Hello everybody, it's me, Mr. Paul23, back with another video.
In this video I'm going to be explaining why and how you should attempt to memorize
scripture, how to memorize the Bible. Now it's much easier to have verses
and passages which are important for teaching and preaching the word of God
and the doctrines of the word of God. It's easier to have it put to memory than it is to
continuously go back to the book to pick up a Bible and see what it says every time.
Now you can just memorize, I guess, where the verses are, or even actually just
memorize the scripture itself. So as many have done before, I made it my
goal, personally, back in December to actively attempt to memorize
scripture, to put verses to memory so that I can quote them
and have it on my heart. And my goal is to memorize
at least one chapter a week. If it's a longer chapter,
such as John chapter 1, which has 51 verses in it,
then I might split it up into two or three weeks, but for the most part it's been
about one chapter a week, and that's about
20 to 30 verses. So far I've memorized
Romans 3, Genesis 1, the first 42 verses of John 1,
Romans 4, Hebrews 1, Genesis 2,
Psalm 2, and Acts 1, and currently I'm working on John
chapter 2. That's not counting the dozens of other scriptures, the other
verses I memorize just from doing these videos where I talk about
biblical verses all the time. You know, constantly reading them
and talking about them helps me memorize them, but it's also from
listening to sermons or watching other videos on YouTube about the Bible has helped
me memorize these verses. And a lot of them are
verses which are important for teaching the gospel, such as John 3.16,
For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish,
but have everlasting life. Romans 10, 9,
For if thou confesseth on the mouth of the Lord Jesus, believeth in thine heart,
that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. And also Ephesians chapter 2,
verse 8 to 9, For by grace are you saved through faith, and that not of yourselves is the gift
of God, and not of works, so that any man should boast. And there are a lot of other ones,
particularly ones that are important for teaching the gospel,
because those are the things that I think we should memorize the most, but
there are a lot of other scriptures which you could put the memory in.
Personally, if it wasn't obvious by the fact that I make videos on YouTube already
about the Bible, I want to be a preacher, I want to be a pastor in the future.
So if somebody out there who's watching this video wants to
be a pastor as well, if you want to teach the Word of God, you should
know the Word of God, you should have it memorized. I don't think somebody should really be
a pastor if they've never really read the Bible, or don't really know that much about
the Bible, and they need to turn to everywhere, and
I say everywhere meaning that they don't actually know anything of what they're reading,
or what they're talking about. I don't think anybody who hasn't memorized
scripture should actually be a pastor, they should actually know the Word of God.
And both common sense should tell you that, but the fact
of the matter is a lot of pastors don't know the Word of God in America today,
or even in other places around the world, especially when it comes to the
weak, the lukewarm churches who have people who
teach weak sermons that's more just inspirational speaking and not actually
preaching the Word of God. People just get a theology degree
and then expect that to mean that they can be a pastor and
they can teach the Word of God now, and that just means that they can start preaching.
But no, the Bible teaches in 1 Timothy chapter 3 verse 1 to 4.
This is a true saying. If a man desires the office of a bishop,
he desireth a good work. A bishop then must be blameless, the husband of one wife,
vigilant, sober, of good behavior, given to hospitality,
apt to teach. Okay, so the phrase to focus on among these list of things,
and there's more after that, I just stopped at verse 2, but
the phrase to focus on is of course what I ended with, apt to teach.
One who holds the office of a bishop or pastor, the leader
of a church, should be apt to teach the Word of God.
The Bible also says in Joshua chapter 1 verse 8, This book of the law shall not depart
out of thy mouth, but thou shalt meditate therein day and night, that thou mayest
observe to do according to all that is written therein.
For then thou shalt make thy way prosperous, and then thou shalt have good success.
Matthew chapter 4 verse 4 says, But he answered and said, It is written,
Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.
Psalm chapter 119 verse 11 to 16
says, Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin
against thee. Blessed art thou, O Lord, teach me thy statutes. With my lips
have I declared all the judgments of thy mouth. I have rejoiced in the way of thy testimonies,
as much as in all riches. I will meditate in thy precepts,
and of respect unto thy ways. I will delight myself in thy statutes.
I will not forget thy word. So it's an actual command from God
in Joshua 1.8, it's an actual command
from God to learn his word, to store it in your heart, to meditate on it.
So if you want to know how to memorize, that's what this video is for,
that's what I'm here to teach you. And this is a method that's worked for me personally.
