20,000 Verses Vast portions of the Bible were written to be memorized, evidenced by the number of psalms that are based on Hebrew acrostics, such as Psalm 119 or Psalm 145. Bible translator William Tyndale, suggested the book of Romans as prime memory material: I think it meet that every Christian man know it by rote & without the book. Scripture memory stocks the mind with material for endless meditation, which, in turn, accelerates the transformation process. It keeps the heart from sin, & helps instill in us the mind of Christ. In his book Your Inner You, pastor Leslie Flynn tells of his conversion to Christ during an evangelistic campaign led by Dr. Oscar Lowry, author of the book Scripture Memorizing for Successful Soul-Winning. Lowry admits that he entered Christian service as a young man with an undisciplined mind. Thinking he could not memorize Scripture, he filled the flyleaf of his Bible with references useful for counseling & evangelism, but it proved awkward to stop his conversations long enough to track down the right verse. Finally he determined to succeed at Scripture memory. If I can memorize one verse, I can memorize one more, he said, & ten more, & even one hundred. He rose early the next morning & chose what seemed to him a difficult passage, Romans 10:9-10. He paced the room, saying to himself, I will do this thing. He struggled with this passage for half an hour, but finally succeeded in memorizing it completely. The next morning, he reviewed & reinforced those verses in his memory, then added a new one. He kept reviewing his chosen passages & adding new ones until it dawned on him one day that he could repeat one hundred verses without looking in his Bible. By the end of his life, he had learned over 20,000 verses, & he could locate each by chapter & verse without his Bible. No wonder his Christian life was full of joy, his mind full of wisdom, & his evangelistic efforts full of success. *Adapted from Leslie B. Flynn, Your Inner You (Wheaton IL: Victor Books, 1984), p. 60.
Posted on: Fri, 18 Oct 2013 07:31:00 +0000
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