Scripture Memorization for Adults

I myself am blessed to have two parents who have a similar passion for Scripture memorization as I do, though we do not usually memorize the same things at the same time. I'll be praying that other kids on this site will ask God to work on their parents (and they themselves work on them as well) in this important area.

There are few things (if any) more worthy of spending time on than memorizing God's Word, so if your parents don't think they are able to memorize, either because of their age or their schedule, get on their proverbial backs about it and show them what they're missing out on!

Andy, Jacky and I are excited as I am sure you and your wife are, to share our passion for Scripture onto the next generation that will be growing up under our roof. Thanks for the reminder.

I actually preached a message at my church a couple of weeks on this very topic. If you are interested, you can view the sermon at this link:

http://wanna-be-preacher.blogspot.com/2012/01/sermon-necessity-of-scripture-memory.html

My Father was definitely a big inspiration to me in my memory work. He memorized the entire New Testament and major portions of the Old Testament!

Wow...thanks for that encouragement! When me and my siblings were younger, we almost always had Bible memory as part of the daily schedule. Mom was very instrumental in encouraging me to memorize scripture. However, I must accredit Bible quizzing and the Bible Bee for giving me a passion for scripture memorization. I will always treasure the word I have already memorized, and look forward, Lord willing, to memorize more in the future!

My parents are very encouraging about my memorization. I have encouraged them, but haven't done so recently. Thanks for the reminder :)

@Rebecca King - wow! That's a lot. I wish I could do that.

I started memorizing verses at a young age, as my grandparents are very into teaching God's word. My mom and dad encourage us to memorize verses as well, but they are very busy. I know my mom would love to memorize verses if she had the time, though! My dad memorized a lot of verses in KJV when he was a teen.

Thanks! My Dad's thinking of doing it too! When he found out about this website, he started thinking about it. I hope he hasn't forgotten yet!

Well I really don't know any other person who memorizes Scripture but I really wish I could share this with someone else.

By the way, with all the comments I always see in the blog, I do wonder, what is the average age for the Memverse user?

I grew up in a Christian school that "forced" us to memorize whole books of the Bible, starting in elementary school and going all the way through high school. I also did a lot of Bible Quizzing, too. I fell away from setting my mind to memorize through my college years and most of my career, but I never stopped reading and studying the Word. Now that I'm back into the habit (and it is a difficult habit to re-acquire), I have found it is easy to recall many of the verses that I learned in childhood and studied when older; however, learning new ones and retaining old ones are the toughest part.

My wife grew up Bible quizzing, so she has had a good history of storing God's Word in her heart; and she had some of our oldest children in Bible Quizzing when they were younger. Our goal as a family is to get all of our children excited early about God's Word, so that they will keep It with them all their lives, and then share that same passion with their own children someday.

Any of you who have parents who say they're too busy, respectfully challenge them to reevaluate that assessment. I am a husband of 1, a father of 8, and I try to stay actively involved with my wife and kids every day. I also run a business, and oversee several staff, while also managing many aspects of the day-to-day functions; and I just began attending seminary online, yet I'm still committed to Bible memorization (often using my smartphone throughout the day to go over verses).

Have your parents contact me if they would like some tips and pointers on how to manage their time well enough to make memorization, as well as overall Bible study, a higher priority. I have found, being a lazy glutton by nature, that I will make things I really want to do a top priority, even at the expense of important spiritual disciplines. This is where we need to pray for the Spirit to renew our minds to have a greater appetite for eternal things of God over the trivial, temporary things of this life.

We make time for the things we really want. May our pray be to really want God and His Word above all else.

@ Wretched Man not to be rude but if somebody wanted to contact you how would they do so ?

I meant here on the blog. You can get in touch with me via the blog.

If anyone wants an email from me instead, they can just let me know their email address, and I'll contact them.

wretched man are you really wretched :)

does any one know about virtuous daughters

I just memorized my 18th verse! I know its not a lot but its some! :)

Hope Harrison- Well, do you mean what a virtuous daughter is? If so, then a virtuous daughter is a daughter who does what is right in a Christ-like way or in way that Christ would do it.
If that is not what you meant, then, no, I do not no about virtuous daughters.

