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Scripture Memorization


turtletwo

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13 hours ago, turtletwo said:

Scripture Memorization is a vital part of the Christian life.

"Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee. Psalm 119:11

I thought maybe we could share ideas of methods we use that are helpful in this... For me, my mind is not as sharp as it once was due to medical reasons. ( Yep, getting older too. :laugh: )

I think scripture songs can be an effective tool. Sometimes having scriptures set to music is a good tool because the tunes are catchy and repetitive. Has anyone tried this as a way to memorize? If so, any in particular you might suggest?

:) All other idea welcome too.

This is going to be a bit of a random post.

One of the most important things is knowing how God has wired us individually and what is best for each of us individually.  My sense is that we all at times take unnecessary burdens on ourselves trying to be like someone else.  Over the years, I've observed that the most spiritually alive Christians (over the long run, not just temporary highs) are those who have figured out how best to incorporate prayer, bible reading, study, memorization, and other things as a natural part of their lives.  I've seen the quickest route to failure is copying someone else out of a sense of obligation or guilt and assuming that there is only one way to for Christians to accomplish something spiritually.  Another quick route to failure is adopting a method that is hard and burdensome and unfruitful for us and throwing a ton of effort at it with the attitude that the frustration is proof it is good for us.  My observation is that the Christians who sustain the most vibrant spiritual lives over the years are those who learn what works most fruitfully and naturally for them.

I found this was true for me with regard to memorizing.  Decades ago, I started working diligently at memorizing II Thess, Titus, Galatians, and part of Ephesians.   I was seeing good results.  However, after awhile, I found that review time to try to keep up word by word accuracy started to completely take up most of my devotional time and efforts.  Over a period of months, I realized that I hardly ever had opportunity to quote any of those verses I had memorized.  Basically, this was not sustainable for me, had become a burden to me, and wasn't yielding the spiritual fruit I had expected of it.  The reality is that I would never have the entire NT memorized and at my fingertips to quote every verse without spending hours per day reviewing.    Over the years, what I did find was that reading over and over bore more fruit for me than rote memorization ever had.   What I observed was that I rarely ever quoted or used the verses I had memorized.  However, I found that I frequently used knowledge I'd picked up from general familiarity with scripture which came from reading it over and over.   I found that I rarely had occasion to quote a verse I had memorized, but I had many more occasions to make reference to something in the Bible that I had seen.  A huge jump for me in this occurred when I read my NIV through once per month for 4 months.  Then, over about the next 3 or 4 years, I read my ASV through perhaps 5 or 6 times.   Basically, I found that this compassing familiarity with scripture was something that the Holy Spirit often brought to remembrance as needed.      Over the years, I've found that reading the Bible through in various versions and various languages has solidified the content and message in my heart and memory much more effectively than rote memorization ever did for me.  Now, this has played havoc with my recall of details because different languages (and sometimes versions) use different spellings of names.  However, that's a small cost compared to what I've gained.

Now, I do know some Christians for whom traditional rote memorization has been a great spiritual blessing.  I've noted that these are often more disciplined detail oriented people.  I've known others that simply take a few especially meaningful verses or passages and do a lot of things with them (like finding art work with it) and make it part of their life in some way.  I've known others that are still reading the same Bible over and over for decades.  I think we each need to learn how God wired us to best treasure scripture in our hearts and not feel guilty that how God made us is not the same as someone else.

Here are some more practical thoughts.

What are the topics, classes, skills, or whatever that you've most enjoyed learning or mastering in your life?   What teachers and types of classes were the best and worst for you?   This can provide insight into how God made us.  If you enjoyed art, writing, or making things, perhaps taking an approach where you create things (be it drawings, calligraphy, wood carving, whatever) using various verses or passages might be a way of treasuring it that you have something to sit on your desk, nightstand, or wall as well as have it constantly before you as you are working on it.   If you enjoyed accounting and detail oriented things, perhaps creating lists and cross-references of various verses and passages and particular words would be an effective way to treasure scripture.

One interesting academic result about learning is that one of the biggest killers of learning is stress.  Any type of stress reduces our ability to effectively learn.  Be it from job stress, family life, feeling pressure to learn, whatever the source, the more stress we feel, the less effectively we learn.  If any part of memorizing scripture is raising our stress levels (be it due to frustration and forcing ourselves to do something over and over, a sense of guilt that we should be enjoying it, failing to meet expectations, or whatever), this is reducing our ability to do it.  I've learned to monitor myself when doing things for stress.  If I feel myself tensing up, feeling frustrated, or clenching my jaw, I take a deep breath and remind myself it's supposed to be fun.  Sometimes that's enough to relax, other times I find I just need to drop it and move to a different activity for awhile.

One anecdotal result (I haven't seen academic research to back it up, but I've seen it in myself and heard others discuss this) is that we have a limited time of good focus when we start working on something.  After a time, our attention just starts to lag and we become inefficient.  We need to learn what our effective working span is.   Basically, our brain starts to tell us "enough is enough, I'm sick of this" and our learning efficiency drops dramatically.  We can force ourselves to continue, but that doesn't do much except sap our motivation and raise our stress levels.

Current academic research into brain function sheds some light on learning.  It's currently thought that forgetting is a feature of our brain where we shed useless stuff we don't need.  Things that we need every day become automated and we don't have to think about them.  When learning something new, we need to let our brains slowly settle into the pattern and let it feel familiar and comfortable.  This is not something that is easily forced or rushed.  I've applied this to foreign language learning and found that pleasant consistent repetition doing actual reading and listening over a period of time is much more effective than rigidly planned repetition of tables and wordlists with deadlines and goals.

One of the biggest challenges in learning is distinguishing between methods we think are working and those that actually work.  People frequently have the incorrect perception that methods that give immediate results are better than those that do not.  We'll often focus our efforts on things that give the best immediate feedback.  Rote memorization is one of those things.  After 10 minutes, we can usually point to something that we've "memorized" which means we can repeat it right now.  This however does not give us good feedback as to how close we are to a goal of being able to repeat it one year from now.  Rote memorization (and the accompanying review sessions) usually leave us with a sense of some degree of accomplishment that leads us to thinking that it is a good method for learning.

Knowing what I do now, if I were to start an effective life-long Bible memorization plan for myself, I'd separately print out say 1o or 20 verses I wanted to learn (along with the surrounding context and passage), and just read them once or twice out loud in the morning and at night without trying to rote memorize them.  I'd just enjoy reading them with no pressure to do anything except enjoy reading them.  I'd pull them out, read them, and then put them away, no pressure, no guilt, just enjoy reading them.     I'd do that for as long as it takes for them to become familiar, be it 2 or 3 weeks or a few months or more.   I'd perhaps also start to mix in some new verses as well during this time.  There are other things that could perhaps be done after a few weeks or a month or so such as writing the verses by hand on another piece of paper slowly with my best handwriting on perhaps a weekly basis.  The key is that I'd view this as a long term project where I remember the verses when I reach a point where I remember them and not put the pressure of deadlines on myself (e.g. I'm going to perfectly memorize two verses per week).

Anyway, a number of disorganized thoughts... your mileage may vary.  :) 

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