For nearly forty years, I have been plumbing the treasure chests in God’s Word, like Edmond Dantès taking inventory of the value and number of gems and coins that filled the chest he discovered on the tiny island of Monte Cristo. the bible is an unlimited treasure! and nothing I’ve ever done has enabled me to take stock of this treasure more than the discipline of prolonged scriptural memorization.
i discovered the benefits of memorizing entire books of the bible on a summer mission trip in 1986. while sitting on a bench waiting for a bus to nairobi, kenya, i started working on ephesians 1:1. God has led me to add thousands of verses to my mind ever since, and to this day, I continue to embrace the relentlessly hard work of hiding God’s word in my heart. So, after struggling to memorize scripture for decades, what lessons have I learned?
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1. the rewards of biblical memory are immeasurable.
I know very little about the stock market, but I have enough background knowledge to use this metaphor: memorizing entire books of the bible has been like investing in blue chip stocks when they first became available and holding onto them for decades. Like Standard Oil in 1882. Like Microsoft in 1986. Like Amazon in 1997. If you had the foresight to jump into one of those stocks, you would have seen it grow exponentially until it was worth millions. That’s how it has been for me.
The books I have stored in my mind have been paid for with extraordinary interest, more than I can estimate or describe. This discipline has paid off in my battle for personal holiness (Psalm 119:11), as the Spirit has unleashed the power of its sword to slay temptation after temptation, day after day (Ephesians 6:17). It has paid off in my evangelism, as the spirit has recalled the miracle accounts in detail from the Gospel of Mark to make it clear to a lost person that Jesus can heal our most fundamental disease: our sin.
Biblical memory has also paid off week after week in sermon preparation over 23 years of sequential exposition of passage after passage in my church. as i write those sermons, the word of god wells up from deep within me like the oil that made rockefeller rich, only infinitely better. and as I preach, I often experience the immediate ministry of the spirit by bringing to mind another text that was not in my outline.
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Seeing how much I’ve gained by memorizing the bible, I don’t regret a single moment I’ve invested.
2. Biblical memory becomes more difficult with age.
The older I get, the worse my memory becomes. there may come a day when I can’t remember any verses (or the names of my closest friends).
The aging and dying process is meant to be humbling. my declining mental ability has matched the previous drop in any athletic ability I’ve ever had. we know that our mortal body will be buried like a seed in weakness and dishonor (1 Corinthians 15:42-43). We also know that “the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” is hidden in “earthen vessels” (2 Corinthians 4:6-7). so our clay brains are fragile. Which means that while I memorize the Gospel of Mark now by learning three new verses each day and retaining/revising the ten chapters that preceded them, accurate recitation has never been more difficult.
last summer i had the privilege of hearing my talented nephew peter play a bach toccata on a pipe organ. I asked him how he could play so nearly perfectly. His answer was obvious: with hard work and disciplined practice. he convinced me that I need to work as hard on my instrument (writing) as he does on his. there are no excuses. I walked away more determined to work on memorization while I still have the strength.
That said, even as long as we have our memory, and even when we discipline ourselves to really work on memorization, we still won’t remember every verse. And that’s fine. The point is not finally being able to recite every verse perfectly, but humility and deeply saturating ourselves with God’s word. Regardless of what we ultimately remember, the type of meditation required for prolonged memorization will change us. That means no thoughtful, prayerful scriptural memory is wasted, even if it seems like we’ve forgotten it all (and you won’t).
3. Biblical memory clarifies the beauty of Christ.
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The best part of memorization, by far, is what it does to my faith. I believe that faith is the sight of the soul by which we see past, present and future invisible spiritual realities.
just as faith initially comes from hearing god’s word (romans 10:17), so faith is nurtured and becomes more vigorous, precise, and vivid by hearing god’s word. if faith is the sight of the soul, we know that we “see in a dark mirror” (1 Corinthians 13:12), that we see men “like trees, walking” (Mark 8:24). The more I swim in the words of God, the more vivid the invisible Christ becomes. I live more and more “as seeing him who is invisible” (Hebrews 11:27).
as i review ten chapters of the gospel of mark every day, i see more vividly the power of jesus over demons, the compassion of jesus for heartbroken sinners, the healing ability of jesus over every disease, the resurrecting power of jesus over death, and the atoning power of jesus for all my sins. I see more vividly that he is the vine, and I am a branch. and through his words, I feel his life-giving and nourishing sap flowing through me every moment of the day. It makes me want to see it with my own eyes. he makes me love him more passionately with my fickle heart. Biblical memory preserves and feeds my soul.
4. biblical memory has built a city of truth within me.
the river of detailed knowledge that 38 years of memorizing entire books of the bible have given me has caused the city of truth to be built in my soul: stone by stone, beam by beam, window by window, boulevard by boulevard. . some call it rather dryly “systematic theology.” but really it is a vast system of interconnected living truths that make up my world view. it’s really impressive, even when it’s unfinished, and I can only see it faintly in a mirror. and this city of truth within me, verse by verse by verse, prepares my soul for heaven.
I can’t wait to see that new Jerusalem. But before I get there, I want to do everything I can to beautify the city that God is building within me. the more scriptures I have in me, the more boldly I can live each moment with a powerful, almost tangible hope in heaven. and the more capable I am of instilling that same energetic hope in the people around me.
then, what about you? Have you started your own journey in this wonderful discipline of prolonged scriptural memorization? yes, it is incredibly hard work. but it’s so worth it! Let me ask you two questions: If you could memorize an entire book of the Bible for the next year, which one would it be? And if you do that, do you think you’ll ever regret spending the time?
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