Scott Slayton

In June I wrote about eight passages of Scripture every Christian needs to commit to memory. The response to the post has been great and I have been encouraged at the hunger to memorize Scripture I have seen. At the end of the post I asked what passages people would add to the list. If you look back at the original post, every passage contains at least six verses and some close to twenty. My aim in that post was to point to longer foundational passages for Christians to commit to memory. Most of the feedback I received listed single verses, and realized that new Christians following my advice would miss many well-known verses that Christians usually memorize early in their Christian life.

In light of this, I put together a list of passages for young or new Christians to memorize so they would grow in their understanding of the character of God, the work of Jesus, salvation by faith alone, and the basics of the Christian life. We need to focus on these issues early in the Christian life because if we just start learning Scripture’s commands without understanding who God has revealed himself to be and the heart of the Christian message we will develop an unhealthy view of what it means to live as a Christian.

When memorizing these verses, work on learning them for the long haul and not just to check them off of a list. Learn them thoroughly and accurately, then develop a system for reviewing them so they stay fresh in your mind. As you learn and review these verses, meditate on them, take notes on them, and pray through them. You will find that committing Scripture to memory, studying it, meditating on it, and praying through it will give you aid in trial, temptation, discouragement, and evangelism opportunities. (If you need help memorizing Scripture and developing a system for review, I recommend the ScriptureTyper app. It has been a great aid to my Scripture memory over the last two years.)

Each time the threat of war comes about, Christians find themselves pondering over the questions of if we should support war and if so, when should we support it?

Many eager Bible readers plunged into the beginning chapters of the book of Genesis only to bog down after the first couple of genealogies. They have argued about the days of creation, know about the ark, and used Sodom and Gomorrah to warn people about the dangers of immorality, but know precious little about the contents, characters, and message of the Bible’s first book.

Every follower of Jesus needs to read and understand the opening book of the Bible. We need to develop a great familiarity with its characters, a deeper knowledge of its themes, and a better grasp of how it sets the stage for the rest of the Bible.

We often struggle with how to read and understand a book as large and varied as Genesis, but often we need to understand why we should do something before we start figuring out the how. Here are four reasons we should read Genesis.

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We live in a distracted age. We sneak frequent glances at our phones and get immersed in things that don’t matter in the long run. This has consequences for our work and family lives. It also wreaks havoc on our Bible reading. When we struggle to pay attention, it makes it difficult for us to read God’s word profitably.

It doesn’t have to be this way. We can regain our attention span and drill deep into God’s word, but it will take work. Here are four ways you can recover your concentration for Bible reading.

Recently, I ran across this post about Vern Poythress’ Scripture memory habits. While I had been faithful in my own personal Scripture memory the last couple of years, late last year I started slacking on reviewing the verses I had memorized and this post provided me with the example I needed to get going again.

I doubt that I am the only person who struggles to be consistent in his Scripture memory. Scripture memory has no deadline and rarely does anyone ask us how we are doing in our Scripture memory. It doesn’t feel urgent in the way that many other things in our lives do. Scripture memory falls into what Stephen Covey would call the “important but not urgent” category. We need to memorize Scripture. We must memorize Scripture, but we fail to grasp the importance of it until we are in a situation where knowing God’s word by heart would be helpful.

We need to remember why Scripture memory is so vitally important for our walk with the Lord, so here are seven reasons that you need to store God’s word up in your heart.

Memorizing and meditating on God’s word provides fuel for our growth as Christians.