In this sermon, Chuck emphasizes the importance of having a peaceful and loving home environment. He shares the story of a girl who turned to drugs at a young age due to the constant conflict in her home and the lack of support at school. Chuck highlights the significance of the evening dinner hour in determining the quality of family relationships. He encourages listeners to continually learn and grow in their prayer life and in their efforts to please God, as we were created for His pleasure.

Two things I want to share that are not part of the lesson. I thought this morning, this is kind of a potpourri, and a potpourri, if you've bought... hmm, potpourri, is a combination of flowers and spices all kind of mixed up, and there's a fragrance that lingers when you open the box or when you spray the potpourri cologne or whatever. There's a fragrance that lingers, and I hope this lingers, but a potpourri is kind of an amalgamation of lots of things. And so, this morning, we're having a little bit of that in the class, and I pray a fragrance will linger. But yesterday, I was reading something in Tough and Tender by Joyce Landorf, and I would recommend any of Joyce Landorf's books to you. Carolyn has reviewed, I think, most of them, probably, if not all of them. And Tough and Tender is... it has some very good things in it for the home and the family. And one of the things I noticed that Joyce Landorf brought out was that she said, a famous psychiatrist once said, tell me in detail what your evening dinner hour is like, and I'll tell you about your family relationship. Hmm, think about it. And he talked about the home where they sit around the table and they chop everybody all during dinner. And adolescents and teenagers are very prone to do that, and they keep it up and they keep it up. And then you notice it spreads throughout the house, and there's always this chopping each other down. And sometimes it becomes a habit, and it's a very hard pattern to break. But you can do it through menacing love, love, love. I hate cynicism, and I hate scornfulness. And I think many, many homes are full of it. And don't allow it in your home. It doesn't please the Lord. And if it's there, you pray that God will show you ways and methods to get it out of your home so that love is being ministered, and especially at the dinner table. Watch your conversation at the dinner table tonight. See what it's like. And if you don't have your dinner meal together, you straighten out your home so you do. We couldn't always have breakfast together, and we very rarely could have lunch together, except in the summer, but we could have dinners together. And Chuck, as busy as he was working on the churches or preaching, being gone almost every day and every night for a long period of time, always made it home for dinner, with very few exceptions, because he knew how important it was that we have that one time together to share. And it can be a beautiful time together. I was reading the other day about a girl who got seriously mixed up with drugs when she was 12 years old. She's been delivered since, and they asked her why she started on drugs. Now, when you ask most kids why they start on drugs, it's hard to get a good answer. But she very clearly stated two reasons. The first reason was because there was so much conflict in her home. She couldn't cope in her home. They were always cutting each other, always chopping each other down. No love, but just this constant conflict. Parents in conflict, parents and children in conflict. Then when she got to school, she could not cope at school because there was no strengthening in the home to prepare for the onslaught of school. And the easiest thing to do was to just take drugs and just, you know, fade out on drugs. She had two girlfriends the same age that did the same thing. Two of them OD'd and one was murdered. That's how serious... When they got hold of this girl, she was 14 years old, and they didn't know if she was going to come out of it. She was so badly hooked on drugs. But she said the two things. She couldn't cope with the conflict in the home, and she couldn't cope with school because of all the conflict in the home. There was no place where she was fortified. So you who have a lot of conflict in the home, think of that. Now, there are a lot of reasons why kids go on drugs, and those aren't the only two. But it's much easier to take a drug than it is to cope in this society for a lot of people. And unless there's some loving support someplace, it's certainly the easiest thing to do. Oh, I read this, and I have to share it. I told you it's potpourri this morning. We are going to get right into a lesson, too. But this is just fun stuff. I was reading where it was Jesus' nature to disregard conventions of his day that held women in second-class citizenship. For instance, he talked to the woman at the well, and he shouldn't because the Jews were not to have dealings with the Samaritans. And then remember the woman taken in adultery. He wrote something in the dust, and he defended her, and he forgave her, and so forth. And it says one Jewish rule was the witness of a woman was not accepted in court. Jesus made women the witnesses to the greatest event in history, his resurrection. Isn't that precious? Look how important you are today to him as his witnesses. I just was delighted when I read that. I thought women's liberation, they don't know what liberation is, do they? Jesus made women the witnesses to the greatest event ever. All right. Pleasing to God. Turn in your Bibles back to Hebrews 11.5. We're still