I wrote earlier about how, since I was barely a teenager, God blessed me with a large and every growing appreciation for Scripture and its power in my life. When I was probably in about 9th grade, basically the same time as my first (almost literal) run through the whole Bible, our church youth group also embarked on a short season of guided devotionals and encouraged journaling. We used a little booklet that accompanied DNow-type materials that I have even taught out of a couple times as a college leader at DNows. In the middle of the booklet of daily snippets and challenges was a page of perforated Bible verses, one for each week of the study. It had blank places for us to add more verses, and even had a little carrying case that would slip easily into pants pockets or be kept in my wallet, which I eagerly did for many years.
Being a nerd and at times intellectually pretty smart, I made great haste at memorizing the whole set and a few subsequent sets that we did over the course of my high school years. I happily testify that many of the verses I took to heart were great encouragers, ranging from great promises of faith like 2 Chron 7:14 (but if my people!), meditation starters like Ps 46:10 ("be still and know I am God") and Ps 42:2 ("when can I meet with God?"), and exhortations to steadfastness like Galatians 1:10 ("if I were still trying to please men, I would not be a servant of Christ!"). I will likely always remember the very first week's verse in our cards, and I still think it is possibly the most succinct while practical summary of our response to the gospel, Ephesians 4:32, in the grand NIV which all conservative youth curriculum use, "Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ, God forgave you."
Certainly in our youth group we were given much motivation and opportunity to know and treasure God's Word as Psalm 119:11 tells us (another in the list!). Yet all this memorization seems so run-and-gun now. Maybe this would be more an indictment of a lack of 'biblical theology' and instruction in salvation history from our teachers and leaders at the church, or more perhaps (very likely, indeed) that I simply was not paying attention most of the time, but as I aged I became increasingly frustrated in my biblical study that I did not have any kind of functional literacy in my Bible reading. I had all these cool sounding phrases in my head, and yes most of them were great truths and had both good doctrinal concepts and good personal application, but when I read three verses in front of and after Ephesians 4:32 I could not really tell you what was going on. In fact I was frustrated that I had no idea what was going on in any of the epistles at all, just that they were these great collections of exhortations and Christ exaltations with all these personal references to Epaphrodites, Timothy, and Junia mixed in. When I read the Gospels I recognized the familiar parables and narratives of Jesus, but I could 5 chapters in a row and probably could not tell you if what I read was from the pen of Matthew, Mark, Luke, or John. The Old Testament was a little easier since all the VBS stories were pretty much distinct in their own eras, and a psalm was definitely different than a proverb was different than a prophet.
In spite of my discouragement, I did get ambitious a few times. 1 John was a letter that, probably because it was very repetitious, I did study and memorize at least all the individual verses one summer, though not all together at one time; I also noticed once that Matt 5-7 was the most red letters in a row with no stops, and it seemed to be a great section of Jesus' teachings, so I went through the Sermon on the Mount another summer as well, though again not retaining all of it at once. However, it was not until my first year in college, with the help of a front and back 1 page laminated copy, that I studied and became intimately familiar with Paul's letter to the Philippians, the first extended book "study" I had done and my first major experience with connecting and applying the context within a book to gain greater understanding of it and its application to our faith today.
Next time I will hope to discuss maybe some principles for memorization in the Church. For now, a simple word of praise and prayer: May God continue to show how His Word has infinite depth and infinite resource into knowing His character, and may we pursue the Holy Spirit deeply to make it real in our lives, proclaiming God's good news to the world.
