You can never have a Christian mind without regular reading of the Scriptures and serious Bible study. Why is this? Because you cannot be profoundly influenced by what you don’t know. If you are filled with God’s Word, your life can then be informed and directed by God–your relationships at home, your parenting, your career, your ethical decisions, you internal moral life. The way to a Christian mind is through God’s Word! (Hughes, Disciplines of a Godly Woman, p. 72)

In light of this quote from Hughes, I want to direct you to another blog I enjoy reading. Many of you may already have it bookmarked, but I’ll mention it anyway. It is This One’s For The Girls. Monday, she posted a little something called Bible Saturated. It is a perfect illustration for the quote from Hughes. Go read it and then come right back. Go on….I’ll be here when you get back.

OK. Wasn’t that some great encouragement to get into God’s word and be intentional about committing it to memory? I don’t want to get older and regret not spending more time reading and memorizing God’s word. I don’t want to be in a situation in which I am caught saying, “I know the Bible says it somewhere!” I want to be a scripture-dripping sponge!

There are several methods for scripture memory out there. If you have a plan that works for you, GREAT! If you don’t have a plan, I’d like to commend one to you. I read about it in Piper’s book, When I Don’t Desire God. This particular method is for memorizing long portions of scripture. I used it to memorize Philippians, and Hubby and I have used it to memorize parts of Revelation together. Believe it or not, this is a fun couple-activity.

The key to any method of memorization is repetition and review. If you don’t review periodically, then the scripture isn’t stored in long-term memory. It takes commitment and discipline, but it is so worth it. Scripture memory is one thing I have found to be a fairly easy commitment because it is something I can do anywhere and at any time.

The hardest part is deciding what to memorize. Last year, I was participating in a Bible study of Philippians, so it was logical to memorize Philippians. Karl and I worked on Revelation through January and February. Since then, I’ve only worked on whatever scripture we were memorizing as a family, not a passage. I’d like to commit to at least one chapter before the end of the year. One of my favorite passages is John 14-17; lot of good stuff in there. I don’t have very many red words memorized, so I am committing, and you bloggers can hold me accountable, to memorizing John 14 (if God grants success with chapter 14, I’ll try to keep going). There are 31 verses. That means 6 verses per week will take 5 weeks and one day. I’ll add one more week in case I fall behind. SO, six weeks will give an end date of October 9, 2006.

If you’d like to try to memorize a passage, long or short, please share. We can encourage one another!

*Updated: I did not finish memorizing John 14 nor have I started to memorize another passage. Clearly, I need to tighten up in this area.