Why should you be memorizing Bible verses? And some practical tips on how to memorize
Bible verses. Now, this is not only something that relates to preachers or pastors or it's taught in
a Bible Seminary, but as part of discipleship, you have to allow God's Word, not only living
in God's Word but God's Word living inside of you and I think that one of those things
one of those methods by which God's Word lives inside of you is through memorizing the Word,
now here are my four reasons why I believe that you should memorize the Bible. The first one is
that Jesus quoted the Old Testament over 60 times in the New Testament. Additionally, there are over
100 other references of Jesus alluding to specific Old Testament scriptures in the Gospels, so if
Jesus quoted the Old Testament verses over 60 times, then we should also be following Jesus and
have the scriptures not only on our phones, not only on the shelves in our houses but also in our
hearts and in our memory bank. The second reason why you should be memorizing the scriptures is
that when personally tempted by the devil, Jesus quoted the Old Testament to defeat the devil's
schemes against him, so when you begin memorizing the Word, what's going to happen is that you can
actually use that in the moment of temptation. The Bible says that the scriptures, the Word of God,
is the sword of the spirit. You must learn how to use your sword because when you are in the battle
and are not useful, you are not practiced before, and you have not had an experience with it. What
begins to happen is you might not find yourself as victorious as God wants you to be and our sword
is the scriptures. So we should be learning the scriptures, we should be reading the scriptures,
we should be meditating on the scriptures, but also memorizing God's Word. The third reason
I believe that we should memorize the Bible is that it helps us put God's Word into our hearts.
The Bible actually says, "your Word I have hidden in my heart, that I will not sin against you,
"in Psalm 118 Verse 11. So when you put God's Word into your heart, how do you do that? One
of the ways is through meditation and through memorization. Now the fourth reason why you should
be memorizing the scriptures is because it will actually help you to develop your memory, now,
people are always making excuses and they say, well, I'm not good at memorizing things but memory
is a muscle, if you develop it, it will grow, if you memorize things, it will grow, if you simply
make an excuse that you can't memorize things then what's going to happen is that it will get
worse with time and so don't use that excuse, simply develop a plan, have a plan and have a
strategy on how to grow or develop your memory by putting God's Word into memory, now I'm not saying
to memorize the whole Bible even though that's probably not going to be a bad idea, so here are
some practical things that I want to encourage you when it comes to memorizing the scriptures,
first one is have a plan and it could be a simple plan like memorizing one verse per week
or memorizing if you already have been doing it for a while, two verses per week, if you memorize
one verse per week that would be 52 verses a year, if you memorize one verse per week, you know that
would be about 500 verses in 10 years and so have a very simple plan and be realistic in your plan,
don't simply say, well I'm going to memorize a verse every single day, if you have not been
doing that and you're gonna start with that, it most likely you're going to fail and so but if you
start with one verse a week then build on that for a while, do a whole year like that and then review
these verses and then what's going to happen is that you will grow and develop the memory and also
I believe your walk with the Lord is going to be strengthened when you speak, when you witness to
people, when you present the Gospel, you'll be able to quote it instead of just summarize it,
the second thing is create your own system for Bible memorization,
now one of the things that I would recommend, I don't personally use it but I used it before,
what I would write things on memory note cards all the verses and I would review them on one side,
I would write the reference and on the other side I would write the verse and so and then each day
I would try to reverse it, reverse it before or review it before I would go to sleep and I tried
to bring that into my prayer time as I would finish my prayer, I would pull up my verses and
review my verses and so and very good program and they even have a book and the whole system called
navigator memory system, now I would recommend that it will, it's in the description below,
I don't get any royalties or anything from that so this is just me encouraging you to get into
memorizing the Word and they seem to have a very good system for that. The third thing that I would
encourage if maybe Navigators you know memory note cards are not kind of like your thing, you could
use a Bible app, that's actually what I'm using currently is a Bible memory app, you can go to
biblememory.com also I'm not affiliated with the ministry or with that website, I'm just using it,
and it's been a great blessing to me a lot of people on our team use that Bible memory app,
why I like the Bible memory app first of all, it's on my phone and so for the season many times what
I would do is I would actually delete all of my social media from my phone and just use the Bible
memory, in fact as I'm recording this video that's the case where I don't have social media on my
phone but anytime I'm tempted to just go through scrolling, I just pull up my Bible memory app and
I just want to you know kind of review the verses and Bible memory app allows you to track how well
you review your verses and by that, they determine how often you will review those verses so it has
its own little system and it's really amazing and so you can give that a shot if you've struggled
with the memory note cards, then you can try the app. I think many of us spend too much time on
social media. We could be spending way more time on the scriptures, which could be one of the ways,
if you just simply leverage the free time you have between appointments, you know, waiting for
a meeting or something. You know, we kind of by default go and just scroll through stuff; we could
just pretty much go by default and review Bible verses, it will definitely improve your peace, and
it will improve your walk with the Lord because God's Word will be living in you as you're living
in the Lord. The fourth tip that I would give you is to memorize versus perfectly Word for Word;
it decreases the loss of verse integrity, and it also communicates competence if you are quoting
Word for Word versus just a paraphrase. The fifth tip is to memorize out of the same translation, so
my personal preference is to memorize out of the New King James translation; I'm currently reading
the Gospels through a different translation, and occasionally I would switch up translations for my
daily reading devotional, but to memorize, I try to memorize out of one translation,
you can choose your own translation. Still, my personal one is the New King James translation.
