I already told you the story of a preacher who used the Bible to stir up the crowd and to show off how "brilliant" he was. I said told you how disgusting I felt it was.
I also wrote about the importance of endurance when it comes to memorizing the Bible. I cannot stress this enough. I am not the most brilliant person you will meet, but I have discovered that perseverance goes a long way in the learning (and in the memorizing) process. I have memorized most of the books of the New Testament - not because I am smart or have extraordinary skills. I did so because I memorized one verse at a time for 20 years.
For every day I memorized a new verse, I tested myself on past verses (90 every day). This was no great undertaking as some would think. I failed to reach my goal of memorizing the entire New Testament; and I failed to memorize every day as I planned (by year 20 I was memorizing 3 verses a week); and by year 20 I quit.
At the beginning of 2013, after 20 years of not memorizing, I bought myself a new leather Bible and started rememorizing scripture I once knew. It's coming back a lot better than I thought. At the rate I am going I should be able to catch up to where I was 20 years ago within 2 or 3 years.
I don't know if I will memorize any new material at that time. Maybe I will, maybe I won't.
What is my point?
Sometimes I feel like failure is a big part of my life. In memorizing the NT, I failed. But despite this failure, I did memorize a lot. In areas like this, I discovered that it's better to try and fail along the way than never to try at all. If I had never tried, I would not have any scripture memorized.
My Challenge to You...
Go beyond what I did.
By the way, see the video I did about memorizing the NT: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJtG3nsjeWQ
No comments:
Post a Comment