May 11, 2026 • 53 mins
Don't forget to grab your free scripture journal at PrayingChristianWomen.com/journal today!
What happens when the spiritual disciplines that once came naturally suddenly feel completely out of reach?
In Part 2 of their conversation on Scripture Memorization, Jaime and Alana tackle the mental blocks, perfectionism, and daily distractions that often keep us from hiding God's Word in our hearts.
They discuss why getting an "80%" on a memory verse is infinitely better than never opening your Bible, and why the simple act of slowing down to absorb Scripture is a valuable spiritual practice in itself—even if you forget the exact words a few weeks later.
Alana opens up with a deeply personal testimony about a grueling season in college when the stress of her studies caused her to lose her ability to recall Scripture completely, and how God graciously restored that gift during a profound moment on a mission trip to Russia. Jaime shares a beautiful story about how a specific passage in Matthew ministered to her teenage son's doubts, proving that the Holy Spirit can bring the Word to mind exactly when it is needed.
Along the way, they swap practical, everyday tools for getting verses to stick when your adult brain feels a little too full. From using dry-erase boards and acronyms to incorporating sign language and leaning into the undeniable staying power of catchy children's Sunday school songs, they offer realistic ways to make memorization work for you.
Whether you are battling the friction of an overwhelmed mind, wondering which passage to pick first, or simply need a gentle reminder that your spiritual gifts are a daily grace to be stewarded, we hope this episode encourages you to embrace the beautiful, imperfect process of knowing God through His Word.
Episodes Mentioned in this Episode:
Part 1 The Importance of Scripture Memory:
https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/477-the-importance-of-scripture-memory/id1436550370?i=1000763747665
Alana's Testimony Episode from the Christian True-Crime Junkies Podcast:
(1/3)Fleeing From My Abusive Church: Our Co-Host Shares Her Story:
https://open.spotify.com/episode/74K9bYKM9LCQdpVYeBLhjN
Discover More:
Explore additional episodes of Praying Christian Women, Mindful Christian Prayers, and other Christian podcasts at Lifeaudio.com
Check out our new podcast, Christian True-Crime Junkies!, on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere you listen to podcasts!
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Life Audio. Hello, Welcome to the Praying Christian Woman podcast.
I am Alana here with Jamie.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
How are you doing great? How about you good?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I am so excited we get to keep on talking
about Bible memorization. And I don't feel like people need
to go back and you must listen to part one
before we go here. But we've just been chatting about
the benefits of Bible memorization, tips and tricks for memorization,
some of my testimony that hopefully I want to share
(00:36):
some more about that with you, about Bible memory and
continuing to have that talk. So what's been in your
mind since we last talked, which is only a couple
days ago when we recorded the first part.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, I've just been thinking a lot about how little
I've been committing scripture to memory, and so as I've
been trying to memorize this verse that we talked about
we're going to memorize the verse, my brain isn't It
doesn't work the same, I think because I haven't been
memorizing scripture. My brain is different, and so I can
(01:12):
feel the gears start to gradually start, you know, moving,
and I know and I can tell that the more
I work on it, the more it's going to help.
So this scripture memory is going to help not only
with memorizing scripture, which is going to be good, but
probably with my brain in general and just like you know,
elasticity and neuroplasticity and all of that stuff. But yeah,
(01:34):
I've been thinking back to the days when I began
memorizing scripture, which was very cool because it was kind
of a time in my life where I sort of
rededicated my life to Christ, when I started praying in
ways where I saw God starting to move like I
never had before because and I was looking at prayer
in a different way. It was it was just it's
(01:57):
kind of stoked the flames of my faith a little
bit to remember back to that time.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, one thing that I did because you and I
in the last episode decided that we would both choose
a passage to memorize and that would be our worst
of the day. And like I said, we've only had
two days, so either of us probably have a full
passage memorize, but well, we'll do what we can. But
what I did is, while I was working on it,
I had a post it. You know how much I
(02:24):
love my post it, and I would jot down all
of the blocks that popped into my head while I
was doing it, and one of them was kind of
like what you said, Like if it's not as easy
as it was when I was twenty, why bother right?
And it's just this idea of when you look at
it in a certain way, and I can't explain how
(02:47):
nonsensical was, Like what in the world does anything about
when you were twenty have to do with anything?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Right?
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Like mo cares that that has no bearing on today.
So it might be like saying, you know, when I
wrote my first few books, I could write six thousand
words a day, and I can't write six thousand words
a day anymore, so I'm not gonna write like that's
not really like it's a dumb metric. It means nothing.
The fact that I'm not writing six thousand words a
(03:15):
day certainly doesn't mean I can't write two thousand words
a day. And just because I can write two thousand
words a day today doesn't mean that if I'm eighty
and can only write two hundred words a day that
I still won't like writing, you know what I mean? Like,
they're just it's so arbitrary, it's to me, it sounds
(03:35):
like it makes sense, but when you look at it,
it's like saying, well, I can't go be the bridesmaid
in your wedding even though we're best friends and no
Jamie's not getting remarried or anything. Jamie and our husband
are still happily together and happily married. I'm just trying
to pull out like the dumbest hypothetical I can, like, sorry,
I can't be your bridesmaid because when I was twelve,
I went to a junior high dance and wore red
(03:57):
shoes right like to me, And it would be like
as if in my brain that made perfect sense to me.
That's what it sounds like by saying well, since it
was easier to memorize when I was this age, who cares,
you know?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, No, totally agreed.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
We're different people and we have different things in our lives,
and thank God for our brains that adapt to our
place in life, Like our needs for our brains are
very different from when we were twenty and had no, like,
let's face it, super responsibilities other than making it to
(04:33):
class and memorizing scripture. I mean, that's maybe simplifying it
too much, because schools demandle it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
But it is.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
But yeah, I mean there was studying, but our minds
were primed to memorize things we were studying. We had
just come out of high school, we're in college, you know.
