“I will delight in your statutes; I will not forget your word.” (Psalm 119:16, ESV)
I recently came across a meme that read: My ability to remember song lyrics from the 80s far exceed my ability to remember why I walked into the kitchen. I had to laugh at that because it often happens to me where I will forget the task at hand.
It is incredible the things that we remember. We remember the lyrics to songs. We remember the numbers of our favorite athletes. We remember the quotes from our favorite movies. The brain is an amazing wonder about what it can store.
It is also highly efficient at sorting out what is important and what is not important. That is why things that we encountered many years ago are locked down in the far recesses of the brain. But at the same time, we can’t remember what we had to eat for lunch.
With the advent of the Internet and wireless phones, it has changed the things we remember. I can still remember my parent’s phone number when I was a kid and all the phone numbers of my best friends. But I have no clue as to what my daughter’s mobile phone number is. It is on my speed dial, so I have no reason to remember what it is. My mind chose not to remember her number because it was not important to remember. But I had to remember all the numbers of my childhood friends because I repeatedly had to manually punch the numbers on the phone.
As we think about God’s Word, we are blessed today to have the Bible at our fingertips. There are some great apps where we can search the Bible on our phone in multiple translations. We might be tempted to think that we don’t need to memorize God’s Word because we can always look it up.
But here is the problem. God’s Word is not something to look up. It is something to live out. Remembering the Word is about being able to apply it to life. Being able to apply God’s Word to life is not so much about having it on our mind but upon our heart. And the only way to have God’s Word in our heart is if it is on our mind.
If you take on verse a week, you will memorize 52 verses over a year. That is a whole lot of Scripture. Even if you take one verse a month, that will be 12 verses a year. I will guarantee you that the time you spend memorizing Scripture will be time well spent. It will be useful, and you will not regret it.
Try this, take a verse and write it out every day for a week. Let the Word go from your hand to your mind to your heart and then let it be lived out in your life.
Reflection
- Do you practice Bible memorization? Why or why not?
- What useful tips do your have or techniques you use for memorization?
- How has memorization help you in real life situations?
Leave a Reply