Where’s the God of Enoch?

Everyone has a scriptural go-to character in a quest for the blessings of heaven. Everyone of these biblical figures has a peculiar anointing or specific “God” to set off the required fireworks for whatever the situation might demand.

The God of Elijah is required to rain down fire; to destroy the prophets of Baal in one’s life; to reward those who bless the pastor as he blessed the widow of Zarephath. But we don’t need him to send us to speak truth to power as he sent Elijah to Ahab. Life’s too short for that kind of palaver!

When it comes to dealing with power we prefer the God of Joseph and Daniel. That God dispenses the anointing for favour and elevation. He gives spiritual gifts that make kings eat off your hands. He translates one from nonentity to the apex of privilege. That’s the God to have hanging around you. He runs only slightly second place to the God of Jabez – now that’s a God! All the books in the world would not suffice to celebrate what he achieved in two biblical verses! Enough to say: the God of Jabez, who can find?

The God of Moses, however, is in high demand. There’s always a Pharaoh somewhere who requires sinking; a Red Sea to part, a wall to bring down, manna to pour down, a rock to piss water and a thirst to slake. And if ever there was a member of a congregation who needed to learn that pastors must be feared and served, you could count on the God of Moses to open up the earth and do the stupendous.

In this pantheon of divinity, these dimension of signs and wonders, there’s a quiet corner, a God that’s hardly ever called upon. Much to the manner of the Teacher in Ayi Kwei Amah’s The Beautiful ones are not yet Born, he is the proverbial ‘lonely mourner at a festival of crazy joy’. He is the God of Enoch.

This God does what no other God can do. He renews a right spirit within you. He gets you to walk with God. He perfects you to a level that God Almighty cannot wait to possess you for himself. Whereas other anointing empowers you to do things that might get you to the kingdom of God. He literally takes you there. I don’t know how he does his thing but his record is excellent. As them marketing lot like to jingle: He does exactly what it says on the tin.

If the essence of scripture, the reason God gave the word is to prepare for himself a generation perfected for eternity, the God of Enoch is the go-to God. He is Jesus’ muse – the only anointing the son of God recommended in Matthew 6:33. In fact if we dare to believe the Word incarnate, then that’s the only anointing that matters. His is all that’s required.

At every spiritual convocation the church ought to be crying out for this God, literally dragging him down from heaven by every means necessary. We ought to dance, sing, give offerings – an arm here, a leg there, throw in a tooth or two, and just about whatever it’ll take to have the anointing on Enoch poured out upon us. But we don’t.

Pastors don’t talk much about this God. Some might say it’s because not much is known of Enoch, so there’s not enough to run with. I’d say Enoch got five verses more than Jabez in the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) and three more in the New Testament where Jabez got no mention at all, yet the latter gets much more coverage.

Why is the God of Enoch hardly ever invoked? Why is his spirit not desired and his presence not sought after? Why doesn’t he play in the big leagues? Why are there no songs to extol his exploits and revivals and vigils to call forth his anointing?

The fact that our prayers are inspired more by the experience of those whose exploits slaked earthly thirsts than those for whom heaven yearned, betrays a massive cognitive dissonance between what we claim to love and what we actually hanker after; between what God desires of us and what we desire of God.

The question, as the Prophet Amos put it is, “Can two walk together except they be agreed”?

There are choice adjectives for people who say one thing but do something different; people who make a profession in one direction but train their energy and resources towards a different goal; folks who claim to be heirs to a better covenant but who keep resorting to exploits under the ‘old covenant’ to seek anointing! But I will not deploy those adjectives here.

A pastor recently lamented that we’re building churches 10 kilometers long but 1 millimeter deep. It is nonetheless into this shallow mass that we are making disciples.

Christ Jesus lamented that the Pharisees compass heaven and earth to gain a soul, but end up making him worse than he was before conversion. ^[1]Matthew 23:15 You could be forgiven for thinking he was foretelling the future of his own church.

Everyone of us who desire to be named after Christ, especially those who look forward to eternity in a home they’re never in a hurry to go to, need to take a cudgel to our pretentiousness and clobber the hand-waving,  sloganeering chicanery we call ‘faith’.

Most of us are too self-absorbed, too self-interested to begin to understand the meaning of what we profess. Most pastors are mainly interested in feeding flocks with what is sufficient to sustain their own Ministry.

But the One who knows the heart of all can discern a lie from an infinite distance. God can’t be mocked.

The church of my Lord Jesus Christ requires a lot more than reorientation. It is desperate for a wholesale rebuilding. What is being fed at daily and weekly religious fora around the world is not the ‘new man’. It is the same old natural instinct. The word continues to be sown among thorns and as the Lord said;

“The cares of the world and the deceitfulness of riches and the lust of other things entering in, choke the word, and it becometh untruthful.” ^[2]Mark 4:19

Jesus taught to seek first the kingdom of God and it’s righteousness and we wouldn’t need to call on the God of Elijah, Moses or Jabez because God Almighty will perfect all else.

So instead of seeking the parting of seas, cleaving of rocks and calling fire from heaven, let’s go get some of that anointing on Enoch.