So anyway, all of that to say, thank you God,
that's what where I'm going to land. I'm going to
take what you said totally resonate with it and say,
I'm going to thank God for the ways that He's
transformed my brain to deal with the things that I'm
(05:03):
dealing with on a day to day basis now. And
I'm also going to thank him that I have a
brain that is able to get back into scripture memory
and that I can work at it and it can
probably become easier as I go.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Another big block that came up for me.
I think this might be one of my biggest blocks
that I encountered was because I've memorized in the past.
I know how much work it takes to keep what
you've memorized in your brain. Right, So my block is, well,
I'm memorizing this now, but in two weeks I'm not
(05:38):
going to have it memorized. And so what I have
had to combat that block with is. It's not about
keeping it memorized for the rest of my life. It's
about absorbing it in the act of memorizing it, almost
like in fifty first States, Right, it's like I might
(05:59):
forget who you are every single day, so then I
get the joy and the privilege of falling in love
with you every single day, right, as opposed to I'm
not going to remember you tomorrow, so why should I
even go on a date with you today?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Right?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
You can, you can flip it, and I'm like, well,
it's not about am I going to know this in
a year, It's about right now. The act of slowing
down and memorizing this passage has allowed it to absorb
in my spirit in a way that nothing else does.
So that in itself is the spiritual discipline. And if
(06:33):
I happen to remember it two weeks from now, that's
the almost the bonus. And then I also absolutely recognize
that if this verse, I'm going to say that I
am eighty percent comfortable in my memory of this verse,
and so another block might be, you know, unless I
know it one hundred percent and can guarantee that in
(06:53):
six months i'll know it one hundred percent, then it
wasn't worth the time spent doing it. I'm choosing to
trust that when the recall is going to be required,
that the Lord will give it to me. I have
a friend who runs marathons, and basically what she told
me once was, if you can run about fifteenish miles
on your own, then you can almost definitely run a marathon.
(07:17):
So it's not like you go from fifteen and then
you work sixteen, then you go from sixteen, then you
go to seventeen. It's almost like, if you get to
a certain point, then by the time you get into
marathon mode where there's adrenaline and there's positive peer pressure
and motivation, like you don't muster up when you're running solo,
(07:39):
you're going to be able to do it. And I
kind of think of it like that. Like so again,
if we want to go really, really dramatic, I'm sitting
in the jail cell and have no Bible, I probably
can trust that if I needed this exact passage that
I've been working on and right now I have eighty
percent accurate, that either eighty percent accurate is going to
(08:02):
be good enough for me in that moment, or God's
going to give it to me with better accuracy, right,
So it's I have it good enough, and good enough
can be good enough. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I mean I think about it as putting scripture in
the well of your brain so that the Holy Spirit
can bring it to mind if you absolutely need it.
It's there, your unconscious subconscious mind retains it, even if
your short term memory might discard it in favor of
(08:33):
something more vital to survival at the given moments. But
it's there and the Holy Spirit can take it and
bring it to the forefront. I mean, realistically, I guess
the Holy Spirit could just plant it in there in
the first place. But I do believe that God wants
us to partner with him in some way. So that's
that's how I look at it as. Even if it's
not one hundred percent the act of going through the
(08:54):
process of getting it so that it's memorized, it's going
to be there for the Holy Spirit to more easily
bring it to your mind when you really really need it.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah. So I'm choosing to go into this phase of
scripture memorization with even if I don't even remember a
single word tomorrow, what I'm doing today is still worth it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So with that, what have you chosen to start memorizing?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
So I'm going to tell you my process.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
So I wanted to memorize the passage where Steven kind
of gives like this gospel recap it's long though, it's
so long long, and so I'm going to begin at
some point. But at some point in my looking into
like passages that kind of do like the Gospel in
(09:42):
a nutshell. Yeah, one passage came through that really isn't
what I was looking for, but it has a story.
So this is Matthew twenty six, sixty three and sixty four.
I haven't memorized all of it. But when our oldest
son was like maybe in middle school, maybe twelve thirteen
and thirteen fourteen, he was kind of wrestling with I
(10:06):
believe there's a God.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I know the stories of the Bible.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
I know about Jesus, and I want to believe in Jesus,
but I have a kernel of doubt that Christianity is
the true religion. And I just he's always been kind
of analytical, and I was like, well, you know what,
just ask God to help you. Just tell him that
and see what happens. And so at one point in
(10:30):
that sort of general timeframe. I came into the room
in the morning to wake him up, and he said
as soon as he woke up, he didn't say a word.
He was just like, Mom, get my bible, get or
get a Bible and look up Matthew twenty six sixty four.
I think this is the passage, because I just remember
(10:50):
that when he said sixty four, I was thinking, I
don't know if it goes that high, you know, I
must don't. And I was thinking, what are you doing God,
Like this is scary, And I got kind of panicky,
because of course we want to make it, you know.
And so anyway, if this is in fact the verse,
which I think it is, I opened up the Bible
and sure enough it was there. And we hadn't talked
(11:13):
about this particular thing in a long time, like this
in a while, and so I just read it and
I said, you have said so, Jesus replied, but I
say to all of you, from now on you will
see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand
of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.
And I said, okay. And He's like, WHOA, Like that's
that's really cool. I said, well, why and he said, well,
last night I did what you said.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I prayed and I asked God.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I told him I didn't know, and I said, can
you just give me a sign that Jesus is real
and that he's really your son and that Christianity is
actually true? And he said, I woke up And so
he didn't have the scripture in mind. He had the
numbers like Matthew twenty six sixty four, and so to him,
(12:00):
that was God's answer. It was, okay, Jesus is the
son of Man. He sits at the right hand of
God and he's real, you know, And so that is
he's kind of stood on that as he's had doubts
and things as something where he felt God really spoke
to him. So anyway, this popped up in my and
(12:21):
so I was like, well, I might as.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Well memorize this one.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
So yeah, great, do you want to try it or
do you Okay? I haven't. We want everyone to know.
Jamie and I committed to this, but we thought that
we were going to record in a week and we're
recording two days later.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I know, and I just started memorizing it today. But
I can do I think verse sixty three, so verse
sixty threas starts out, but Jesus remained silent, which doesn't
really go along with the rest of it. But so
the rest of it is okay, the High Priest said
to him, I charge you under oath by the Living God.
