Seven Immediate Benefits of Scripture Memory, Part 3

Chapter 9.
Seven Immediate Benefits of Scripture Memory,

Part 3

Write them on the tablet of your heart.
(Proverbs 3:3)

The government of Norway recently announced construction of an enormous doomsday vault in the Arctic, a sort of “Noah’s ark” for seeds in the event a global catastrophe wiped out the earth’s vegetation. The cornerstone for the Svalbard Global Seed Vault was laid near the town of Longyearbyen, 620 miles from the North Pole, with the prime ministers of Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, and Iceland in attendance. The vault is designed to stockpile as many as three million of the world’s crop seeds, which will be packaged in foil and stored at cold temperatures. Researchers claim the seeds could last hundreds, even thousands, of years.

Our minds are vaults especially designed to stockpile the seeds of God’s Word. We never know when we’ll be hit by a catastrophic loss, faced with a staggering problem, or challenged by a formidable foe. We don’t know what our children will encounter during their life’s journey, but we do know that the simple seeds of Scripture are priceless assets in times of drought, doubt, and difficulty.
 We can leave our children no inheritance more valuable than the legacy of God’s Word. It gives us clearer thoughts, steadier nerves, healthier emotions, purer habits, and better environments.

And that’s the fifth benefit of Scripture memory. It gives us happier homes. 

 One of the by-products of internalizing God’s Word is a brighter home life, for as you mull over the trans-formational truths of God, you become a more functional and wiser person; and as your children do the same, they learn the secrets of healthier relationships.
One of the most mysterious and commanding figures in Christian history is the Virgin Mary, mother of Jesus. We’re full of curiosity about her, for the Bible gives us only fleeting data about her life’s story. But if you read carefully, you’ll notice she must have been a great Scripture memorizer.
In Luke 1, when the angel Gabriel told her she would bear the Messiah, she hurried to the home of her relative, Elizabeth, and there she broke out in one of the Bible’s greatest prayers of praise the Magnificat in Luke 1:46-55.
 It drew heavily on Old Testament Bible verses, and we get the impression that Mary was a student of Old Testament Scriptures, with a rich treasury of verses packed away in her experience. She knew how to ponder these things in her heart.

When she burst into a prayer of praise, it was composed largely of verses she had stored away through the years. We can also assume she frequently quoted those verses to her firstborn as He was growing up. It’s incredible to think that Mary’s commitment to Scripture memory was perhaps one of the reasons God selected her to raise the Messiah.
The precious verses of God’s Word filled her heart and undoubtedly filled her home.

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Deuteronomy 6 tells us to talk about the Scriptures when we lie down and when we rise up, when we sit at home and when we walk along the way. This assumes that we have ready mental reference to the Scriptures so that we’ll be able to recall the right verse for the right occasion.

One of the first verses my wife and I tried to teach our children was Proverbs 20:11:
“Even a child is known by his deeds, whether what he does is pure and right” (NKJV).
I suggest teaching your child memory verses by hook or by crook. If your church, school, or Bible club has a Scripture memory program, jump in with both feet.

If not, develop your own, using the verses in this book. As I said in chapter 2, I learned many of the verses I treasure today in an incentive-based school program; so don’t be afraid to use incentives. I know one woman who memorized the entire Sermon on the Mount because her teacher offered her five dollars (back in the days when five dollars was a lot of money). She later said that she wouldn’t give a thousand times that amount now for the joy of having learned those three chapters, Matthew 5, 6, and 7.

Sixth, Scripture memory enhances our reputations. It augments the respect with which people view us. Isaiah 50:4 says, “The Lord God has given Me the tongue of the learned, that I should know how to speak a word in season to him who is weary” (NKJV).
Job’s friends told him, “Your words have upheld him who was stumbling, and you have strengthened the feeble knees” (Job 4:4 NKJV).

Publisher Brad Waggoner grew up on a ranch where all the farmhands and cowboys carried cans of tobacco in their back pockets. Later in college he met a group of Christians Navigators who also had something outlined in their hip pockets. But it wasn’t tobacco. These men carried around packets containing memory verses, which they worked on learning at every spare moment.
 Enticed to try it for himself, Brad started by memorizing three verses. “I couldn’t believe what an effect they had on me, on both my thinking and my talking. It seasoned my conversation with salt.” 

