Genesis 17:1 And when Abram was ninety years old and nine, the Lord appeared to Abram, and said unto him, I am the Almighty God; walk before Me, and be thou perfect.
“Walk before Me” can be literally interpreted “Set thyself to walk in My presence.” The most important thing we can do is to function in His presence. We have related to the Lord so much in a historical and futuristic manner that we tend to not be aware of His presence with us. When we pray or speak of the Lord, we usually speak as though we are separated from Him. If we are going to know the Lord, we must learn to live in His presence. An awareness of His presence must take precedence to our historical and futuristic knowledge of Him. We can know about Jesus the Nazarene, but it is far better to know the resurrected Lord.
Learning to function in His presence is more important than any religious ritual, ceremony, or tradition. This is why He exhorts us to “love the Lord thy God with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might.” And these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart: and you shall teach them diligently unto your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up. Deuteronomy 6:5-7.
There should be a constant awareness of being in His presence. Then when we read the Scriptures they will come alive to us. We will not just learn what He did in the past or what He will do in the future, but every scripture will be related to us in the present. God will become a present reality to us, and we will no longer be of this world. Listen! The spiritual realm of God can become more real to us than this temporal world.
Set thyself to walk in His presence! It is something we determine to do. Nothing happens automatically. The heart must be set. Every religious discipline is futility without this awareness of His presence. There are many religions and many forms of religious worship, but none of them means anything without a walk with God.
Enoch set his heart to walk with God and he was not, for God took him (Genesis 5:24). I don’t know if Enoch literally left this earth at that time or not. Most people believe he did. But I do know that this world no longer had a hold on him. He was transferred from one realm to another. That can happen for us, too. We can break loose from the hold of this world and live in His presence by the setting of the heart. It is God’s will for us to live in His presence!
Copyright © 1995 by Henry DuBose