with Enoch, and if you believe it, there's more to say about Enoch. Hebrews 11.5, pleasing God. Our whole series has been on pleasing God. And this will not be my last talk on this. God has just burdened my heart and mind so much. It's not only going to be my last talk. It will be until the fall. But God is going to continually show us more and more on pleasing him. And if you're taking notes, I want you to write down 1 Thessalonians 4.1. Does anyone have a living Bible with them this morning? Would one of you stand and read 1 Thessalonians 4.1 for me? Let me add this, dear brothers. You are already known how to please God in your daily living. For you know the commandments he gave you from the Lord Jesus himself. Now we beg you, yes, we demand of you in the name of the Lord Jesus, that you live more and more closely to that ideal. And I read it, King James. Furthermore, then we beseech you, brethren, and exhort you by the Lord Jesus, that as ye have received of us how ye ought to walk and to please God, so ye would abound more and more. Thank you for reading a living Bible. And I want you to get it in a living Bible, too. Because the thought is, as you know how to please God, as you've learned how to please him, so abound more and more. Learn how to please him more and more. Never stop learning how to please God. And ask God to teach you how to please him. In Psalm 143.10, there's a verse that says, Teach me, O Lord, to do thy will. David said that. And another translation says, Teach me, O Lord, how to please you. Psalm 143.10, Teach me how to please you, O Lord. I was at pastor's conference a week ago last Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday, and Armand Guestwine spoke on praying. And he said a prayer that we should never stop praying. Now the study of his life has been revival and prayer. And he said we should continually keep asking God to teach us how to pray. He will teach you more about prayer all the time. Your prayer life isn't just this one little space here, but there's so much to learn about prayer. And the more you learn about prayer, the more you feel this power in prayer, and this strengthening prayer, and this moving of mountains in prayer. We grow in prayer. I'm continually learning more and more and more about prayer. And I believe I always will. And I am continually learning more and more about how to please God. And I believe until the day of the rapture, I will continue learning more about pleasing God. As a quick review, the reason we started these lessons, remember Revelation 4.11, all things are created for his pleasure. We are created for his pleasure. Therefore, every woman in this room was created to bring pleasure to God, to live a life that is pleasing unto him. Jesus, our great example in John 8.29, said, I do always those things that please him. We are to follow after Jesus. He showed us the way to God. He is the way to God. He was the one example we can follow without any fear of not pleasing God. Then in Hebrews 11.5, through prayer, God gave me this word enoch. I began to look it up. And by faith, Enoch had this testimony before it was translated that he pleased God. And I began to think about all this meant, pleasing God, pleasing God. And then we studied the two things. If you were not here for the two classes on two ways we cannot please God, I wish you would borrow the tapes from somebody. Because some of the material this morning will not, I don't want to go back into what we shared with you on those two days, and yet I feel you need it as a foundation for pleasing God. But the two points I brought out in not being able to please God were, first of all, Hebrews 11.6, without faith, it is impossible to please him. And the other one is Romans 8.8, so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God. I have been reading so many books that I haven't read for years about the war between the flesh and the spirit. And a couple of them I've read that I don't know if you can still get. One is called Beyond Humiliation. Do you remember that by, is that by Mantel? By Mantel. Yeah, Mantel. If you haven't read it, read it. Also, Crowded to Christ by Maxwell. I've gone back to that, and, pardon me? Crowded to Christ is the second one. I don't know, I was going to bring mine out and put them in a tape library this summer so you could borrow them. And if I remember it and get it on my list of 82 things to do before I go, I'll bring them out. But try to borrow them from someone who might have them. They're old, but they're so good. Of course, Calvary Road. I went back and I read The Normal Christian Life this past week, and in that he tells you not to try to please God. But as I went through it, he was very specific on you cannot please God if you are in the flesh. And that is what I was covering on the tape when I said you cannot please God in the flesh. In other words, you can't bake beans into heaven, as they say. Your good works will not get you into heaven. And if you decide in the flesh, I'm going to please God, you cannot do it. There, first of all, has to be total surrender unto God. There has to be recognition of death to self and alive unto Jesus Christ, or you are in the flesh and your works are in the flesh, and they will not be pleasing to God. And let's see. The Normal Christian Life by Watchman. You've got to be aware of that, because I put in my book this time, every time he said you can't please God, I put in the flesh or under the law, and he refers to the law with a capital L, which would refer us back to the Mosaic Law. And we know keeping of the Mosaic