You Can Do It!

Chapter 10.
You Can Do It!

Keep my teaching with you all the time; write it on your heart.
(Proverbs 7:3 GNT)

Not long ago I spoke at a luncheon in Asheville, North Carolina. The setting was the clubhouse of a golf course, and the views across the mountains were fabulous. Many of those in attendance had moved to the North Carolina high country for their retirement years, and I was seated beside a gracious woman in her eighties. As we chatted, I brought up the subject of Scripture memory.

“Oh,” she said, “I found it so easy to memorize when I was younger, but now it is hard to get my brain to retain the words.”

I agreed, but I suggested we can still work on it. “God has made our brains so they mature and develop over time,” I said. “When we’re young, we have good memorizers because there is so much material to learn. When we’re older, our memorizers slow down, but our wisdomizers speed up because we have to sort out all the information we’ve previously acquired. We have to use it correctly. But we can still memorize Bible verses even if it takes longer to do so.”

“I’m so glad you told me that,” she said.

The 100 verses in this book are for people from one to one hundred.
My four-year-old grandson, Elijah, is learning memory verses, and he can beat me four to one. But as long as our minds are in reasonable working order, we can memorize. I can prove it to you. Do you know your phone number?
 If you moved to a new house, don’t you think you could learn your address?
If you welcomed a grandchild into the world, don’t you think you’d learn and remember his or her name?
 I have ten grand-children. Sometimes when I’m calling one of them, I go through a handful of names (including the dog’s). But I really do know the name of each child and eventually come up with the right one.

Can you learn the security code on your home protection system? How about your post office box?
 Today’s date?
The name of the new store that opened down the road?
 The name of the neighbor who moved in across the street?
The day and time of the new television program you’ve become interested in, and the names of the chief characters?
 The score of last week’s football game?
The BCS rankings? Your Internet password?
The price of a gallon of gas?
Your weight (before and after your diet)?
We have a remarkable, built-in capacity for memory, thank God.

If you can learn one single word, you can learn another. And if you learn two, you can learn four. The younger we are, the quicker our minds inscribe the data; but whatever our age, we should be actively practicing the discipline of Scripture memory.

This book is the result of a yearlong series of sermons I preached at my church on 100 Bible verses everyone on earth should know by heart. The week I began the series, one of my senior adults was rushed to the hospital with signs of a stroke. When I visited her the next day, she couldn’t wait to tell me she was still intent on learning her verse for the week. “Oh, don’t worry about me, Pastor,” she said with effort. “I have my verse right here; I’m going to work on it while I’m in the hospital.”

Another woman, eighty-nine years old, came up to me the next Sunday.
 “Oh, Pastor Morgan,” she said. “I’m so glad you’re having us memorize those verses. I’ve already gotten started on them. It’s going to help me keep my mind fresh and young!”
While writing this book, I had lunch with Cliff Barrows, the music director for the Billy Graham Crusades. Cliff was influenced by the Navigators early in life and started memorizing verses as a young man. Now in his eighties, he told me he works every day on Scripture memory. Poor eyesight doesn’t deter him. His wife, Ann, records passages on a handheld recorder, and Cliff listens to them over and over until he has them down pat.
Some books offer elaborate systems for memorizing material, but I only have ten tried-and-true suggestions.

First, make up your mind you can memorize just one verse. That’s all. Just one. (Of course, if you can memorize one verse, you can memorize two.)

Second, work at it every day. Make it a simple part of your daily routine. It might be at the breakfast table, at the shaving mirror, in the drive-to-work traffic, while jogging, during your daily workout, at the end of your morning quiet time, during your evening bath, or just before you turn your light off at night. Let it piggyback on some other activity, the habit of which is already established, like your daily power walk.

Third, keep your current memory verse on whatever screens you use, such as your handheld phone or your computer screen. Post it on your refrigerator. Slide it under the glass of your desk or tape it to the dashboard of your car. Use sticky-notes everywhere. This is akin to the Bible’s advice of writing it on the doorposts of your house and on the walls of your rooms.

Fourth, repeat, repeat, repeat. Say the verse aloud over and over.
Whenever I conduct a wedding, I write out my comments and read the vows to the nervous couple unless I’m using the traditional ones I’ve used for years. Even those I still tack into my notes, but I seldom look down at them. I’ve said them so often I memorized them without realizing it.

In taking the woman I hold by the right hand to be my wedded wife, I promise to love her, honor her, and cherish her in this relationship, and, leaving all others, cleave only unto her in all things a true and faithful husband so long as we both shall live.

When I realized how I’d learned those words by sheer repetition, I decided the same could happen with Bible verses. So every morning during my devotions, I repeat a Bible verse aloud slowly, as if giving it to a bride and groom.
 In that way I’m gradually learning new verses, one by one. Repetition moves the verse from sensory memory to short-term memory, and from short-term memory to long-term storage, and from long-term storage to everyday use. In other words, first you have the verse, and then the verse has you.

My wife repeats her memory verses aloud, often using little songs she’s composed for the words. She finds that singing a verse, even with a made-up tune, helps her remember it for years. (Of course, sometimes she can’t quote the verse for others without singing it first.)

Sixth, read each verse in its context and study it. Write it out. Check out different translations, and memorize it in the translation you use the most.

Seventh, learn the reference as part of the verse.

Eighth, review, review, review.

Ninth, figure out some homemade mnemonics and mental associations, either for the verse or for the reference.
 I remember Proverbs 19:11 because my dad was born in 1911 and this verse reminds me of him: “A man’s wisdom gives him patience; it is to his glory to overlook an offense” (NIV).
Tenth, use your verses. Preach them to yourself, quote them for others, and turn them into prayers to the Lord. Say with the psalmist: “Your word I have hidden in my heart, that I might not sin against You” (Ps. 119:11 NKJV).

It’s as easy as that. Now let’s get started on our first 100!

* 100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know by Heart.