Tell us, if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.
(12:58):
You have said it was, you have said it is so,
Jesus replied, You have said so, Jesus replied, So that's
as far as I got. Sorry, it's not very kind
of anti climactic, that is. And then he goes on
to actually say, but I say, from now on, but
I haven't gotten to that part yet, how about you.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, yeah, I also started today because, like I said,
we committed for a week, and to be fair, I
had a couple of those.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Blocks to have to get over, which is in itself informative.
So that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah. Yeah, it was really useful to have that post
it and just john him down because I knew that
you and I were going to be talking about scripture memories.
I'm like, okay, here's all the blocks that had come up.
Let me see if there were any more on my
posts that I forgot to mention for me accuracy was
a big one. It was like, if I practice it
just to my but I say a word wrong, I'm
(14:02):
not going to know, and then I'm just going to
be reinforcing the wrong word.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I had that too, because I kept looking back instead
of trying to memorize it myself. I kept looking back
at the thing because I didn't trust myself and I
didn't want to say it wrong because I didn't want
my brain to like imprint that yeah ession.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
And I think that just again becomes where good enough
is good enough, Like you say it is so, or
you say that it is so, they mean the same thing,
and so it doesn't matter like which you use. You know,
the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want versus
the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in
(14:41):
one like, hey, that one's just which shepherd translation you've
decided to go through, But b it means the same thing,
so it doesn't really matter. So yeah, I have learned
to accept the fact that like, yeah, percent, that's a
bee getting a B and Bible memory is going to
(15:03):
be good, Like I'm okay with my eighty percent, and
if feeling like I need to get one hundred percent
is actually what's keeping me from doing it at all?
That I would way rather be a B student and
get eighty percent of a big chunk of scripture memorized
and never opening up my Bible because I'm afraid I'm
(15:24):
not going to get a hundred.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Well, and you have to think, if you're in that
prison cell with no Internet and no Bible, will you
get the point across missing a couple of words. And
I am not in any way saying that we should
paraphrase scripture, but the bottom line is if you get
the idea of what it's saying, then that is, you know,
at some point, it's absolutely better than not having access
(15:47):
to it at all.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Absolutely right. Like memorizing the Beatitudes, for example, it's more
important to know that God has called the Peacemaker's blessed
than to know the exact threeason why, because like when
you read the Beatitudes, there's like, you know, eight or
ten different virtues and then eight or ten different reasons
why they're blessed. But they're all fairly enterchangedabolans, you know.
(16:12):
Not that again, not that we want to mistreat scripture,
but it's not a sin for me to say, blessed
are the peacemakers for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
if like if actually the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to
the meek, and I, you know, and I mess them
up right, like I think God is gonna give me
some grace there. And all right, so I had chosen
(16:36):
to go to Romans eight, and I'm gonna be starting
at twenty eight, and I am I've just decided I
found one of my really old, like old school nibs,
and I'm just gonna stick with that. So all right,
let me get myself started. I'm to where like I
need to look at it to get myself started. It's
(16:56):
almost like the training meals you know what I mean,
and then I can and then they like, okay. And
we know that in all things God works for the
good of those who love Him, who have been called
according to his purpose. For those he fore knew, he
also called to be conformed to the likeness of his son,
and those he fore knew he also called. I got
(17:18):
some of those wrong, okay. If he foreknew them, he
predestined them. And then for those God for knew he
also called. Those he called he also justified. And as
he justified, he also glorified, And that's kind of what
I mean. It's like they all sort of mean the
same thing. So if I like I switched up in
my brain the order between being called and predestined, is
(17:40):
God going to be mad at me for that? No?
Am I going to sacrifice somebody's eternal soul if I
am witnessing to someone in a jail cell where there's
no Bible and I say called before predestined, when really
it was predestined before called no. Right, So and that's
a pretty big step for me to learn to be
okay with Okay. Yeah, So that's that's kind of been
(18:05):
my journey. So now that we've done our versus the day,
I guess it's time to open up in a worder.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
All right, God, we just thank you for your word,
and we just thank you for the ability to let
go of perfectionism for the sake of just loving your
word and being open and excited about committing it to memory.
And we just pray that today we would just be
able to appreciate even more the gift of scripture.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And for those of us that have a hard time.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Getting back into memorizing things, I just pray for the
supernatural ability to open ourselves up to learning something new
or to relearning something that's gotten difficult over the years,
so that we can not just to check something off
of a list, but to seriously just for the process
(18:57):
of getting to know you more deeply and and actually
incorporating scripture into our being in a way that just
makes us love you more.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So interestingly, one of the blocks that I thought I
would come against that I really didn't is this question
of like, how do I choose what to memorize first?
Did you have that or were you just kind of like, Okay,
this is the one I'm going to.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Do it sort of?
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I mean, it took me a little bit of time because,
like I said, I had in my head, Okay, I
want to memorize something where I can just present the
Gospel in a nutshell to somebody in I'm picturing the
prison cell. That's my goal, is what are my wants
and go tos if I'm on a deserted island with
twenty people. And so my block was that it's long
(19:47):
the one that I thought I wanted to start memorizing.
So I'm going to And then I realized about myself,
I'm I'm going to start small and so it wasn't
that bad, but it was a little bit of a process.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Huh yeah, I I figure that that would be one
of my biggest blocks because it's almost like, by choosing
Romans eight, I'm saying that Romans eight is better than
Isaiah Forte. Who am I to say that? But it
sort of did, like, Okay, I think it was just
God being like, here's where you should start. So if
people do have that as one of your blocks, I
(20:19):
would just prabay and ask God to show you. And
for me, it was just kind of really natural where
to begin with that. Another option could be think about
times where you wish Bible recall would come to you.
So maybe it's at night and you feel anxious, so
then maybe you could just google good Bible versus for anxiety.
(20:40):
You know, you could do it kind of topically or
issue based, or maybe you have a hard time with
a specific sin. Maybe you are hot tempered and you
can just look up what are some verses that speak
about anger and make that one that you do. But
by choosing, you're not saying that that verse is more
(21:02):
important than another. It's just what God is bringing to moments,
you know, just like if I eat spaghetti for dinner tonight.