Law only showed, it was a schoolmaster to show us what God required, and that we couldn't fulfill those requirements. We needed a Savior. We needed Jesus. So this morning, I want to talk to you about two requisites of pleasing God, which were evidenced in Enoch's life, and they are so simple and so precious and so sweet, that I pray that God will keep these in your mind the rest of your life. The first one is by faith Enoch pleased God. You could almost leave out all the words between by faith Enoch and all the rest, down to he pleased God, because that's how he pleased God, one of the ways. By faith. Without faith, it is impossible to please him, and we told you why before. Our behavior, our conduct, our work, are all a result of our faith. As you read this 11th chapter of Hebrews, and you should read it over, you should read it over and over and over again. I know of no chapter in the Bible that's much more inspiring than this chapter. When you read, By faith, Sarah conceived when she was past age. By faith, Jacob blessed and worshipped. By faith, Moses, when he would come to years, refused to be called the son of Pharaoh's daughter, but he chose to suffer affliction with the people of God, rather than the pleasures of sin for a season. And you read about the great exploits these people did by faith. Your heart will be so blessed and so touched. I already did a study on without faith. It's impossible to please him. So I don't feel this morning we need to do a great deal on faith, but I want to bring this out to you. Where does faith come from? Okay, where does this faith come from to please God? Romans 12, 3, To every man is given a measure of faith. God gives us faith. Secondly, faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Romans 10, 17 If you have children at home, will you please have them memorize these scriptures this summer? They need to know where faith comes from. You don't just reach out in the sky, and all of a sudden, you know, pull it in. People don't know that faith comes by God giving it to them, and by the hearing of the word of God. And faith is a gift of God. Ephesians 2, 8 Write these down. Have your children memorize them. If you don't know them, you memorize them. Do you want them again? Alright, Romans 12, 3 Where does faith come from? Romans 12, 3 God gives to every man a measure of faith. God gives it to you. You can say, I know I have faith because God has given it to me. Armand Gueswain stressed the preying on the authority of the word. He went over that and over that with the pastors. You know why? Because the word is steadfast and true and sure. And when you prey on the authority of the word, God acts. God has given you faith. Now, believe it this morning, not because Kay is up here saying it, but because God's word says, it gives to every man a measure of faith. Romans 10, 17 Faith comes by hearing, hearing by the word of God. Now, Ephesians 2, 8 Faith is a gift of God. Now, one more scripture. 1 Thessalonians 2, 13b and that means the latter half of the scripture states that the word of God effectually works in you that believe. Now, if faith comes, not only as a gift from God, but from hearing of the word, when you hear the word, your faith is built up in the Lord. Right now, while you listen to the word of God, as I read it from the Bible, or as I give you these scriptures, that word of God is working in you. Hebrews 4, 12 says, The word of God is quick. That means it's alive and it's powerful. It does things in your life. I read a psalm every day, at least one. And as I read that psalm, I just say, God, this is at work in me. I mean, I literally say those words, not every day. But I'll take a scripture in the psalm. For instance, Psalm 42, 8. Yet the Lord will command, don't write this in your notes. Yet the Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime, and in the night His song shall be with me in my prayer unto the God of my life. And I go, Lord, You have commanded Your lovingkindness in the daytime. I receive that and I accept that from You because Your word is alive and powerful and I am going to experience Your lovingkindness this very day. And I do. And I do. You see, faith is filled up in me. And His word works in me. And do you know what else it does? He probably has shown me His lovingkindness many days and I've never recognized it. Because maybe the word wasn't at work in me, effectually. Maybe I wasn't walking in that walk that I should have been walking with Him. As I pray that and I believe that, that's why you must read the word every day. Not just once in the morning. Go back to the word. Keep Bibles all over the house. It is so neat. Just pick them up. Write out scriptures. I have... Sherry's giving me a bad time about this. I have three bookcases in my bedroom. This is crazy, but I do. Chuck has a whole office full at home, a study full. So I have three in my room and there's one right across from my bed. And I have a stack of Bibles like this. And Sherry came in yesterday and said, My, my, aren't you spiritual mom? She's teasing me. I said, oh yeah, the more Bibles you have in your bedroom, the more spiritual you are. I mean, that's, you know. And we're laughing about it. But the reason they're there is that I like to look them up in all the translations and all the paraphrases and see what it says and how it says it. And that's the most convenient place. But we keep Bibles all over the house. Any room you walk in, almost you can find a Bible. Because lots of times the phone rings and we need a Bible right there. Or I'm in the living room and I'm troubled