The main reason that I made this page is to pass on to others how we can store the Word of God away in our minds and hearts. Some people get very defensive when talking about memorizing Scripture. I think that I was like this at one time as well. I have always hated memorization. I think it started with the Gettysburg Address back in Junior High. I had to memorize it and I hated every single syllable that I had to memorize. Because I hated to memorize I just assumed that I could not or cannot memorize very well. By hanging around my mentor, Tracy McKenzie, a staff member of the Navigators here at Kansas State, it didn't take me long to see the incredible power of Scripture memory. If I ever needed one verse on a subject he would have five. I always knew what the Bible said but could not ever tell you where it was in the Bible. The truth is, people want to know where, especially when you are sharing with them. I dilly-dallied around the idea and finally I asked Tracy to teach me how to memorize the Bible. From that day on Scripture memory has revolutionized my life. I look forward to memorizing the next verse. After all this, I can memorize Scripture, I want to memorize Scripture, and I look forward to memorizing Scripture. First I'd like to start with some verses on how incredibly important the Bible is to our Christian life: John 8:31-32 Jesus' words above are kind of a revolutionary statement. Paraphrased: "Only if you continue in My word are you a disciple of Mine." In the New Testament a disciple simply meant "a Christiain." (Now I am not saying that you have to memorize Scripture to be a Christian though.) Ephesians 6:17 Hebrews 4:12-13 Now here is some things to think about. From Ephesians 6:17 above, the Word of God is the Sword of the Spirit. It is our spiritual protection and weapon. Also we are not fighting a normal war here: Ephesians 6:12 Another analogy of the Word of God is as follows: Luke 8:11 In the parable of the sower, the sower was sowing seeds which Jesus tells us are the Word of God. Now if we are to go out and sow seeds in people's lives, to plant God's Word, how can we do it if we can't take it with us. We don't always have a Bible. I'm getting to know where things are pretty well in my Bible so I can find verses even though I don't know what exactly the reference is but once I got stuck with sharing with an old Gideon New Testament that a dog had chewed on. I had a heck of a time finding things because I didn't know the references. Knowing the references and the verses is powerful. Now I'd like to give the verses that give us good reason why we should memorize Scripture: James 1:21-25 Joshua 1:8 Psalm 119:9-11 John 15:7 My Memorization Technique: The way that I memorize Bible verses comes from the Navigator's topical memory system and don't claim it for my own or anything. Believe it or not, your brain keeps things in memory in a type of file system that organizes things under topics or association. You hear a song and it reminds you of something that you did while listening to that song. When you hear a certain word or name it reminds you of a certain thing. We can take advantage of this association property of you brain to store and organize Bible verses. By keeping verses on little cards with the topic at the top in a little verse wallet (verse pack) that you can take with you everywhere in your back pocket. By always having them with you, you can work on Scripture memorization while driving in your car, while waiting in line or wherever you are just burning time and otherwise wouldn't be doing anything productive. Oh, by the way, if you are seriously interested in Scripture memory and would like one of these Verse Packs, email me your address and I'll send you one for free with some verse cards as well. Verses are memorized under topics and then you recall them by the topics as well. For example I will start with the first verse that I memorized: Psalm 119:11. I picked this verse because it seemed to be a good foundation for Scripture memorization and put it under the topic of "The Word." On the verse cards you always write the topic at the top, then the reference, verse and then the reference again at the end. Example: The Word To start memorizing just memorize the topic and then the reference. Say "The Word, Psalm 119:11" over and over again until you can bring it back to your mind with no problems. There is no hurry here, sometimes I'll just practice a topic and verse for an entire morning before I move on. When I have the topic and verse down then I tack on the first small phrase. I would then repeat the following over and over, "The Word, Psalm 119:11, Your word I have treasured, Psalm 119:11". Notice that at the end you always end with the reference. This is so that you get the reference engrained in your mind and it is the first thing that you forget. Keep working and adding small phrases and always saying the reference before and after you say the verse until you have the whole verse. For me this may take up to 4 days to remember one verse, sometimes less but the trick is that you memorize it good and this isn't a race. Example:
**Note: I have the entire verse written on the card at all times but just recite the part that I show above in the steps that I've shown Then to practice your verse you can write the topic on the back of the card and practice calling the verse from memory by the topic. Then when you have a bunch of verses memorized under the topic "The Word" when you think about the topic, "The Word" a bunch of references come to your mind all ready for you to quote or take someone to that place in the Bible. Now memorizing the verses is one thing and remembering them later is another. The trick can defined in one word, "Review." Review is critical otherwise you will forget the verses. It will be easy to review at first because you will only know a handful but after a while you will have hundreds of verses you will have to find a way of systematically reviewing to keep them fresh in your mind. I always keep 10 or 15 old verses in my verse pack that I am reviewing and I go over them by looking at the topics and then recalling the verse(s). Note: Every time you say the verse always say the topic first. The way you memorized it is that once you say the topic and the reference then the verse will just come out by itself. More Stuff Another challenging thing that I found was finding good topics for verses. I found myself memorizing verses under one topic and then finding later that there was probably a better topic. One example is that I memorized 1 Corinthians 15:10 under "Grace of God" and then Ephesians 2:8-9 under "Grace." I should have memorized them both under the same topic. The trick is finding a topic that is broad enough that you can memorize multiple verses under it but narrow enough that you can think of what you need. Here are some topics that I've used:
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