I'm not saying that spaghetti is inherently better than lasagna.
You know, they're just two different meals.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
They just are. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Well, where I started when I first started memorizing scripture
in college was the Navigator's Topical Memory System. And we're
not like promoting it in terms of like we don't
get a kickback. I think it's a free resource. But
it's the topical memory system. And they actually have categories.
So if you have something that you want like living
(21:38):
the New Life, they have you know, Christ, the Center,
Obedience to Christ, the Word, prayer, fellowship, witnessing like they have.
They have it topically organized so you can choose like
which ones, and they do have kind of a method
to what you memorize, kind of to equip you to
share the Gospel more fully, more easily. And so yeah,
it's it's a pretty Oh I guess you do have
(22:00):
to buy it, so but I think you probably you
can buy the cards that you can tear apart, but
they have all of them listed so you can create
your own cards based on their resource. So all of
that to say, if you need to use something, it's
that's a really easy one to use. But there are
tons of them.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Absolutely, we have Google now, we even have chat GPT.
So you could even say, I'm the fifty year old
woman trying to get back into Bible memory, and I
like this translation and I want a passage it's not
too long that talks about this, and it'll give you
a bunch of options, and you could pick one right
from there. Maybe double check that I have not had
(22:39):
chat GPT. Ever, give me a Bible verse. It's not
a Bible verse, but I have had chat GPT, just
like make up facts that are true.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Me too, Oh my gosh. And it'll always say, oh,
you caught me.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yes, I'm just.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Like what, So double check it before you do it.
But that is an option as well. So when you
memorized the one that you started working on, did you
just start looking at it and learning it or did
you have any other systems for how to do the
(23:13):
act of memorizing.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I did just basically. I would do the first few words,
cover it up, say them, and then I did the
first few words plus a few more. Now, though as
you say that, I remembered what you said about memorizing.
The large amounts of scripture, it might be beneficial to
memorize the first few words, then memorize the next few words,
(23:39):
and then put the two together.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
I'm thinking for my brain because when I just keep
adding and adding and adding, one.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Of my blocks is ooh, that's too long, like when
I start to see the string getting longer and longer.
So I think, maybe, like you what you did, only
I do it on a micro scale of like, okay,
first few words, then the next phrase, just memorize that
phrase and then put the two together. So I think
that's what I'm going to do for the remainder. But
what I had been doing was reading a little bit,
(24:07):
then adding a little bit more, adding a little bit more,
and it was challenging.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yeah, eventually you know what your brain capacity is and
you need to basically make it into a smaller chunk
than what max is out your brain capacity.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
One of the I don't think this is a block,
This is just a logistic problem that I come across
when I memorize, is how do I know if I'm
getting it right? Because if I'm just here doing it right,
Like we think of Bible memory as something that a
kid does in Sunday school and there's a teacher there
and you're chanting it with the group, and all of
those things are so good for memory, right, like speaking
(24:47):
of it out loud, doing it kind of more chanty,
doing it in a group, so there's reinforcement. But if
you're just sitting there with your Bible, most of those
aren't available to you. You I would come up with
a chant. I think that's actually very beneficial, but I'm
too self conscious to do that out loud, even if
I'm home alone, which you know, there's another block that
(25:10):
I could eventually get over.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yeah, well one thing if you're not if you're open
to it, I remember it was for a Wana. There's
a CD that you can get and if you are
not opposed to singing little kids songs, it was so effective.
And it's not like great music. It's not great tunes.
It's very repetitive and generic sounding. But you would be
(25:34):
amazed if you haven't already learned things through Auana music.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Or no no, no, no, I'm sorry. Was it a Wana?
Or was it Good News Club?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
There's tons of resources and most of them.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Are both Good News Club.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
But yeah, even the most sing songy generic tunes stick
in your head better stick in my head absolutely well.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
And there are some albums for Bible memorization that are
more geared toward adults. So honestly, for me, if I
were to do it, I'd be like, give me the
kid stuff. It's more fun, it's more catchy. But there
was definitely a time in my life where I would
have been almost insulted by that and it just wouldn't
have resonated with me. And so I do know that
(26:19):
there are lots of people who make scripture memory versus
set to music, and sometimes they're more paraphrase and sometimes
they are definitely like verbatim to the word, And you
just have to decide what you're most comfortable with. Do
you know the band Shane and Shane, So they have
an entire album. It's just an acoustic album called Psalms,
(26:42):
and it's beautiful and they're all inspired. All the lyrics
are inspired by Psalms, but they're not like verbatim from Psalms.
But I know there are also people who for adults
take John three sixteen and set it to music. But
like I said, to be fair, the kid's stuff is
catch here, it's going to be in your head more. Yeah,
(27:05):
to me, I'm at the stage of my life where
it's more fun anyway. So yeah, the one thing that
I could definitely see myself wanting to add that I
wouldn't be self conscious about doing home alone is signing.
So the whole thing that I came across it was
like called predestined, justified, glorified, and like it's like, what
order do those go in? I think I could definitely
(27:28):
if I learned the sign language for those, or even
just some kind of hand q that helps me do
it in order, I think I would memorize it more,
or if I really wanted to, I could come up
with a mnemonic, right, so I could be Okay, first
it's called then it's predestined, so CP. So now I'm
(27:53):
thinking about cerebral palsy, which is kind of a sad
thing to be thinking about, but that's what I'm thinking about.
So you know, I can I can tell myself it's
a three were palsy verse. So okay, those he called
he predestined because see has to come first, right, There
are lots of mnemonics there. One of the things that
I find for when you get logistically to just if
(28:14):
you're learning a passage by yourself, and you don't have
a great way to test yourself. There are apps that
will do this, or I like to do it in paper.
What I like is to write down the first letter
of each word and then just put it on a
(28:34):
note card and look at the note card and see
if I can do it all of that way. It's
basically the equivalent I know a lot of Sunday school teachers.
