now they were on the verge of nationhood and to take a vast territory that was promised to them. Joshua, their leader, forced a momentous decision as recorded in Joshua 24:15 'Choose you this day whom you will serve...But as for me and my household, we will serve the Lord.'

In the story of the Student Prince, there was another setting in which such a crossroads decision had to be made. The student prince pondered his options for the future as he ascended to the throne after the death of his father. He decided like Joshua of old that he will walk with God from that day forth, as he started his reign. There is a wonderful song sung by the great tenor-actor Mario Lanza entitled 'I'll walk with God'.  

I'll walk with God

From this day on

His helping hand, I'll lean upon

This is my prayer my humble plea

May the Lord be ever with me

There is no death though eyes grow dim

There is no fear when I'm near to him

I'll lean on Him forever

And He'll forsake me never

He will not fail me as long as my faith is strong

Whatever road I may walk along

I'll walk with God

I'll take His hand

I'll talk with God He'll understand

I'll pray to him

Each day to Him

And He'll hear the words that I say

His hand will guide my throne and rod

And I'll never walk alone

While I walk with God.

The traveler in the woods, the student prince and Joshua considered their choices carefully. The poem indicated that the traveler studied his options. Did he regret it? Did he find the going tough? Did he ever think of going back? 

It does not appear from the poem that the traveler ever changed his mind. In the same way, my whole extended family chose to convert to Christianity decades ago and since then not one of us - spouses, children, grandchildren, nieces and nephews ever looked back. 

We took the hand of the Lord and we have not and will never walk alone.

Lionel