God's Dancer- Two things, 1.) I like your name, God's Dancer. 2.) Congratulations on memorizing your 18^th verse! You're doing well!

@HopeHarrison: We are all wretched (Jeremiah 17:9). I just tend to be more wretcheder than most others.

@ Wretched Man does your church believe that the church has replaced Israel ? It says on your church page under what we believe and then we are reformed " In the Church as God's New Israel. "

@ God's Bondslave: We don't believe that the Church replaced Israel, but we believe that there was always a remnant within Israel which was God's true Israel, and the Church has been grafted into that remnant. (Romans 11) We do not believe that ethnic Israel today is God's chosen people.

Hi, everyone - it is Astroleah's 16th birthday tomorrow (March 2nd). She intends to get her 500th verse memorised on that day. If she makes it, it would be great if you could send her a little Happy Birthday post. I appreciate the encouragement you all give her. She started Memverse quite a bit later than me, but passed me up in verses long ago! God bless you all as you hide God's Word in your hearts.

Sorry, @God'sBondslave, I didn't see your post until now.

@ChiefOfSinners pretty much summed it up very well, although I will add two more cents:

We do not believe that the Church has replaced Israel, because there was no Israel to replace. While God chose a nation of people through which to reveal Himself in His special revelation, that nation was not all a saved people in its entirety, as shown, for example, in the destruction of those who were 20 years old and above who did not believe Joshua & Caleb's testimonies about the Promised Land when they first went and spied in it with the other 10 spies. Throughout ethnic Israel's history, God has had an elect remnant within the nation of Israel, one that even outsiders (called "aliens" or "strangers") could be grafted into, consummated by their outward signs of circumcision and commitment to the ceremonial, civil, and moral laws of Israel.

As Paul delineates in Romans 4, and then more explicitly in Romans 9-11, the promise to Abraham that he would be a father of many nations was made centuries before Israel was an actual nation, shortly before circumcision was provided as an outward sign of an inward commitment, and long before Moses received the Law on Mount Sinai. Therefore, as Paul concludes, the promise was made at that time to show that salvation was/is by faith imparted to the elect of God, with the Messiah's righteousness being imputed to them (in the OT, the elect looked towards the Messiah in faith of what He would do; in the NT, the Messiah is revealed as Christ, but it is still by faith that we believe in what He did). Did Abraham do anything to garner God's special, elective grace? Nope. Nada. Nothing at all. He was a wretched sinner, just like all of us. God elected to show him mercy, just as He did in choosing Jacob and not Esau.

In a nutshell, while we believe that there are definitely different dispensations and increments of when and how God revealed His redemptive plan to the world, we do not believe that there were multiple, exclusive-to-that-era covenants beyond the two parts that make up the One Covenant overall:

The Old Covenant was the first part of the Covenant of Grace, which began in Genesis 3:15, pointing to the Messiah, and was revealed in types and shadows throughout the OT, especially the OT sacrifices, the Levitical priesthood, and tabernacle/temple items & rituals (as described throughout Hebrews), but also through Noah & the Ark, Abraham's almost-sacrifice of his only son, Isaac, and the Davidic Psalms (to name a small few). The New Covenant was the "removing of Moses' veil" and the "tearing of the veil" surrounding to the Holiest of Holies," where, in Christ, the whole grand Plan, determined in eternity past, was/is revealed, and, through the rejection of the ethnic, non-elect Jews of their promised Messiah, the Gentile world (well, its elected remnant) has been grafted into the Covenant of Grace, which has always existed. (And just as ethnic Israel had the redemptive gospel preached to them in types and shadows, so the Gentile world now has the same gospel preached to them in the revealed Christ.)