It may not work for you, it may be different for other people, but it's worked for me.
So for some it may be easier than others, depending
on what they do on a day-to-day basis, because it either requires a lot
of time or a lot of concentration. If you don't have a lot of time, you
can probably get through a chapter in two or three hours or so,
but it requires a lot of concentration in order to do that. But if you have plenty of time to get
this done, maybe you're younger, maybe you don't really have a job, maybe you don't have much to do
yet, you could probably use this method while multitasking and
get it done throughout the day. And I learned how to do this from Pastor Stephen
Anderson from Faithful Word Baptist Church, he has a video on it on YouTube, that's where I
learned about it, but I modified it a bit so it could work for me, and I've added
some tips, so it's a little bit different from what he
from his method, but for the most part it's like the same general concept.
So what I do every week when it comes time to memorizing the verses,
I either spend some time writing out the whole chapter on a piece
of paper, and here's an example.
This is an old one I just kept in on my desk. This is
Romans chapter four from a few weeks ago.
And I did this the first few weeks, I wrote him out on a piece of paper,
wrote out the chapters on paper first, and found that it was easier to memorize
this way.
Now, that may just be because
I quoted them for longer too, it might not just be because I wrote it
down, but it has been proven, it has been shown by like scientific
studies or whatever, that writing down something helps you
memorize it easier. Also I find that some
of the chapters that I memorized back then, like Romans 3, have simpler language.
Genesis 1, for example, is kind of hard to memorize because
there's a lot of repetition, and there's a lot of, the verses
are kind of long, and there's a lot of chunks and things like that, or
big chunks and things like that, so I think Genesis 1 is a lot more difficult
to memorize than Romans 3. But it is well known, as I said, that
writing down something can help you memorize it, basically because
you actually have to focus on the words that you're writing, and you're not just writing random stuff,
you actually know what you're writing when you're writing it, you're not just mindlessly
chanting it, and that's the next step, chanting the scripture, chunk by chunk.
But it's not mindlessly, so get rid of the mindlessly part, you just have to chant
the scripture. So let me give an example, let's say you
want to learn Psalm chapter 2, I would start with a small
chunk out of the first verse, so why did the heathen rage, and then you
just say it over and over again, why did the heathen rage, why did the heathen rage, why did the heathen rage, why did the heathen rage?
And do this over and over again for several minutes before moving on to the next
chunk, the next part of the verse.
And continue to do this until you finish the entire passage you want to memorize it, that's a
chapter, then get to the end of the chapter. Psalm chapter 2 is only like, I think
10 verses long, so that's pretty easy to memorize.
I think I only did that in like an hour and a half or so, probably even less than that.
But something you also want to do after learning about
3 or 4 verses, I tend to stop and quote the verses
a couple times just to piece together little chunks, so
why did the heathen rage, so then after I learn like the first
let's say 3 or 4 verses, I just say, I just
stop and quote those verses that I just learned before moving on
to the next verses. So why did the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing?
The kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together
against the Lord and against his anointed, saying, let us
break their bands of sunder and cast their cords away from us.
So that's the first 3 verses of Psalm 2.
Now don't just stop when you get to the last verse.
When you go through the whole chapter, don't just stop and say, okay I'm done, I'm finished
that's it, I memorized all of it because that's not going to work.
What I do then is I go through the whole chapter first a couple of times with help
so I keep my computer open if I'm using my, like a
website or an app or something, or I keep my bible open
or I keep the paper unfolded that I'm using to read off of
that I wrote down. I do that and after a few times after
reading it out and memorizing it, then I close it and
I only open it again when I need help, when I can't really think of what I need to say.
So for each chunk I try to shoot for about 2 or 3 minutes of repetition
of chanting the word before moving on. So you know
why the heathen rage, why the heathen rage, just do that for 2 to 3 minutes.
And assuming that a verse usually has about 3 chunks
in it, again it depends on the verse, there are some verses that are
like super long and it probably have like
6 or 7 chunks in it and then there are some verses that have like only a few
words in it and then it's only one chunk, but just on average probably about 3 chunks
it should take about 2 hours to memorize
20 verses with an extra 20 or 30 minutes afterwards for the additional time
spent quoting sections of the chapter
and the whole chapter. So this is just a general time frame, you do
not by any means need to shoot for this, you don't need to do it in 2 hours, this is just
me saying something that I tend to do.