and I need a Bible right then. I don't want to have to go back upstairs. And it's precious because the Word of God essentially works in us. Now if God's Word says that faith cometh by hearing and hearing by the Word of God, if our faith is built up by hearing the Word of God and by reading the Word of God, then we certainly need to be in His Word. Now you can choose to believe God's Word that says you have faith and act on your faith that He's given you. Or you can believe Satan's lies and say I don't have any faith. Do whichever you want. It's a choice of yours. OK. So the first way to please God is you must exercise the faith He's given you. By faith ain't it please God. Back to Genesis 5.22 now. The other way we please God. And these two things encompass it all. Genesis 5.22 and also verse 24. Enoch what? What? Yeah, let's say it once more. Enoch what? Walked with God. Enoch walked with God. By faith ain't it please God. But then the other secret is he walked with God. Our life is often described as a journey. We're aware of paths of righteousness, highway of holiness, steps of a righteous man. We walk in the light. We walk in love. We walk in righteousness. We walk in joy. We're not supposed to walk in the counsel of the ungodly. We're not supposed to walk in the vanity of our minds. We have Christian books called Pilgrim's Progress and Hinds Feet and High Places which describe the Christian's journey. And we talk constantly about our life being a walk. We have here that figure of speech. Enoch walked with God. This is a figurative type of speech. He walked with God. What does it mean? When Cheryl walked down the aisle the other night with her dad, she literally walked down the aisle. But there's also a symbolic walking down the aisle with your dad. She walked down the aisle with her daddy and she walked up the aisle with Brian. She changed relationships and walking down the aisle and back up the aisle were symbols of that. When she walked back up the aisle, she had made vows to Brian. She was no longer under dad's authority. Pardon me. She was no longer first in... Daddy was no longer first in her affections and that's very difficult for daddy, you know. And we sensed that as she walked out. That's why dads and moms have such a hard time at weddings is they know that a certain relationship has been replaced. That walk up the aisle is not just two people stepping up an aisle, but it's symbolic of a brand new relationship. When we walk with God as Enoch walked with God, it's a symbol of a certain kind of relationship. Marriage. In marriage, we talk about a walk through life. We walk with our husbands through life. I have found, and I think it's true, with most of us who have any kind of a relationship with our husbands, we are conscious of the fact we're married almost all the time. I can't tell you how. There's just a sense of it, isn't there? You just know you're married. You don't stop and think, I am Mrs. Smith. I am married. It's just there. And I build my life around Chuck's coming and going. He leaves in the morning and then I go back for my second cup of coffee. And I plan dinner about the time he's coming home. And through the day, my decisions are made on whether or not this will fit in with Chuck's schedule and whether or not... You know? You just do it. You aren't particularly conscious of it all the time, but it's there. It's just there. And our walk with God should be like that. There should be a constant awareness that we are walking with Him. We walk through life in marriage with that awareness. We walk through our spiritual life with God. Now, a walk with God is beyond just service to God. It's beyond just obeying or disobeying. Beyond obedience and disobedience to His Word. It's not just a life of do's and don'ts. The walk with God is the exciting, glorious, marvelous walk. What does it mean to walk with someone, literally? It denotes a togetherness by choice. First of all. It denotes a togetherness by choice. Brian said to Sherry, not in these words, but, Sherry, will you marry me? And he was saying, will you walk with me in marriage the rest of our lives? And Sherry had a choice to say yes or no. And she said, yes. Brian, I choose to walk with you. There is a togetherness when you ask somebody to walk with you or when you walk to God. There must, first of all, be that choice. Now, you have a choice if you're going to walk with God or not to walk with God. It's completely up to you. The walk with God is that devoted, precious, marvelous life that pleases God. And you cannot please God without truly walking with Him. Enoch walked with God and he pleased God. Okay, first there's that choice. And then, if you choose to walk with someone, you can't walk alone and be with them. There is a togetherness. You must be aware of God's presence if you are going to walk with Him. There must be that continual awareness of His presence. I went back and read The Practice of the Presence of God by Brother Lawrence. It's a short little booklet and it's so good. It's one that you can get through very, very quickly and I'd ask you to read it in your summer reading. He talks about the one thing in life that he wanted to do which is love God all the time with all his heart. And he told of some ways that he did it and began this in his life. I was reading where Amy Carmichael who was a missionary to India and started an orphanage to rescue little children from temple worship where they would be brought up as prostitutes in the temple. This is boys and girls. When she gathered these little children into the orphanage, she