MEMORIZING SCRIPTURE

About a month ago I was listening to Janet Pope on Revive Our Hearts talk about memorizing Scripture. I've memorized individual verses before and even the book of Philippians when I was in college. I've forgotten Philippians over the years but have kept a lot of the verses in the back of my mind. This woman intrigued me though because she had memorized 14 books and many chapters of the Bible, plus had retained all of it over many years. How'd she do that?! I listened some more and was challenged to try it.

A couple months later and I've memorized and retained more than I thought I could. I've memorized Jude and Colossians 3 so far and tomorrow I'll start on a real challenge - Hebrews, all 13 chapters of it.

So what's the system? Well, this Janet Pope suggests memorizing one verse per day and the trick is to carry it around on a card and say it to yourself throughout the day while you're doing other things like drying your hair or doing the dishes. One day a week you review everything you've memorized. It's worked well for me and it's really amazing to have all this Scripture "in my back pocket" so to speak. When I have trouble falling asleep I can go over it in my mind. When I'm running by myself I can review, even out loud because I'm running so early in the morning. That's what I did this morning and it took me three miles to review out loud Jude and Colossians 3. This practice also gives me opportunity to study and meditate on the Scripture without having to carve out time at a table with all the concordances and study helps and my journal.

Back in college, after I finished memorizing Philippians, I would go back and read it and an amazing transformation had occurred. The reading of that book became a much more intimate experience, as if the Holy Spirit Himself was reading it to my soul.

So have you ever been interested in memorizing Scripture like this? I encourage you to try it out. Here's a link to the program on Revive Our Hearts I was talking about.