A Moving God

For these first few lessons, we’re going to be taking a dive into the Bible to explore what this wonderful book says about dance and movement and what we can learn from this.

To begin with, let’s start with God! A pretty good place to start I think!

God is a moving God. Movement didn’t originate with us, but it originated with Him. He is the author of movement and dance. It is one of the heavenly languages that He speaks.

A key thing that I will refer to throughout this e-course is that movement is a language in itself. We know that words have meaning, and movement is the same. It has meaning. It is not a redundant or completely abstract language, but it truly is full of significance and worth. God communicates through movement, spiritual beings communicate through movement, and so do we. Even taking dance out of the picture, studies show that the majority of our communication in life is non-verbal i.e. through body language. Movement has meaning!

Let’s look at some examples of when we see God act or communicate through movement. 

You don’t have to search too far for the first example. Right at the very beginning of the first book of the Bible, we see that God moves.

‘Now the earth was formless and empty, darkness was over the surface of the deep, and the Spirit of God was hovering over the waters.’ (Genesis 1:2)

The Spirit of God was ‘hovering’. What kind of movement was this?

The Hebrew word that is translated as ‘hovering’ here is rachaph¹ which means to move, to shake, or to flutter. This is not a soft, floaty movement, but it’s a very intense movement. Some translations say that the Spirit was ‘brooding’ over the waters, where we have this image of the Spirit incubating and birthing something new, which was creation. The exact same word is actually used in Deuteronomy 32:11 to describe an eagle fluttering over her young.

I find this very interesting that the whole of creation began with breath, word, and this passionate, powerful and vigorous movement! Our God is and has always been a moving God.

Let’s look at another example:

‘The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.’ (Zephaniah 3:17)

The Hebrew word that is translated as ‘rejoice’ here is the word suws² which denotes a very exuberant joy that involves physical action, notably, to circle around, twirl and spin. So this verse is saying that God rejoices over you so much that he spins around in excitement! These are God’s own words recorded by the prophet Zephaniah, showing that this is how God wants to describe His joy for us: with exuberant movement!

Here’s another example of God moving:

‘I too will strike my hands together, and my wrath will subside’ (Ezekiel 21:17)

This is such an interesting verse. God here describes Himself as having hands, and not only that, but He claps His hands together! God uses a physical action to soothe his feelings — what? I don’t know if I can get my head around that. It is fascinating!

Let’s look at this final example in the New Testament of when God moves:

‘After they prayed, the place where they were meeting was shaken.’ (Acts 4:31)

When the early church gathered together to pray, God chose to show up with movement. I love that here in the New Testament, we see that the Spirit of God moves in the same way in which He moved at the beginning of Genesis — with fervent shaking! God has always been and still is a moving God.

So, all throughout the Bible, we can see that God moves. It’s a language that He chooses to use in order to take action and communicate meaning. 

 1. Strong’s H7363 (I will put the references of any Hebrew words in the footnotes so you can easily look them up to explore them further!)

 2. H7797