had what they called a prayer tower, I think it was called. And at every hour on the hour, they would have chimes come out from this tower and everybody stopped wherever they were in recognition of the presence of God and a moment of prayer. You see what she was doing was building into these little ones that constant awareness of Jesus, that constant awareness of God. We just have prayer chains around the clock in Calvary when it was very small. There's still prayer chains, but this is one that whenever anyone was in great difficulty, we got people to take an hour, a certain hour, or we would pray on the hour every hour. That's what we did. And we'd say, okay, we're going to pray at 11 o'clock, 12 o'clock, 1 o'clock, 2 o'clock, and we'll keep it up until we hear that there's a real victory there. And sometimes we did it four and five days at a time. Sometimes we did it two and three weeks at a time. But every hour in the hour, wherever we were, whatever we were doing, we would pray for that person on the hour. And it was amazing how we were aware of the presence of God all the way through the rest of the hour, and how we held that person up many, many times. All day long we would just be in that continual place of prayer. Some of you, if you're not aware of the presence of God that continually, you might start that. You might try it this summer with your children. Set your timer and say, you know, when the timer dings, we're going to stop just for a second, just for a couple of minutes. We don't have to pray aloud. We don't have to do anything except just, let's just stop where we are and just think of God and that He's with us. How precious. If you're a widow alone, if you're a single person, how precious to form that habit of being aware of God. How can you walk with Him if you're not aware of His presence with you? You can't. I was telling you that when I drive a car down the street, so many, many times as I'm driving, I just have a conversation with Him. Do you? You just say, oh Lord, you've got to get me around that car in front of me. You know I'm in a terrible hurry. No. Okay. We learn what pleases Him through walking with Him. He reveals Himself to us. When we were in Medford, Oregon a few weeks ago, Wendy Freeman was there too. Kit and Wendy were there. The pastors had a luncheon in one of the restaurants and we didn't know if pastor's wives were going to be there or not, so we thought we'd better go so if they were, they wouldn't feel all by themselves. Well, there were no pastor's wives, so Wendy and I ate in another part of the restaurant and then we went back into the pastor's room thinking it might be where they were eating, thinking they might be about through. We realized they weren't going to be through for a long time. So we decided to walk back to the hotel together. As we got back to the hotel, it was a much shorter walk than we thought it was going to be, so we said, well, let's walk around the town. A little tiny town and we were very close, I think a block and a half or something from town. So we started walking and I've known Wendy a long time. I don't know, maybe 10 years. But I hadn't known her all that well. Just within the last year, I've gotten to know her much, much better. Now, we've had times of eating together. We ate together in that restaurant. But you know where I got to know her the very best of all? As we walked together. It was interesting. We went in stores and I discovered that Wendy likes China cups and that she only has four of them. And I discovered that she collects butterfly things for her mom because her mom loves butterflies and that was the inspiration for the butterfly album that they put out. I found out lots and lots of things about Wendy. I saw how she reacted to certain things. I found out some things that pain her, some things that she disliked. Now, that knowledge gave me another choice. I had the choice of knowing her likes and dislikes to deepen our friendship by doing things that pleased Wendy or I could bring tension into the relationship by doing things that could hurt her. And you have that same choice as you walk with God. And you're walking with him and he's saying, this really pleases me. I like it when you do this. And you're walking along and he says, no, I don't want you to do that. And he will tell you. As you walk with him and you talk with him, you're going to know what pleases him and what displeases him. I was tempted, I think I shared this once before, but the Lord laid down my heart to share it again. It's not the best side of me, but something happened several weeks, oh, it's been a couple months ago now. And I had a very crafty little scheme to do something that I thought was kind of cutesy clever to a friend of mine. And the Lord spoke to my heart. I had it all planned and I had another friend that was going along with it and we were laughing and having a good time over it. And I was preparing to go someplace and I was praying about the day and all and the Lord said very strongly in my heart, okay, I don't want you to do that. And I'm like, oh Lord, that's just so funny. And that's just so fun. Do you ever talk to the Lord like that? Sure you do, if you really know Him you do. If you really walk with Him. And I went, well, Lord, everybody will laugh. Not in class, it was someplace else. It'll be funny. And the Lord said, okay, I don't want you to do that. You have a choice. You can please me or you don't have to please me. Well, Lord, you know I want to please you. And then He said, you know, Kay, I don't even like the attitude in you that makes you