There's no actual limit, I mean
if you do it in 3 hours, if you do it in 4 hours, I'm sure you might even be able to memorize it better than I have.
So as I said in the beginning, this all depends on how you are. I'm planning
on doing this on the Sabbath each week, so I have free time to focus on this, but
if you decide to do it on like a work day, there are a few tips I'll give you to make it
easier. First, take smaller chunks.
It's hard to multitask to actually do your work and get your work done and to think
about something and to say something when you're speaking a 10 word
piece of scripture, so try to
shorten it, try to get something smaller. Second, spend longer on that chunk as well.
So when you're focusing on something else, it's going to take a longer amount of time
to commit it to memory. For example, when I first memorized Romans 3,
that was the first chapter I memorized, I had my family over at my house because
it was Christmas that day, and I was sitting
downstairs snacking and talking to my parents and helping my mom prepare dinner
and things like that, so it took me about 5 to 6 hours to
memorize a chapter because I was focusing on other things, but I was taking
longer to quote each chunk. I was spending maybe
5 or 6 minutes on it instead of 2 or 3 minutes.
So the 2 and a half hour time is only for when you have nothing else to do.
For example, when I learned John chapter 2 the other day, I basically just sat in my bed for
2 hours, it was the Sabbath, and I occasionally just looked at the
scripture I opened. I had a thing on Bible Gateway on my
computer, I just had the page open, I just looked at it,
I read the verse, I quoted it, and I looked away
for 2 or 3 minutes, and then when I was done with that, I just looked to the next
chunk and I read it and memorized it.
So that's just...
Doing that is what is 2 or 3 hours if you have nothing else to do, if you're just sitting
there and focusing entirely on memorizing scripture. So it's all about
concentration and how much time you have. But then after that, there's another step.
So once you actually have it memorized, once you actually have it down,
you want to retain it in your memory. So how do you do that? Well, once
you memorize it, you need to quote the passage, just memorize every day
for one week. So the next day, quote it, then quote it the next
day after and so on for 6 additional days. Then after doing that,
quote it once a week for a month. So just for an example, let's say you
start learning a passage on April 1st. You want to quote it
last on April 7th. You want to quote it April 1st to April
7th, then quote it again on or around April 14th,
then on or around April 21st, then on or around April 28th,
then on or around May 5th, so 4 total weeks.
And then from that point on, try to quote it once a month for the rest of your life.
And I haven't gotten to that point yet because I've only been doing it for a couple months
and the only passage that I've gotten to the month point is Romans 3 and Genesis 1.
And it's only been once, I've only, actually I've said
Romans 3 twice and then Genesis 1, I should quote
this upcoming week, which is, I'm filming this on
March 11th, it might be uploaded sometime in the future, but
so maybe when this is uploaded I will already have quoted Genesis 1 twice
like, by months. So, but
doing all of this, I keep digressing and I don't know why, but whatever.
That's just how I am, I guess. All of this will put
the scripture in your long-term memory by doing it once a month, so eventually
perhaps even a few years, even if you go
months without quoting it, maybe let's say you forget a few years down the road
you forget to quote something, you'll still be able to
put it together from memory even after a few months if you do it so much
that it's in your long-term memory, you've been doing it for years, it's something that you just
completely learn by heart. And finally I want to make one last tip
which will probably make this whole thing a lot easier, make a
day to plan out what scriptures you're going to memorize, because it's easier
when you have a plan so that you can see ahead of time which verses to quote
and at what time you're going to quote them. So make sure to get it right
so that you memorize, so that when you memorize something
you quote it every day for a week, you quote it every day for a month, or every week for a month
then every month from then on. So if you're shooting for a new chapter every week
the schedule might get messy, you just have to work through it. My schedule
was messy, I had to do a lot of going back and forth and
doing all kinds of
bumps and flips in my brain in order to get it down, I planned out at least until
July of this year, so I have all the
scriptures I want to memorize throughout the next four months or so.
So that's how to memorize scripture, hopefully it works for you
I hope this helps, it might not
just chant it, just
try to retain it in your memory, that's what you need to do. If you have any other questions feel free to ask
this method has definitely worked for me, and
I don't know, maybe there are some people out there who watch this video
who actually know me personally in real life, like I can
walk outside or go to my church or go to my school
or whatever, and people who watch these videos might know me and see me there
so maybe if you want to ask me to quote a scripture
I might be able to.
Thank you everybody for watching, I hope this helps, thank you and
goodbye.