The sixth tip or advice concerning Bible memorization is to memorize the reference to the
verse and the reference in the sequence so when you're quoting, for example, John 3:16,
"for God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son that whoever believes in Him shall
not perish but have everlasting life. "First is the reference to the verse and then the reference
again, so that you always connect the verses with the references, sometimes it's easier to memorize
the verse and actually not the reference, and if you memorize a lot of verses, sometimes you
get mixed up a little bit with the reference for those verses. The seventh tip is that memorize
scripture at night before going to bed; it will stick better and then review it in the morning,
and so that's one of my habits is to review it before I go to sleep and then review it when I
wake up in the morning or after my devotions so that in the morning and in the evening I feel
like it just sticks a little bit better. Eighth practical tip is to have some accountability,
have a partner maybe or a friend with whom you can memorize verses together and then once in
a while you can get together and actually quiz each other and so instead of just talking about
other stuff you can actually be talking about the Word of God, you can do that in your small
group actually, if you're a small group leader you can have your small group memorize a verse
every single week and then before a small group starts you know, everyone reviews those verses,
people really benefit by having a system and being intentional putting God's Word in their heart,
now some of you maybe listen to this, and you're like, man, why would I want to be memorizing the
Bible? The Bible doesn't tell us to memorize the Bible; you're correct, the Bible doesn't
tell us to memorize the Bible, but there are verses, and I'm going to read them to you,
that pretty much really emphasize us putting God's Word inside of us instead of just reading it
occasionally, Colossians 3:16 says, "let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. "John 2:22 says,
"as He was raised from the dead, His disciples recalled what He had said and they believed the
scripture and the words which Jesus has spoken. "John 15: 20, "remember the words I spoke to you,
so you have to remember them. "I mean somebody has to memorize it, you know, Ephesians chapter 5
verse 19, "speak to one another in Psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs. "Second Timothy, chapter 3,
verses 14 and 15, "but as for you continue in what you have learned and have become convinced
of because you know these from whom you learned it and how from infancy you have known the holy
scriptures. "So Timothy knew the holy scriptures from infancy; that's incredible. Second Peter
chapter 3 verse 2, "I want you to recall the words spoken in the past by the holy prophets and the
command given by our Lord and Savior through your apostles. "So Apostles remembered these words,
this was not just Holy Spirit supernaturally giving them a memory, I do believe Holy Spirit
aided them and helped them, but they still had to exercise and develop their memory by remembering,
and they passed these teachings to the disciples and then now Peter is telling them to believers to
recall the words and so it's important to review, recall, memorize, remember the scripture is full
of these instructions for believers. Deuteronomy chapter 6, verses 6 through 9, "these Commandments
that I give you today, let them be upon your hearts, impress them on your children, talk
about them when you sit at home and when you walk along on the road, and when you lie down and when
you get up, tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. "Wow, write them on
the door frames of your houses and on your gates. I mean, that's pretty serious. That's extremely
intentional, putting God's Word everywhere. In Jeremiah 31:33, "this is the Covenant I will
make with the house of Israel after the time declares the Lord, I will put my laws in their
minds and write them in their hearts. "Psalm 37:31, "the law of his God is in his heart,
his feet do not slip. "Psalm 48, "I desire to do your will O God, your law is within my heart,
"and the verse that I already mentioned. Psalm 119:11, "I have hidden your Word in my heart that
I will not sin against you. "John 14:26, "but the counselor, the Holy Spirit whom the father will
send in my name, he will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you.
"Do you have a habit of memorizing the scriptures? Is this part of you growing as a disciple of Jesus
Christ? I want to speak to you and encourage you if. You don't have that habit of starting
that habit this week, follow some of these guides and advice that I have given but create your own;
in fact, share with us what are some things you have done that helped you to memorize the
Word of God, and maybe you are not memorizing, why are you not doing that? Let us know in the
comments below. Thank you for watching this video. Hit thumbs up to this video as well
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