want to do that. Oh, you're going to deal with attitude, huh, Lord? Ah, that's getting down to some of the deeper motivations in my heart. Okay, Lord, I'm sorry. I didn't do it. I had to go back to my friend and say, we can't. And she knew, she knew, she knew, oh yeah, you know, that really doesn't please Him. And you know, pleasing Him brought me a lot more joy than doing the thing that would have displeased Him. But the only way I could know what pleased Him and the only way I could have heard His voice was by walking with Him and learning what pleased Him and what pleased Him. He had a chance to talk to me and tell me. I was listening to what He said. As we walk with Him, we communicate with Him. We learn about what He's like and about what He dislikes. In Hawaii, one of my favorite things that we do while we're over there is take long walks together. We don't have time to do it here. We used to walk together a lot, but we just don't have time. But over there, we do. And the first thing I say, which is so typical of a woman, Chuck will come in and say, Hey, honey, let's take a walk. And I go, okay, where are we going? And the reason I ask is because I want to know if we're going to walk on the sand or on the sidewalk. Because on the sand, I go barefoot and, you know, what shall I wear is the next question, typically. And I wasn't going to throw this in, but I think I will because God tells us what to wear when we walk with Him. In Ephesians 6, He tells you what you're supposed to wear. Put on the, what? Full armor of God. And He even tells you what to put on your feet, doesn't He? And He tells you exactly what you're supposed to wear. And so I also want to know where we're going because I want to know if we're going to be caught in the rain. And when you walk with Chuck, you often are caught in the rain. It just works out that way. I don't know why. But two things Chuck hates when we walk together. Absolutely despises and hates. And it doesn't matter whether we're walking into Waikiki or where we're walking, he cannot stand shopping and he can't stand coffee stops. Now those are two of my favorite things to do. But you see, because he's chosen to walk with me and I love him and I enjoy walking with him and I don't want anything to spoil our walk, I don't want to go shopping and I don't want to go in a coffee shop. I put aside my own desires to please him when we're walking. Do you do that when you're walking with God? Do you put aside your own desires to please him? Do you quit doing those things that would bring severance of your relationship, that would have you going one direction and have him go another direction? It's very important in our walk. This is beyond obedience. Can you see the difference? It's beyond obedience. It's a desire born in your heart to want to please. And you must love somebody to want to please them. When you love God as you ought to be loving him, you're going to want to please him enough that you'll be willing to put aside your own desires. If you only know God in the sanctuary, if you only feel his presence on Sunday morning or when Chuck's speaking or the radio or when you play a tape, you aren't walking with God. Walking with God means a continual fellowship with him. And you will not have this desire to put aside your own desires if the only time you really walk with him is in the sanctuary. If the only time I ever saw Wendy was when we were at church and that usually was about the only time I saw her was in church or maybe when we go out with a group to eat. And that's the reason I didn't know Wendy very well. And I didn't really know her likes and dislikes. It's when we walked alone together that I began to really know her. And so it is in your walk with God. Okay. We have a dog named Tolstoy. And he's a character. He's big and white and fluffy and adorable and we all are crazy about him. But he's a pain in the neck to take on a walk. You hardly take him on a walk. He kind of takes me. I feel like the Flying Nun when I go down the street. He's so strong that he actually pulls me. In fact, I broke my toe one time taking him for a walk. And he's a Samoyed, if you know what they're like. They're a really neat dog. But the only way Tolstoy and any member of the family can go for a walk is to put him on a leash and hold the leash really tightly. You know why? Tolstoy has his own idea of where he wants to walk. Now, I know where Tolstoy should go and shouldn't go. And the silly dog, as Chuck said, has ended up in the slammer because he didn't obey and the dog catcher got him and he was in a day and a night in prison, so to speak. Disgraceful dog that he is. And he will cross the street in front of cars. He'll take after a pack of mongrels and he doesn't care. He runs with the wrong kind of people if we let him alone. He's really some kind of dog. But the only way I can get that dog to walk right or anybody in our family can is to hold him on a very tight leash. Now, God doesn't do that to us. He gives us the privilege of free choice. But when you choose to walk with God, He is the one that chooses the path you walk. You're not a Tolstoy. You don't choose your own path. God chooses the path for you. And sometimes that causes a reaction as we go, He chooses the path I want. It's going to be the most dull, boring, terrible path ever. Oh, is that so? He leads us in the path of righteousness. He leads us beside the still waters. He leads us in the paths that are best for us. How faithful God is in the path that He's designed for you to take. He even gives us the feet of a wild goat to climb the