Why Memorize?

The ONLY way to be a great quizzer is to memorize the material.  You may think that you could never memorize an entire year’s material (500 to 1100 verses) but it’s not as hard as you think.  Don’t get me wrong, it takes a lot of work and discipline, but I believe almost anyone who can carry a B average in high school can memorize this amount of material.  If you can find 30 to 45 minutes a day to spend by your self in a quiet place to learn new material and another 30 to 45 minutes where you can think to yourself to review old material you can learn a years worth of material.  There are two keys, learn new material every day and review old material every day.  I don’t really know the material well until I have quoted it to myself every day for two weeks or so.  When I am trying to learn a whole book, I spend 15 to 20 minutes in the morning learning new material (3 to 5 verses).  Then I quote the old material to myself while shaving, taking my shower and getting dressed (50 to 200 verses depending on how well I know it).  I quote the rest of what I know while driving to and from work.  Depending on how much material I have to learn that week or how many days I slept in I also try to do 1 or 2 verses at lunch and 1 or 2 right when I get home.

There are no short cuts, memorizing hundreds of verses is hard, but probably not as hard as you think.  While there are no shortcuts, there are things you can do to help.  One of the biggest is to review what you already know while you are doing something else.  Quote while you get ready in the morning.  Quote while you are running laps in gym.  Quote to someone on the bus while going to an athletic event or a band competition.  Quote 5 or 10 verses while you walk from the bus to class, or while you walk from one class to the next.  Have a study book on you and learn a verse every time you go to the bathroom.  During the year I keep one book in the car glove compartment, one in my desk at work, one in the bathroom at home, one in front of the computer at home.  You have more time than you think if you get creative.

Why memorize?  You may start out memorizing in order to have a high average and win quizzes, but I still try to memorize for a number of other reasons. 

Do it for the buzz - When the year starts and I finish the first chapter, when I get to my first hundred verses, whenever I reach a milestone of some kind I feel great.  I know I did something hard that not a lot of other people have done.  I sometimes get an endomorph rush, an actual buzz, when I start getting up into the hundreds of verses range.

It makes you look good - When I quote 100, 200, 500 verses to someone in one sitting it feels great.  It’s a blast to see how people react when they see you do this for the first time.  It’s fun to be able to quote a verse and give a reference in the middle of a conversation or a Sunday School class.  People get impressed and talk about you.  Being good at something does great things for your self confidence and self esteem.

Do it for what it does to you - Spending this much time in the word of God will change you.  No matter what your motives, you can’t help but be changed.  God’s word is powerful stuff.  Memorizing hundreds of verses makes you intimate with God in a way that I don’t think anything else can accomplish.  When I am in the middle of memorizing a book, God’s word is right in the front of my mind most of the day.  I am constantly thinking about it.  It becomes a filter in the front of my brain through which everything I see or hear must pass.  It’s amazing how often a joke, a song, a spoken word makes a verse pop up into my head.

Do it so you don’t do something else - If I am bored I tend to watch movies and TV, read popular fiction, play computer games.  The more bored I get the more I do these things.  The more I do these things the more likely I am to watch or read something I really have no business looking at.  When I am memorizing large amounts of scripture I don’t have time to be bored, and after a while I don’t even really miss doing those other things. 

Do it for your witness - I am scared to death of talking to someone else about becoming a Christian.  I am in awe of those who do it on a regular basis.  When I am constantly working on memorizing the bible people around me notice even if I don’t want them to.  I get so caught up in keeping up with learning the new material and reviewing the old that sometimes I often don’t notice until afterward that I actually witnessed to someone in a conversation about quizzing and the bible.

Memorizing God's word is one of the smartest, most rewarding things I have ever done.  I hope you get to experience this for yourself.