To Encourage You

Deuteronomy 11:18 “You shall therefore lay up these words of mine in your heart and in your soul, and you shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes.”

Do you memorize Bible verses?  Do you think it matters if you do?  Although verses like the one above command us to do this, for how else does one “lay up words” in their heart and soul, do you ever do it?

I remember a conversation with one of my coworkers many years ago about this topic.  One of the things she said to me was, “Why memorize when you can just look it up?”  I don’t think I ever said this to her, but as I later thought about it, I thought about how ironic her question was in that one of the things she was committed to was working in the evenings as an EMT.  Can you imagine an EMT responding to an emergency somewhere and before ministering first aid having to get a book out and look up the procedures?  Isn’t any form of training for any discipline in life a process of transferring what is written down in books into our heart and soul so that we can put it into practical use?  Why would the work that the Christian is called to be any different?  If we are called to work as unto the Lord (Colossians 3:23), if we are to do all that we do, even the most mundane tasks of eating and drinking, unto the glory of God (1 Corinthians 10:31), doesn’t it behoove us to have God’s directions on how to do this stored up in our mind.  We are told that the early church “devoted themselves to the apostles’ teaching” (Acts 2:42).  Surely that commitment involved storing up their words in their minds.  Paul told his student Timothy that “All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of Godmay be complete, equipped for every good work” (2 Timothy 3:16-17). If you are a believer, isn’t that what you want for your own life, i.e., to be complete and equipped for every good work, works that bring glory to the God you serve?  And then we have these words from the psalmist: “I have stored up your word in my heart, that I might not sin against you” (Psalm 119:11).  Were these words ok for the psalmist, but not that necessary for us?  They are obviously just as important to us as they were to him, or the Holy Spirit would not have preserved these words for us in His Word. 

Memorization is work, but it’s a good work.  It’s something I was once much more diligent about than I have been of late, so I’m talking to myself as much as to anyone else – that a recommitment to the discipline of Scripture memorization is an extremely valuable and necessary goal.  And we can start small and build from there, for every Word of God is profitable to us.  So today, how about committing these four words to memory: “The Lord is near.” It’s from Philippians 4:5. These four words, if buried deep in our soul and truly believed, are a cure for anxiety.  They are words that we can tell others as they face their struggles in life.  They are more life-giving in their nature than any first aid that an EMT can administer to someone in need.  It is words like this that the Bible is full of.  What better things can there be to store up in our heart?