One of the spiritual disciplines of a disciple of Jesus Christ is memorising Scriptures so that we might not sin against God and be guided in our discipleship journey. Read Psalm 119:11,105.
Memorising Scriptures has an added benefit of keeping our mental faculty active and alert.
When I was a young Christian, I was trained by the Navigators to memorise Scriptures as part of spiritual discipline. But I was not good at memorising things. I remember when I was in school, I had difficulty memorising my lines at Christmas pageants. Over the years, I prayed and asked the Lord to help me memorise His Word.
At first, the going was tough. For those of us who have gone through the Navigators training programme, we know that memorising bible verses is a strict daily discipline. After a while, I memorised Scriptures for the sake of meeting a target rather than feeding on God’s Word and using it in my daily life. So I gave up.
But the Lord did not give me up on this. He led me into situations where I wished I had memorised those bible verses that would have helped me in times of temptation, spiritual battles, witnessing, teaching and counselling.
So I started to memorise Scriptures again. This time, not to meet a target but to hide God’s Word in my heart that I might not sin against Him and have a lamp to light my discipleship journey.
Nowadays, I usually run through about 10-20 bible verses or passages a day. I spread the bible verses I have memorised over a few days in a week. I use them in my daily life, including worship and prayer. In this way, I am motivated to memorise God’s Word because I need to use it everyday.
People have been telling me that as one gets older, one tends to forget. That may be true but I pray that I might keep my mind active and alert for as long as the Lord permits. I exercise my mind daily through memorising bible verses and the sequence of the 66 books in the bible (for quick reference), YCK Chapel’s mission statement, its twelve core values, P.A.G.E., the 3Ps (as daily reminders), solving quizzes and mathematics problems and playing mind-games with my grandchildren (for teaching and bonding). As an added benefit, memorising Scriptures has certainly helped keep my mental faculty active and alert.
As disciples of Christ let us persevere and go on memorising God’s Word. Memorise those bible verses or passages that we are likely to use in our daily life. Do not memorise for the sake of memorising or just to meet a target. Keep God’s Word in our hearts so that we can guard ourselves against sinning and have a lamp to light our path. And we are not alone in this. The Holy Spirit is there to help us do it.
By Mr Lim Han Soon (YCKC Bulletin 23&24 November 2013)