By Rev Charles Seet

Preached at / Published Life BPC Weekly, 2006-03-19

Text: Psalm 119:11

As today is the launch of the first review exercise for the present series of our church's scripture memorisation programme, it would be good for us to be challenged once again to hide the Word of God in our hearts (Psalm 119:11). The psalmist who practised this diligently testified that it helped to keep him from sinning against God "Thy Word have I hid in my heart that I might not sin against Thee." We can observe a demonstration of this in Matthew 4:1-10 where the Lord Jesus used memorised portions of Scripture against each temptation from Satan.

Since scripture memorisation became a regular part of our church's Sunday programme in September 2004, many Lifers have benefited from participating in it, and 53 have done well enough to receive awards for their review exercises in the first series of 37 Scripture verses on the theme, "Exceeding Great and Precious Promises." The testimonies of some of them are printed below.

Let us not miss out on the blessings of participating in memorising the present series of 30 Scripture verses on the theme, "The One Another Principle." Take the challenge of attempting the review exercise that comes with today's church weekly. Those who have done this before will observe one noticeable change in the review sheet - no helping words are given this time! To compensate for this, the number of verses per review exercise has been slightly reduced. Make the effort now to review the eight verses that we have memorised since the beginning of the year, fill up the review sheet, and submit it by 2nd April.

Please do not underestimate the powerful mind that God has given you. If properly trained and used, your mind can store up and recall a tremendous amount of information! According to scientific estimates the human mind has a memory capacity of up to 100 billion gigabytes. It is able to process a total of 1 million billion operations a second! It is claimed that most of the time we are only using about 10 percent of brains. So your mind is capable of doing much more than you think. But you need to develop and discipline your mind to work, especially with regard to memorising scripture. The following are some guidelines that will help you to memorise verses of scripture. 

1. Have the right attitude toward memorising verses. Regard it as a challenge that is pleasant and enjoyable, rather than something which is hard and difficult.

2. Read the verse once through and make sure that you understand it. If there are any difficult words, find the meaning. If there are unfamiliar words, learn how to pronounce them. 

3. Divide the verse into phrases which are meaningful but easy to master. 

4. Read each phrase aloud, and then recite it without looking, about three or four times. Repetition is the key to good memorisation. After you are confident of a phrase, go to the next phrase and repeat the process. After that, attempt to recite all the phrases you have memorised without stopping.

5. Take a break and do not think at all about the verse. Then after a few minutes, recite the verse again from memory. If you get stuck at certain points, look at the verse again, and take note of the problem points.

6. Memorise the Scripture reference as well (e.g. "John chapter three, verse sixteen"). This may be difficult for some, because it is just a name and a string of numbers. To help you do this, think of your memorised verses as your friends, and their Scripture references as their addresses. For example the verse, "The Lord is my shepherd I shall not want" is your good friend who lives in the city called "the Bible." The street where he lives is called "Psalm." And his unit number is #23-01!

Memorising Scripture can be done individually or corporately. There is added motivation when we do it together as church before each worship service, or as a family during family devotions at home. We can review memory verses quite effectively by reciting them to one another. This can also help to promote togetherness.

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