This morning, we finished our series on spiritual warfare by looking at the sword of the spirit or the Bible.
I thought one of the best parts of the service was having JP (former pastoral resident, now in a staff position as he prepares to go as a missionary to France) recite Ephesians 4-6 from memory.
As Jim described this morning, scripture is our only offensive weapon to drive Satan back. As important as it is to have our Bibles available to read during difficult times, unless we have it memorized, when attacks come we may have our weapon but be completely unable to use it.
Chuck Swindoll says, “I know of no other single practice in the Christian life more rewarding, practically speaking, than memorizing Scripture. . . . No other single exercise pays greater spiritual dividends!” (Growing Strong in the Seasons of Life)
How do you do it?
One, use tools to help.
For instance, do you know our benediction from the Ephesians series? See if just having the first letters from the verse will help you remember it:
N T H W I A T D I M T A W A O I A T H P T I A W W U, T H B G I T C A I C J T A G F E A E! A.
Wow, isn’t that amazing what only the first letter for a clue can help you to do! A friend sent me this link several years ago that does the work for you if you are working on larger passages. You type in a verse and it converts it all for you.
Another great tool is the NavPress memory system. If you check here, you will find the verses that NavPress puts together as a good starting point to memorize a wide range of verses. You can also order the verses on cards to keep with you.
Second, volunteer on Wednesday nights in the children’s ministry!
We have an amazing children’s program here at Calvary. They do a great and fun job of introducing children to Jesus and biblical truth. But, I am most excited about the emphasis on scripture memory. Each year during Kids N Action, the kids memorize one chapter of James (this year is chapter 4) by putting it to music, doing fun activities and encouraging repetition. If you volunteer, not only will you minister to children you will memorize an entire chapter of the Bible. What a great deal!
If your kids are in the program, make it a family project to memorize James together. We have a dry erase board that we use during the year to memorize the verses. We read the verse of the week every morning, and then slowly erase words throughout the week until we know it.
The benefit of doing it with your kids is that the passage is already divided up into doable chunks, there are fun songs to help you memorize them, and you will have a lot of encouragement from your kids.
Finally, get some accountability. Incorporate scripture memory into your small group, your bible study, or just with a friend. If you need a place to start, why not try to memorize a Psalm written by David during the time of the narrative in 1 and 2 Samuel, which is our new sermon series beginning next week.
If you are up to the challenge, I was convicted this morning that I need to be memorizing scripture, so I am going to start with Psalm 84, which has 12 verses. No particularly good reason except it is one that I have been meaning to memorize for a while. So, in one month if you want to join me, we can memorize an entire chapter of the Bible.
Here’s the plan. Psalm 84 has 12 verses so to accomplish the task in 4 weeks we need to memorize 3 verses each week. So, this week we’ll need to memorize verses 1-3 together.
All is well,
Lisa