Showing posts with label Selah. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Selah. Show all posts

Saturday, June 14, 2025

Sunday’s Blessing – 06/15/2025 – Father’s Day

Sunday’s Blessing – 06/15/2025 – Father’s Day

The past month or so I spent time writing about the sabbath/selah/rest of God. I’ve learned a lot as I spent time reading and meditating on what God thinks about the sabbath from both the Old and New Testament perspectives. I came to realize they are exactly the same. There are two different things here. There is The Sabbath, which is the seventh day of the week, and considered to be a weekly festival which God gave His chosen people, the Jews, for them to remember all God had done for them.

There is also simply sabbath. This is a time when we “suspend” our activity and just commune with our Father. This is not relegated to a day of the week. It is not church attendance. It is not the fourth commandment. It is a time when we let everything else go for a while and spend that time talking and listening to God. The word meaning of sabbath is: intermission, to cease, to rest. In today’s vernacular it might be: “time out” or “chill”.

King David understood sabbath and built into his psalms a pause, called selah, which mean: “suspension” or “pause”. This nuance in musical terms could mean an actual suspended chord or progression of sound. Our minds hear the musical suspension and naturally begin anticipating the resolution; the resolve.

When I saw this, I immediately understood why sabbath means so much to God. In essence, sabbath is faith. When we suspend our efforts, our plans, our purposes, our pursuits, we experience sabbath rest. There’s no struggle or strain. We come to realize that God is the source of everything we need. This is faith: the essence of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. This suspension brings the anticipation of the resolution or resolve in our life.

The resolve leads us to act, not in faith, but in trust. We heard from the Father in the sabbath moment, then go from there trusting in what we heard from Him. This is how we live our life-song. We play and sing the words and melody given to us by the Holy Spirit. It builds up to a point of suspension where we have to pause and seek counsel from the Maker, then continue in the cadence, trusting God’s voice.

Now for today’s blessing:

May the Lord teach you to play your life-song 
To bring glory and honor to Christ and His Kingdom
So those in your world can be blessed
Including you, the minstrel and soloist of your life

May you encounter the Father on this Father’s Day
As you learn of Him through the renewed fellowship available through Christ
To hear His heart, to recognize His voice, to follow His dreams for you
As you continue to compose new movements in the song of your life

Saturday, May 24, 2025

Sunday’s Blessing – 05/25/2025 – Week of Ascension

Sunday’s Blessing – 05/25/2025 – Week of Ascension

As we consider selah/sabbath/rest, one of the last acts Jesus did on earth was to ascend to Heaven to be seated at the right hand of the Father. This would be His posture until He returns for His Bride, the Church. Spiritually, we are also seated with Him at God’s right hand. It is here that we also rule and reign with Christ, though we are still here on earth.

We remain here after our conversion to be ambassadors for the Kingdom of God on the earth. We are to be ministers of reconciliation, bringing mankind back to their rightful place of fellowship with the Creator.
Being seated on God’s right hand is the ultimate in rest. God rested after creation. Jesus rested in the tomb after completing His mission to fulfil righteousness by keeping The Law blamelessly. Now He is resting at the Father’s right hand, interceding for us continually.

The final act (that we are aware of in scripture) before His return is to send the Holy Spirit to fill people who are born again, recreating them to be sons and daughters of the Most High God. We will celebrate this day a little later which is called Pentecost.

Now for this week’s blessing:

May you know the reality of your position in Christ, which is to be seated with the Father
From which you can experience a life of joy and peace, living in the favor of God
Enjoying fellowship with the Creator as friend to friend
Until we actually get to see Him face to face

May you learn to rest in in this relationship, no longer struggling to qualify
But instead, learning to abide, since you are already qualified through Jesus
No longer working or straining, but instead enjoying the fellowship
Forever with Him, the Keeper of our heart