craggy mountains that we couldn't get up otherwise. He gives us hind feet in high places so we can get up those steep places. He's with us through the valley. He makes the crooked way straight. Oh, the path He takes us on is the most delightful, joyous, wonderful, marvelous path ever. In Enoch's time, the people were very wicked. If you read in Jude, and I believe they're verses 14 and 15, you'll read how Enoch prophesied in his times about the wickedness of the people and how God was going to come with ten thousands of his angels to destroy these people for their terrible wickedness. And then it wasn't that much longer until Noah was born until the flood came and destroyed the whole world that was known then except for Noah and the people that were on the ark with him. You say, okay, it's so hard to walk with God in this day and age. You don't know what the temptations and testings are. I really don't think they're all that different from the time that Enoch lived or Noah lived. If you read what it was like in the time that Noah lived, it was just as bad as it is now. The homes were breaking up. People lived for pleasure only. Same kind of society. And certainly in the time of Lot, homosexuality was horrible. Sodom and Gomorrah were destroyed because of it. Those were terrible, terrible days to live in. And these are too. But Enoch walked with God and you can walk with God. And next of all, there's a fellowship in walking with God. There's a song, Oh, he walks with me and he talks with me and he tells me I am his own and the joy we share, the joy we have when we walk with God. We forget about it. You know, when Chuck and I take a walk, there's just a special joy in it, in Hawaii especially. We play games sometimes when we walk. And I don't know if you've ever done this with your husband or your boyfriend, but you're walking along the beach and you decide you're going to walk a straight line in the sand no matter what the tide does. Have you ever done that? You know, I'm going to walk straight down. I see some of you now, I see some of you shaking your head yes, and you're going to walk straight. And the tide's coming in. And have you ever ended up with a wave just splashing you all over and you just get soppy wet? And isn't it fun? It's neat. And you know, people our age love to do that too. It's crazy. But we enjoy it. And we jog and we run and we just have the best time. And we usually start out going that way in the evening and we come back this way. You know why? The sun is setting and we can watch the sunset as we walk all the way back. And Hawaiian sunsets are legendary. Gray, big, orange sun and the whole sky turns orange and red sails in the sunset and the ocean turns orange and oh man, it's something. But anyhow, it's beautiful. And we share it. And sometimes we share it silently. We don't even have to say a word. I know what he's experiencing and he knows what I'm experiencing. And sometimes when you're walking with God there is that sharing where you don't even have to say a word. Have you ever just been in the presence of God where there was such a warmth and such a glow that you could hardly breathe? If you haven't, He wants to do that for you. I've looked at a sunset and gone, Have you ever been in the presence of God and done that? Oh, Father, You're so precious. And then a silence comes over you where you can't even speak. His presence is so real and so powerful. And you know who He is and what He is. We need to walk like that with God. We need to know that joy. Jesus spoke much about joy. He spoke about praying that we might have that joy. It was His desire. He said, These things have I spoken unto you that in me you shall have joy. There should be that joy and that wonder constantly. New discoveries of God every day. He wants to reveal Himself more and more, but we're so busy walking Tolstoy's path that we're not over here walking with Him and listening and hearing and noticing and being aware and knowing His lovingkindness and His goodness and His gentleness. I was reading a thing about Dr. Barnhouse. He used to edit Eternity magazine. And he was telling about one time he was in Greece with his wife and his little child. And he said they'd gone down to Corinth and then they were going out to another city to check out some archaeological discoveries or something. I don't know what it was. And he said from this train station in this little city, his wife and he and their little child had to walk about a mile and a half to this place where the ruins were. And he said as they walked they had a beautiful time. And he said he sat her down on a rock while he sort of was looking around all the ruins. And he had to go up a little incline. And as he did he looked over the incline and he saw this field of cyclamen. He said he'd never seen cyclamen growing wild before. Well, if you've gone to Israel with us you've seen cyclamen growing wild all over Israel. And it's gorgeous. And he said that as he looked at it he knew how much it would delight his wife. So he went over and he picked some and he brought it back and he handed it to her. And she was just breathless with the beauty of the cyclamen. He said from then on all through their marriage the whole rest of their lives every time they saw cyclamen there was a sharing of something precious and something beautiful and a memory. And he said one time they were walking in New York dead of winter and a friend was walking between them and he said that they walked past this florist shop and in the window was a cyclamen blooming. And he said he looked at it and his wife