The elect is the elect, and no one's replacing anyone. God has just revealed His Master Plan in an awesome, phenomenal, supernatural, amazing, praiseworthy manner, calling his remnant to Him in various dispensations of time! Unfortunately, Dispensationalism, in which I was brought up for several years, has polluted the Covenant of Grace, and has created a doctrine full of many exclusive mini-covenants that do not maintain a thread of elective redemption throughout world history. It puts far too much emphasis on ethnic Israel, while ignoring the elective remnant that is, and always has been, true Israel. (For instance, look at the end of Romans 2, where Paul saw that a true Jew is one who is saved by faith, circumcised in the heart, not physically or according to the letter of the law. Look in Galatians, where Paul makes it clear that the law was always intended to be a mirror/schoolmaster to show us that we cannot follow the law on our own, but only through Christ. Paul also equates the Church as being Israel in His epistles as well, but not replacing Israel, though, just as being true Israel.)

It took me a while to fully accept it, but a thorough study of the Scriptures, as well as submissive prayer for the Spirit's illumination throughout, has better opened my eyes to what, I believe, is the correct way to view God's entire Word, from Genesis to Revelation. Paul's allusions to the Church being Israel only makes sense in the light of seeing true Israel as being God's constant remnant/elect in both the OT and NT, and not ethnic Israel.

As for future salvation for ethnic Israel, I lean towards John MacArthur's stance that God still has a massive remnant within ethnic Israel elected to receive saving faith at a future time--now, whether that's before, after, or during a rapture, tribulation, 2nd coming, or milennial reign will continue to be up for debate until Christ actually returns, so I will not make this already-long post any longer.

(NOTE: My above explanation is a very rough, layman's account of something that much more learned men have spent hundreds, probably thousands, of pages describing and better articulating. I hope my brief explanation at lest makes sense and adequately answers your inquiry.)

@Wretched Man: Excellent summary of our Doctrine of the Church! Your thoughts were much more cogent and precise than mine would be, (with exception of the last paragraph:^).

Wretched Man, that was a great summary! I would have botched it if I had tried. ; >)

Hey, Dad, either your sense of math is off, or you and I have a different idea of what "two cents" is. :P

But yeah, I guess that was pretty good... ;)

Ha! You haven't read enough of my former works. That's pretty short-winded for the man known for all his hot air!

I did not feel any hot air, only a gentle breath of the warmth of spring. But I must agree that it was worth more than two cents.

Thank you God's Maiden of Virtue! Hope Harrison is my sister! My name is Grace.

What Hope means my Virtuous Daughter's, is that there is a web site about that. It is, www.virtuousdaughters.com
Be sure to but the S after daughter or else it will go to a different web site.

I hope you enjoy the site if you go there!

God's Dancer- Your welcome. How old are you? How old is your sister?

Oh, okay. That would make more sense. I'll have to ask Dad if I can check it out.
Thank you!

@God's Maiden of Virtue - HI! Sorry I haven't chatted for a while but I've been busy. How are you?
@Christian (CheifofSinners) - Oh my goodness!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Your baby brother is SOOOOOOOOOO cute!!!!! What is his name again?

Hey guys, could you pray for my mom? She got sick last night...please pray that the rest of us don't get what she has either and that she feels better soon.

BBJ12, I think his name is Jude :)

I joined in June and now my mom, brother(who rarely comments),and my younger sister(who never has comented) I'm glad they joined.

@ BBJ12 Ya I'll pray.

@ChiefofSinners - he's sooooooooo cute!!!!!! :)
@RedeemedbyGod - I was talking to ChiefOfSinners.

@ God's maiden of virtue
I am 11
Hope is 9 almost 10

@Rachel - how is YOUR baby brother? :) is he cute too? :) or was it a sister!?

God's Dancer- When is your birthday? You are the same age as me; I just recently turned 12.
And, when is your sister's birthday (if I may ask)? My younger brother (Wretched Son #3) just turned 10 two days ago.

BBJ12- I know!! He gets cuter every day (well, to me at least). :)
What have you been doing lately?

Do any of you know of a good online memory program (like memverse) for memorizing other things besides Scripture? For Example I would like to memorize the Constitution and Declaration.
Thanks!

@MarieMorris: The following website does not have books or documents to memorize, like MemVerse does with the Bible, but it does give good memory techniques and access to memory games that sharpen your mind:

http://www.memory-improvement-tips.com/

Hope it helps.