You'll write the entire verse on the board yep, and
everyone will say it out loud, and then you'll just
erase one word at a time, and when you're with
a group, and when you're doing it in a kind
of sing songy tone, by the time every word's been erased,
(28:57):
you can do the whole thing. So I like having
the first letter of each word as a cue. And
then what you can do is, once you get comfortable
with that as you can turn it into the first
letter of a phrase and then like the first letter
of averse or the first letter of a paragraph, just
kind of to keep you on track. But right now,
(29:21):
if your only options, like for me, my only option
is to have it in my head or to have
the whole thing in front of me in the Bible right,
and so there's there's not an imagery, but I know
there are apps that will do this as well, and
so it can be specifically a Bible memory app. I
don't have any to recommend, but I know there exist,
(29:43):
or I know there are apps designed to help people memorize,
you know, like a speech or something. There are some
where you can if you're an auditory learner, you can
record yourself saying it and then what it will do
is it will read it back to you but leave
out certain words, and then in your brain you're filling
them in. So basically you're doing the same thing that
(30:04):
Sunday school teacher is doing by erasing one word at
a time. Another way you could do it. Another kind
of logistic hurdle I come across in this is if
if it's just me, I don't know if I'm saying
it right or wrong right, so I might think I
have it totally right, but I might be forgetting an
entire middle section. So I know there were apps where
(30:26):
you can record yourself and it will tell you, or
you know, you could even just there are so many
voice memo apps. You could just record it as a
voice memo and then go back and check it against scripture.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
And one of my favorite ways to memorize scripture was
with a partner, Like I had a friend and we
would get together once a week and so she would
have it in front of her and I would say
it and she would, you know, go like this, and
if I made a mistake, and that would.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Cue me to try again.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
It was you know, you can get a live human
to just kind of bounce back. I had forgotten the
whiteboard thing when I was a Sunday school teacher, and
that was my favorite way because it was so really
so easy for me because I would just yeah, and
that way, like you're not just reading all or nothing.
You're taking away and you're practicing and reinforcing.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
That was my favorite way.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I think I'm actually I have a whiteboard that we
haven't used forever. I saw it in my son's room
the other day. I think I'm going to actually do
that and use it for my Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, that one's a useful one. Or when I did
Sunday school, I think we even did this sometimes in
middle school youth group in order to incorporate more motion.
You would all stand in a circle. We'd have a
ball like a beach ball, and you would throw the
ball and say a word, oh yeah, and that person
would catch it and say the next word and throw
it to someone else. Because I am such a firm
(31:59):
below and I know it works two varying degrees. It
works for me so much better when there's a physical component,
and for some people that's less important. But I don't
think in most I don't think it's ever detrimental to
add the physical component. It's just some people it helps
them like a bajillion times like me, and some people
it might help you a little bit extra. But so yeah,
(32:21):
that would be I would say, if I really wanted
to add one more component for myself, it would probably
be in the tricky parts where I get caught up
learning some of the sign language or some kind of
hand motion to help me run through that.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah, as long as you're consistent, it doesn't matter what
the hand motion is. You can make up whatever you
want as long as you do it the same every time. Yeah,
although it would be very cool to learn sign language, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Mean, it'd be a nice way to learn some signed vocabulary,
so I may as well do it that way. Unless
there's a huge reason to make it a different way. Yeah,
So well, I want.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
To hear your testimony.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
I want to hear the part where you found yourself
unable to memorize scripture.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I've never heard this story.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
It wasn't until we started talking about Bible memory that
I even like considered this part of my testimony. And
I got super emotional even thinking about it, because it's
slight losing a sense, Like that's how significant it was.
So in our previous episode about Bible memory, I did
(33:33):
talk a lot about like growing up with a lot
of Bible memory, incorporated into our family life and incorporated
into my spiritual disciplines, and so it was definitely just
part of me and of like being someone who likes
to listen to music is just part of me. And
then I went to college and for a couple of
(33:54):
years I didn't have a church, and I was also
just really intellectually bombarded with so much outside questions, like
the questions that your son had. But it wasn't it
was never like is God true? That was never it,
but it was you know, think about every single like
(34:18):
liberal college campus and all of the questions that would
come at you. And if you've come from a pretty
sheltered Christian life, like you're just ready for all of
those questions.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah, right, taking like a New Testament and Old Testament
literature classes, and one of the professors was an atheist
and he wanted us to be shaken. He saw all
these young, wide eyed Christians and he's like, hey, guys,
this isn't a Bible study. This is a class. And
it was paradigm shifting for me.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Even to learn how non Christians would view the things
that I just never even thought about. Yes, it was like,
what do you mean that your God told his closest
follower to slaughter his son on a mountain? Like we
learned that as a cute story of God's provision and all,
wasn't Abraham so faithful?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
We don't realize the actual act and what it would
have happened, And.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, yes, and so yeah, it was just intellectually such
a difficult time for me. Plus I was so absorbed
in my studies because I needed to get the A
plus and everything. I wasn't okay with being a B
student at that point, and so like my brain was
(35:39):
just so tired, and I really think that's what it was.
Like I went years without reading a novel, which I'll
look back be like that is so sad, and because
like my brain, Like I did take some literature classes,
but after I graduated, like I went two years without
picking up a single book other than the Bible. It
was just my brain was tired. And so I think
(36:04):
those were some of the things, Like if I had
to go back and be like, you know, how did
this happen? A I wasn't being regularly fed the Word
because some of my Bible memorization, I was fortunate enough.
And I think this is just like genetically in personality,
like I could pick it up just by hearing it,
you know, And so I didn't always have to sit
(36:26):
down and force myself to memorize. I did that as
a practice, but like there were a lot of verses
that I knew just because I heard them in sermons
and stuff. And since at that point I'm going back
on my rant, I was hearing them all in the
same version of the Bible, and I didn't have twelve
conflicting versions on my head.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
The versions just or the passage just stuck.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So I wasn't getting fed a regular input of scripture.