Brad was so motivated by the experience that he’s become a lifelong advocate of Scripture memory, and the verses he’s learned over the years are reflected every day in the conversations he has with friends and coworkers.

Where do we get the wisdom to speak a word in season to those who are weary?
How can we know what to say when someone is stumbling or in need of inner strength? Our ability to wisely dispense needed words is directly proportional to our knowledge of His words and of His Word.

In my book of hymn stories, Then Sings My Soul, I tell the remarkable story of Fanny Crosby, who was born in 1820 about sixty miles north of New York City. Her father died shortly after her birth, and she herself was blinded in infancy by a careless doctor treating her eyes. But as a result of her blindness, Fanny developed a phenomenal memory.
 She memorized vast segments of the Scripture—whole books of the Bible including all four Gospels. She later said that whenever she wanted to read a portion of Scripture, she turned a little button in her mind, and the appropriate passage would flow through her brain like a recorded tape.

After she came to the Lord, that vast reservoir of memorized Scripture became the nurturing fountain for her hymns. She would compose hymn after hymn in her brain and retain them with perfect memory, then go to her publishers and dictate them one after another. During her ninety-four years of life, she wrote approximately nine thousand hymns, more than anyone else in known church history.

Whenever she wrote a hymn, she prayed that God would use it to bring men and women to Christ. She had a goal of winning a million people to Christ through the agency of her hymns, and she kept careful track of every story she heard of someone being saved through her hymns. To this day someone somewhere on earth is singing, playing, or listening to her hymns practically every moment day and night—hymns such as
“Blessed Assurance,” “All the Way My Savior Leads Me,” “To God Be the Glory,” and “Near the Cross.”

When your mind is a virtual repository of Scripture, you’ll seldom be at a loss for something to say, and you’ll seldom say the wrong thing; for you will have the wisdom from above at your disposal on every occasion.

Finally, Scripture memory makes us eternal optimists. It gives ultimate hope and modulates us into eternal optimists. There’s a promise in the Bible for every contingency in life; and our faith grows as we find those specific promises that meet our specific needs, commit them to memory, mull over them, claim them by faith, and absorb them into our spiritual bloodstream.
Even death itself is no match for God’s precious promises of resurrection, eternal life, and everlasting joy.

When I was a college student, I had the privilege of being taught by Ruth Bell Graham,
who opened her home to me on several occasions; and I was impressed by her personal “collection” of memorized verses. “Some people collect paintings and some collect coins,” she said, in effect, “but I collect Bible verses.”

For many years Billy and Ruth Graham worked alongside Cliff and Billie Barrows.
 When Cliff’s wife, Billie, was diagnosed with advanced cancer, Billy and Ruth Graham came for a visit, along with Mr. and Mrs. George Beverly Shea. Sitting by the fire, these old friends spent the afternoon reminiscing and speaking of God’s faithfulness.
They had traveled around the world together many times over the years, preaching the gospel of Christ. The tenderness and laughter of their recollections was tinged with the sadness that one of them, Billie, would soon be departing for heaven.

Late in the day the conversation died down; and in the quietness Ruth began quoting Romans 8: What then shall we say to these things?
If God is for us, who can be against us? He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him up for us all, how shall He not with Him also freely give us all things?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? (31-32, 35 NKJV). And she went on to quote the rest of the passage by heart.
“These words were almost stunning to me,” the Barrows’ daughter, BettyRuth Seera later told me. “It was a very familiar passage... but never before had I realized the depth of comfort and hope they offered. I determined that day to memorize this passage and to follow Aunt Ruth’s example to be ready to give an account for the hope that is within me.”
Only as we engrave the Bible’s rich passages on the walls of our hearts can we be ready, in season and out of season, to share a word timely spoken.

When I was in college in the 1970s, Bill Gothard was conducting popular week-long seminars across the country, and a bunch of us students took our spring break to go to Philadelphia and attend his conference. I still have the notes, and many of Gothard’s insights had a big impact on me. The thing I remember most clearly was his definition of wisdom.

Wisdom, Gothard said, was seeing life from God’s point of view.
 And then he went on to emphasize the importance of Scripture memory and meditation. Gothard said that meditation is the practice of memorizing, visualizing, and personalizing Scripture.
As we faithfully memorize and meditate on Scripture, the Holy Spirit will gradually remold our minds until we see things and evaluate life increasingly from God’s point of view, and that’s the essence of wisdom.

* 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart.