Tehillah

Singing can be such a spiritual outlet for me; a way to praise God and rejoice in Him. 

To lay my burdens and fears at His feet. 

To cry out to Him for help. 

To worship Him.

But this isn't always the typical style of singing and worship one might think of. It's just . . . melody that comes from somewhere inside of me, like it exists only to emerge from myself and be lifted up to my Creator. 

Sometimes there are words. 

Sometimes not. 

And its not necessarily a beautiful sound.

Its guttural. And primal. 

But somehow . . . intimate.

While working at CSI Ministries, I would sometimes sing to God; just open up and let whatever sound come out. I'm not sure when, where, or how it started, but it just kinda became a way of focusing my attention to God's presence and glory. My co-worker, Angie, refers to this as my Gregorian chanting.

So over the past few months, my curiosity has been peaked and I've been doing a little internet research about Gregorian chants to see exactly what Angie was talking about. I've learned its a liturgical form of singing often associated with monastic communities. The worshipers would use very small bible verses or words of praise to express melodies of adoration to God. This helped them commit the verses or praises to memory. They would often sing these hymns in other languages that were considered holy or were more conducive to the flowy style of singing.

Well, I've been doing lots of songwriting lately. I love songwriting, but if I'm working on a lot of songs at once, I begin to feel constricted creatively because I write lyrics based around a melody in my head. So, if I writing a lot, then I'm probably restricting myself to the melody of the songs I'm working on to keep consistency throughout the process.

Today I just felt like singing. Wildly and without constraints of any kind; praising God in a way that was just for Him and not involving much thought.
Just praise.

For the safety of my wife and neighbors, I locked myself in the bedroom and shut the window.

And just sang.

It felt like awesome prayer time; connectivity. Afterward, I continued a bit more research about Gregorian chants, hoping to learn more about the actual technique of writing their content. (Who knows!? May the next song I post will be a chant ;-) And during that research I came across the Hebrew word tehillah.

And it was one of those hard to explain 'aha! moments'.
One of those concepts I somehow already understood without knowing it even exists.

TEHILLAH (-teh-hil-law-): to sing, to laud. A spontaneous new song. Singing from a melody in your heart by adding words to it. This refers to a special kind of singing-it is singing unprepared, unrehearsed songs. Brings tremendous unity to the body of Christ. Singing straight to God. Can move into tehilah anytime. Singing it the second time would be ZAMAR. It is the praise that God inhabits (sits enthroned on)(Psalm 22:3) God manifests Himself in the midst of exuberant singing. Scripture: Psalms 22:3, 34:1, 40:3, 66:2, 2 Chronicles 20:22

Tehillah (teh-hil-law'); from 1984; laudation; specifically (concretely) a hymn: KJV-- praise.

a) praise, adoration, thanksgiving (paid to God)

b) the act of general or public praise

c) a praise-song (as a Hebrew title)

d) praise (demanded by qualities or deeds or attributes of God)

e) renown, fame, glory