I was still reading the Bible myself, and I would
still for a bunch of it, like there was still
like a dorm Bible study. I would ATTENDANTU. But there
wasn't like a church community where I was sitting and
listening to a sermon. So I don't know if that
had to do with it. I'm sure some of it
(37:08):
had to do with one hundred percent of my mental
energy was focused on schoolwork, and so maybe my brain
was even trying to protect me. It was like, you
don't have room to keep these memory versus in your
head and learn all of these nomenclature rules for organic chemistry,
so let's just put these aside, kind of like the
(37:29):
cleanup crew in Inside Out, where they're just cleaning her
brain from memories she doesn't need anymore. Yeah, I think
my brain, Yes, I think my brain was probably like, okay,
if getting an A is her primary goal, which at
that point it was, and I have to choose between
remembering this random fact about Raskalnikov in Crime and Punishment
(37:53):
versus what does Romans six say? Okay by Roman six,
And then I think we add on to that just
you know, stress, emotional stress from being away from home,
physical stress. I ate really poorly. I tried to I
decided that I wanted to try to be vegetarian, but
basically that just meant I ate like pasta, like for
(38:17):
a semester, so like, you know, no veggies, no protein.
So I think I think there were so many things
that went into it. And then in addition, using my
brain and my faith together heightened this sense of unease
(38:41):
that I felt being in that environment. So again, I
think my brain was kind of like, Okay, we'll talk
about faith when we're not talking about intellectual stuff, and
we'll talk about intellectual stuff. You know. I think my
brain was trying to do me a favor by really
compartmentalizing the two. And so like I believed in God,
still followed the Bible, still acted like, you know, an obedient,
(39:05):
moral Christian girl, but I could not recall a Bible verse,
like it would have been hard for me to tell
you what John three sixteen said, and that's you know,
I mean, that's one of the ones that's just you know,
from being three years old and up. And it wasn't
(39:26):
as if I knew that I had lost it. It
was more like so it's hard to explain. Like again,
I think my brain got so compartmentalized that it probably
just didn't think about the fact that I didn't have
Bible recall, and it came out. It came to a
(39:49):
huge head this summer before my senior year of college.
So for people who have followed this story on Christian
true crime junkies, I told my whole testimony of joining
a really abusive, authoritarian cultish church. This is the summer
before that happened, and so this is where it all
(40:13):
kind of came to a head. So what happened was
I went on a mission trip that summer. It was
a first mission trip, actually the only mission trip I've
ever been on, and I went to Russia. And at
the time, I had just taken the MCATs, I was
waiting to get my MCAT scores, or I think I
had just gotten my MCAT scores before I left, and
(40:35):
I had at least started the process of applying to
medical schools, and this mission trip to Russia was kind
of going to be like the one the one thing
I did before. I just like jumped right back into
the grind of a really growling school year and finished
up my senior year. And while I was there, I
(40:59):
was lying in bed. It was kind of like first
thing in the morning, I was probably jet lagged or something,
so like I was lying in bed but not asleep,
and the verse came to me and it said, do
nothing out of selfish ambition or rain conceit. And it
was the first time that God had allowed Bible recalled
(41:19):
to come to me in years, like maybe since I
left for college, like after high school. And it was
so convicting because I knew, like simultaneously what God was
telling me, and what God was telling me was that
my medical school plans were just selfish ambition. It was
(41:42):
just because I wanted to prove that I was the
best student. And in the early two thousands, what did
you do if you wanted to prove you were the
best student? You got into medical my doctor. Yes, And
it was so convicting. It was also difficult, like it
was it was a bagi things. Simultaneously, it was the conviction.
(42:02):
It was one of the heaviest senses of conviction. I've
ever experienced. It was also oh, no, my parents are
going to be really mad, So there was fear there.
And also I was worried about what the other people
that we were on this mission trip would say because
in all of the pre mission trip stuff. It was like,
(42:23):
now this is the caricature of what I was told,
So this is more extreme. Now you're going to get
there and this is going to be so new for you,
and you're going to get so excited about serving the
Lord that you're going to think he wants you to
be a missionary. But it's okay, it's just the emotions.
You're going to get caught up in emotions. Just know
that it's going to pass. It's just a face, sweetie.
(42:46):
That's really what they wear into cancers. I get is
an important warning. You don't want people to make rash,
life altering decisions from a heat of the moment emotional level. Right,
Just like I can't tell you how many people I've
met who when you ask them how they got to Alaska,
they say, well, I went on vacation here once and
(43:07):
either never.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Lever came back or yeah, never never went back home,
or yeah, or like went home, packed up and knew
that I had to live here forever.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Yeah. Right. It's kind of a trope.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
I mean it is.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
And there was that trope of being on the mission
field and thinking that God was calling you to be
a full time missionary. But oh, that's just your emotions.
And so I was afraid of getting pooh pooed if
I were to go and tell the people that I
was with that I had had this extremely convicting moment
because basically I knew it. I had wanted to be
(43:42):
a missionary from the time I was very, very little,
and the medical school was the nope, you got to
have an actual career. And so basically, as it was
getting downloaded into my brain to do nothing out of
selfless ambition, it was don't go to medical school, disappoint
your family, pooh pooed by the people on your mission trip. Oh,
(44:04):
and by the way, you're going to become a missionary.
And that side of it never happened. That's a whole
other story that had more to do with medical stuff.
But it was, like I said, the very first time
that a Bible verse came to me in years. And
so then I got home, I did have that renewed
thing that they warned me against and that everybody poo
(44:26):
pooed of, like I got to read my Bible, I
gotta do all this stuff. And in the same way,
I hate when people make fun of or belittle like
teenage crushes. I hate when people make fun of or
belittle like a spiritual high after a retreat or after
an experience like this. Okay, is that the way I'm
going to feel for my entire life about the Lord? No?
