Friday, November 14, 2008

Ever Memorize Scripture?

I've done a little bit of scripture memorization and I've never felt it to be a wasted effort. Although The passages I've previously endeavored to memorize, and did actually remember without help - at least for a short period of time, are no longer stored word for word in my faulty memory. The powerful truth of these passages, however, did remain with me.

For instance Isaiah 53 was once a memorization project of mine and although I cannot an longer recite the entire passage verbatim, I do recall the powerful Christ-centered message therein. I can no longer quote Romans 1 but I do remember the main points highlighted there. Psalm 91 was one of my memorization projects and it too is not retained entirely, yet I recall the theme of God's protection of His people.

I remember especially during the Romans 1 project that the more I recited this chapter repeatedly in an effort to lock it into memory, the more I was beginning to understand it. The memorization effort is a forced meditation, and as such greatly helps with understanding.

I've recently been attempting to commit to memory, what is in my opinion one of the greatest (if not the greatest chapter) in all of Scripture - Romans 8.

3 Verses down and 36 more to go.

On a similar note, my wife and I are teaching our 5 year old daughter to memorize verses. She has several verses committed to memory and it's quite amazing how fast she is able to memorize them.

What verses would you want your children to remember? Or what verses did you memorize as a child?

Do you memorize Scripture? What have portions of Scripture have you committed to memory? Or what portions would you recommend memorizing?

2 comments:

John said...

A couple of years ago I memorized the epistle of James. Like you, my memory is faulty. I can't quote it now, but I can get around in it fairly easy. Also, like you mentioned, in all of the meditation I began to understand it much better and see the "big picture." There are great benefits to memorization; I haven't done it in a long while but certainly need to start.

mwh said...

The interplay of the Spirit and the mind is an amazing thing, how even though our minds can't recall the exact words, the Spirit still uses their power.

Keep on keeping on!