looked at it the man that was walking with them didn't see anything and they looked at each other and there was that expression of joy and that beauty between them over that shared thing that they had. That's the way God wants you to be. Do you ever just kind of as you're walking along you see something that reminds you of some glorious thing God has done for you and there's just that lifting up of your heart to Him and just the two of you share that together and there's that wonder and that beauty do you ever go back to the time you were born again and you go through that time when oh everything was so changed and what a wonder it was. Do that. Go back to that. If you're going to daydream daydream on the things of God and what it was like and return to your first love think about those things. There are lots and lots of things that I could go into on our walking with God many many more I don't have time now. I think again so often in marriage of the wife who says I'll cook for you I'll clean for you and I'll raise the children but that's that. You know no love no joy no intimacy no wonder no gloriousness and you know there are a lot of Christians like that. They say I'll serve you but that's it Lord I won't walk with you. And just as in a marriage they'll never know the gloriousness of a marriage. So you if you walk that way in your own path doing your own will you'll never know this marvelous marvelous wonderful walk that we were meant to have with Him and will never truly be pleasing to Him. One last thought is that when we walk with God our perspective is changed. Constantly changed. I can read the newspaper or hear a newscast on TV and get so bummed out but I can read the word and be so built up. Can't you? I have a new hope a new perspective. I love to travel because it gives me a new perspective on the world and on life. And one of the reasons that we need communication with one another so much is that it changes our perspective. I have gone out with my certain ideas on a certain subject and I've told it to a friend and the friend said but have you ever thought of this? Or have you ever thought of that? And she brought in a whole new perspective and I began to see this thing in an entirely different way. And as we walk with God He says to us but have you thought of this? Have you thought about that? Don't you remember the scripture? Hey, don't you remember that promise I gave you? You don't have to be discouraged and defeated and all that sort of thing. You know and God changes our perspective as we walk with Him. I also read not too long ago that walking is marvelous for depression. They have found that they can even cure people who are depressed by getting them out and walking day after day after day. It takes quite a while sometimes but they found this circulation to the brain seems to bring in a fresh supply of blood which supplies some chemicals or does something in the brain that is absolutely marvelous for depressed people. And I have found when I'm prone to get depressed that if I get out and exercise and walk it does help. But I walk with God. I recite scriptures. I pray. You know so I have a double thing working for me. Not only the physical is being built up but the spiritual is being built up. In closing this morning and I would like you this summer to write down things in your own life about walking with God. What does it mean in my life to walk with God? Where should I change? What am I not doing that I should be doing? How should I arrange my priorities? And seek his face on how he would have you walk with him. I suppose one of the sweetest stories on walking with God I've ever heard and if you've heard it before just listen again because I think I'll bless your heart all over again is the one of the man I believe he got to heaven I don't have all the details right but he looked back over the path he had trod and there was a double set of footprints all the way until one place through the valley with a single set of footprints and the man said to the Lord well why weren't you with me there? It looks like you deserted me and the Lord spoke to his heart and said oh no I knew you couldn't make it through that by yourself so I carried you through there and that's what God does when you walk with him and the places where you can't make it by yourself he picks you up in his loving arms and he carries you and I want when you get to heaven to have you look back and see the places where there's a single footprint on the path I think you'll be amazed at how many times God will carry you and did carry you if you will truly truly walk with him Brother Lawrence in his book on the practice of presence of God said he had resolved to make loving God the purpose of everything he did I think that loving God you cannot truly love God and not walk with him as you should he also said Brother Lawrence said he said he was glad to pick up a straw from the ground if he could do it to show his love and please God are you that way this morning? you're glad to do anything that shows your love and your willingness to please God in whatever you do this ends the time of walking with God I want you to really work on this this summer I wish your covenant with me this morning to really sit down before the Lord daily and talk to him about what it means to walk with him and I pray that your heart has been stirred this morning to really really want to walk with him to be aware of his presence to be his enoch the rapture is coming very very soon I do believe and we want that testimony that Enoch had when he was translated that he pleased God