(44:48):
Is it a gift that I felt that way when
I got home from Russia. Yes, and so I was
spending a lot more time in the world. Now. What
I was terrified of was that I was going to
have to go and rememorize every single Bible verse that
I had ever known. But I think, really, when I
look at it, I don't think it was that the
(45:08):
versus left my brain. I think that they were just
trapped and sealed, and so the act of getting them
back it was scary and daunting. But once that safe
got opened, it first slowly came back and then it
was just there again. So it happened faster than I
(45:28):
expected it too for it to come back. But it
absolutely made me realize what a gift it is, because
I had just taken it for granted in the same
me that I don't look at my hand and be like,
I'm so thankful I have a hand to day right right,
Like that's kind of how having scripture just you know,
I used like people used to joke that, you know,
(45:51):
that I was kind of a walking concordance because if
they would be like, what's that one verse about that
one thing? And this is pre google and I could
be like, I could either tell them it was or
I could flip into my Bible and find it pretty quickly. Yeah,
And to me, it didn't enter my head that that
was like the Lord give it and the Lord taketh away.
It didn't enter my head that that was something that
(46:12):
I could.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Have lost and might have been like, you know, maybe
you even were just like, yeah, this is something that
I made happen, as opposed it's probably to make this happen.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
And so I deserve to have these verses at my
fingertips because I worked to memorize them, and I did
spend a lot of time in the Bible in my teens,
and so yeah, there was a sense of well, you know,
I hate to attribute this to myself, but I'm sure
there was some you know, if you worked hard, you
could have this too, you know, But then to have
(46:48):
it just taken away and then given back with a
snap of the fingers was very humbling.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
That's very cool, that's really neat to see. And I
think we can apply that to a lot of things
in our life lives that you know, you and I
talk a lot about the dangers of focusing so much
on the strengths of others that we don't recognize the
strengths and ourselves. And I think for you that was
a huge strength and a huge thing that you just
(47:14):
like you said, it's like, you know, writing with your hand.
You don't think about that hand being a gift? Do
you think about it as just how things are?
Speaker 2 (47:22):
So I don't know.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
It's a reminder to be able to kind of without
having things taken away. If we could take a moment
and just reflect, like what are the gifts God has
given you?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
What are the things that you're using well now for
His kingdom.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
Or otherwise for you know, your creative process, your gifts,
your talents.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, yeah, I think a good kind of listener holmework
could be ask yourself a Christian who knew you well,
what would they say, like, Oh, that comes so easy
for you, and you're like, doesn't it for you know,
kind of like Elwood's what like it's hard, Like ask
yourself what is that thing for you, and then assume
that that is a gift from the Lord, So a
(48:04):
drop any pretense of pride about it, but be realize
that there's a lot of responsibility. There was a long
time where I thought that God withheld that from me
as punishment because I wasn't walking with him like he
wanted me to be. And I think that there is
a sense of whoever has will be given much and
(48:27):
whoever doesn't use what they have, what even what they
think they have, is going to be taken from them.
It's you know, it's Jesus's version of what Uncle Ben
tells Peter Parker. With a great gift comes a great
sense of responsibility. So think about the one or two
things that are easy to you or at your worst,
what you might be judging about others for like, this
is so easy for me, why can't why can't you
(48:49):
do this? And then recognize, Okay, that actually is probably
a gift. That's probably not something I've fostered in myself,
because yes, I foster your Bible memory work. But I
wouldn't have done that if God hadn't made it easy
for me. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Yes, No, I totally get it, and I feel like
it just makes me realize that there are things that
we might just be thinking like it's this isn't really
work of the Lord.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
This is this is cheating because it seems so easy.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Of course, in order to serve God or to you know,
use my talents, I should have to put some skin
in the game. I should have to be like, work
hard and sacrifice and be a little bit miserable for
it to count right, right? And I think, while, yes,
we don't need to just be only focusing on things
(49:44):
that come easily, but I don't know to appreciate like, Okay,
this is how God made me. And if I love
doing this thing all the better, you know, let me
just keep doing it and doing it well and keep
working at things I love.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
I don't know, yes, And if my story might be
you know me, I'm not a fearmongerer, but I would
not mind my story being used as a tiny bit
of And what would you do if God took that away?
You know? Or is there a chance that if you're
not using the gifts God has given you that he
might take them away?
Speaker 2 (50:17):
There absolutely is.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
I don't think that he does it capriciously. But if
you know, let's say, if doing hospitality is something you
love and just comes so natural and you're so good
at it, and maybe you're even tempted to look down
your nose at people that it doesn't come as easily too,
And then you go four years or that ever inviting
(50:41):
anybody into your home because of this, that or the
other thing. Don't be so brash to assume that the
minute you decide to pick it back up again, that
it's going to be there for you. Yeah. I think
of it almost like how the ancient Greeks would think
of a muse, like the creative muse. They were seen
(51:01):
as extremely capricious. It was like here one day, gone
the next, and you never know, so you're always thankful
when it shows up. And I don't say that we
think of God that way, but I think there should
be a tiny bit of healthy humility when we think
about the gifts that we've been given. Just because God
gave you a gift today doesn't mean he can't take
(51:22):
it away. And that means that we do needs to
be good stewards of it, and we shouldn't be prideful
of it. And if you're not using it. There might
need to be a tiny bit of healthy fear and
just that uneasy feeling in your gut. Ooh, maybe maybe
(51:43):
I'm not living up to God's expectations for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
No, that's a really good point.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah. Well, anything else do you want to add regarding
either just kind of spiritual gifts or back to the
Bible memory side of things.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
I don't think so. I just I'm excited to be
back into it. It's fun.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm really glad that we got into that
discussion about it and I got kind of a reason
to get back into it too. Well. With that, let's
close with our blessing and an addiction. May God fill
your heart with greater joy than all the world could
ever offer. May He fill you with joy and his presence.
May God Himself be your joy and your delight through
(52:24):
sorrow and sadness. May the joy of the Lord be
your strength. May the Holy Spirit himself annoint you with
the oil of joy gladness to strengthen and encourage your
spirit to stay and forevermore.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
And our benediction is from Psalm sixty seven, verse one.
May God be gracious to us and bless us and
make his face to shine upon us.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Amen.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
We'd like to take just a quick second to thank
the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us
on the podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com
you will find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in
their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting,
and so much more. That's life audio dot com.
Life Audio. Hello, Welcome to the Praying Christian Woman podcast.
I am Alana here with Jamie.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
How are you doing great? How about you good?
