The concept of a “selah pause and listen” invites us to intentionally slow down and hear from God. I remember a Sunday morning years ago—the exact date is now a blur—where the day vanished in a whirlwind of activity. By 8:45 p.m., I had barely eaten a single meal. As my husband headed to his overnight shift and I headed home, we truly believed that this frantic pace was the only way to do God’s work.
During that season of life and ministry, we had not yet learned the value of silence, stopping, and stillness. Our society demands rapid results and constant information, making it difficult to prioritize spiritual rest. While we see this same struggle to listen to God throughout the Bible, we should not use those historical examples as an excuse to maintain a lifestyle of constant motion without stopping to seek His presence.
In the Psalms, we find a beautiful invitation from God: selah. This Hebrew word likely means “to stop and listen.” In the context of Christian living, it is a call not just to pause, but to actively listen to God during that stillness. Unlike secular meditation that focuses on the “inner self,” a selah pause and listen moment focuses on meditating on what God is saying. Whether through a prompting, a vision, or the clear pages of Scripture, we all have access to His voice. If we are to bear good fruit in the world, we must move beyond being busy and reclaim the discipline of listening to our Creator.
We are a collective Body, which means we are responsible to one another. By way of the apostle Paul’s words in 1 Corinthians 12, Christ says we are his Body. Where we currently are as a Body is dangerous. If we keep going, thinking we have the best practices and best approaches to “church,” then we’ll stay lost and keep hurting one another, and people will continue to walk away from the faith or not consider it at all.
We are speeding, and we need to selah instead.
I read a book the other day that said that, contrary to popular belief, Christianity isn’t dying. The author stated this as a fact by pointing to statistics. I’m a big fan of data and numbers and believe they communicate information to help us as a society make wise decisions, yet when it comes to measuring the faith of followers of Christ, authentic faith can’t be measured by polling data. Numbers don’t tell us who is following Jesus—one’s life does. If we were to look at the lives of the Christians we know and various public Christian leaders, we would at least wonder whether the Christian faith is expanding in a healthy way ac- cording to the Great Commission.
Matthew 28:19–20 says, “Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.” There are no numbers in this passage, no call to make leaders, and no focus on one specific way of doing church. Instead, Jesus tells us to tell people the good news and form healthy communities that observe his commands.
How do we do this while we wait for Jesus to come back?
One of the best ways is through selah. To stop and listen. To stop and evaluate. To pause and reflect. To take a break and consider what is working and what isn’t. To consider if what we are doing is biblical. To consider what is a priority and what isn’t. To consider what is honorable and what is not dignifying. To consider what it is to be the Body of Christ while we are breathing this borrowed breath here on earth.
Content taken from Being a Sanctuary by Pricelis Perreaux-Dominguez ©2024. Used by permission of Brazos Press.
