Selah: Rediscovering Biblical Meditation

[For my determined purpose is] that I may know Him – that I may progressively become more deeply and intimately acquainted with Him, perceiving and recognizing and understanding [the wonders of His Person] more strongly and more clearly (Phillipians 3:10 Amplified Bible)

“It is well to meditate upon the things of God, because we thus get the real nutriment out of them…Truth is something like the cluster of the vine: if you would have wine from it, you must bruise it; you must press and squeeze it many times…meditation is of great value in opening up truth and leading us into its secrets.”-Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1)

Anyone who has read the Psalms has no doubt noticed how they are often punctuated by the enigmatic word “Selah.” What does this term mean? The Psalms were originally written to be sung with musical accompaniment. “Selah” is a musical cue for the singing to stop, and for the people to quietly meditate as the music plays. This leads us to a vital discipline which is often overlooked in our modern Evangelical circles.

It has been said that the Christian life consists of three primary facets:

  1. The Theological Facet, or the intellectual persuit of God. This comes primarily through diligent study of the Bible and related materials.
  2. The Religious Facet, or the practical persuit of God. This involves how we live out the moral and ethical aspects of the Christian faith.
  3. The Mystical Facet, or the dynamic persuit of God. This facet focuses on our direct personal communion of God, and how we experience His presence in our daily lives.

If we emphasize any of these facets at the expense of the others, it will lead to, at best, a very unbalanced Christian life, or at worst, to outright heresy.

I realize that, in this study, I will be dealing with some terminology that may be misunderstood if it is not properly defined. Before anyone accuses me of promoting any sort of “New Age” ideas, let me state up front that I am quite conservative in my theology. By meditation, I do not mean the same thing as practitioners of Eastern religions such as Buddhism, Hinduism or New Age.

In fact, in and of itself, “meditation” is not even a religious term, although many

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