Speaker 1 (00:13):
I am so excited we get to keep on talking
about Bible memorization. And I don't feel like people need
to go back and you must listen to part one
before we go here. But we've just been chatting about
the benefits of Bible memorization, tips and tricks for memorization,
some of my testimony that hopefully I want to share
(00:36):
some more about that with you, about Bible memory and
continuing to have that talk. So what's been in your
mind since we last talked, which is only a couple
days ago when we recorded the first part.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
Yeah, I've just been thinking a lot about how little
I've been committing scripture to memory, and so as I've
been trying to memorize this verse that we talked about
we're going to memorize the verse, my brain isn't It
doesn't work the same, I think because I haven't been
memorizing scripture. My brain is different, and so I can
(01:12):
feel the gears start to gradually start, you know, moving,
and I know and I can tell that the more
I work on it, the more it's going to help.
So this scripture memory is going to help not only
with memorizing scripture, which is going to be good, but
probably with my brain in general and just like you know,
elasticity and neuroplasticity and all of that stuff. But yeah,
(01:34):
I've been thinking back to the days when I began
memorizing scripture, which was very cool because it was kind
of a time in my life where I sort of
rededicated my life to Christ, when I started praying in
ways where I saw God starting to move like I
never had before because and I was looking at prayer
in a different way. It was it was just it's
(01:57):
kind of stoked the flames of my faith a little
bit to remember back to that time.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yeah, one thing that I did because you and I
in the last episode decided that we would both choose
a passage to memorize and that would be our worst
of the day. And like I said, we've only had
two days, so either of us probably have a full
passage memorize, but well, we'll do what we can. But
what I did is, while I was working on it,
I had a post it. You know how much I
(02:24):
love my post it, and I would jot down all
of the blocks that popped into my head while I
was doing it, and one of them was kind of
like what you said, Like if it's not as easy
as it was when I was twenty, why bother right?
And it's just this idea of when you look at
it in a certain way, and I can't explain how
(02:47):
nonsensical was, Like what in the world does anything about
when you were twenty have to do with anything?
Speaker 2 (02:52):
Right?
Speaker 1 (02:53):
Like mo cares that that has no bearing on today.
So it might be like saying, you know, when I
wrote my first few books, I could write six thousand
words a day, and I can't write six thousand words
a day anymore, so I'm not gonna write like that's
not really like it's a dumb metric. It means nothing.
The fact that I'm not writing six thousand words a
(03:15):
day certainly doesn't mean I can't write two thousand words
a day. And just because I can write two thousand
words a day today doesn't mean that if I'm eighty
and can only write two hundred words a day that
I still won't like writing, you know what I mean? Like,
they're just it's so arbitrary, it's to me, it sounds
(03:35):
like it makes sense, but when you look at it,
it's like saying, well, I can't go be the bridesmaid
in your wedding even though we're best friends and no
Jamie's not getting remarried or anything. Jamie and our husband
are still happily together and happily married. I'm just trying
to pull out like the dumbest hypothetical I can, like, sorry,
I can't be your bridesmaid because when I was twelve,
I went to a junior high dance and wore red
(03:57):
shoes right like to me, And it would be like
as if in my brain that made perfect sense to me.
That's what it sounds like by saying well, since it
was easier to memorize when I was this age, who cares,
you know?
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Yeah, No, totally agreed.
Speaker 3 (04:13):
We're different people and we have different things in our lives,
and thank God for our brains that adapt to our
place in life, Like our needs for our brains are
very different from when we were twenty and had no, like,
let's face it, super responsibilities other than making it to
(04:33):
class and memorizing scripture. I mean, that's maybe simplifying it
too much, because schools demandle it.
Speaker 2 (04:39):
But it is.
Speaker 3 (04:40):
But yeah, I mean there was studying, but our minds
were primed to memorize things we were studying. We had
just come out of high school, we're in college, you know.
So anyway, all of that to say, thank you God,
that's what where I'm going to land. I'm going to
take what you said totally resonate with it and say,
I'm going to thank God for the ways that He's
transformed my brain to deal with the things that I'm
(05:03):
dealing with on a day to day basis now. And
I'm also going to thank him that I have a
brain that is able to get back into scripture memory
and that I can work at it and it can
probably become easier as I go.
Speaker 1 (05:16):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. Another big block that came up for me.
I think this might be one of my biggest blocks
that I encountered was because I've memorized in the past.
I know how much work it takes to keep what
you've memorized in your brain. Right, So my block is, well,
I'm memorizing this now, but in two weeks I'm not
(05:38):
going to have it memorized. And so what I have
had to combat that block with is. It's not about
keeping it memorized for the rest of my life. It's
about absorbing it in the act of memorizing it, almost
like in fifty first States, Right, it's like I might
(05:59):
forget who you are every single day, so then I
get the joy and the privilege of falling in love
with you every single day, right, as opposed to I'm
not going to remember you tomorrow, so why should I
even go on a date with you today?
Speaker 3 (06:10):
Right?
Speaker 1 (06:11):
You can, you can flip it, and I'm like, well,
it's not about am I going to know this in
a year, It's about right now. The act of slowing
down and memorizing this passage has allowed it to absorb
in my spirit in a way that nothing else does.
So that in itself is the spiritual discipline. And if
(06:33):
I happen to remember it two weeks from now, that's
the almost the bonus. And then I also absolutely recognize
that if this verse, I'm going to say that I
am eighty percent comfortable in my memory of this verse,
and so another block might be, you know, unless I
know it one hundred percent and can guarantee that in
(06:53):
six months i'll know it one hundred percent, then it
wasn't worth the time spent doing it. I'm choosing to
trust that when the recall is going to be required,
that the Lord will give it to me. I have
a friend who runs marathons, and basically what she told
me once was, if you can run about fifteenish miles
on your own, then you can almost definitely run a marathon.
(07:17):
So it's not like you go from fifteen and then
you work sixteen, then you go from sixteen, then you
go to seventeen. It's almost like, if you get to
a certain point, then by the time you get into
marathon mode where there's adrenaline and there's positive peer pressure
and motivation, like you don't muster up when you're running solo,
(07:39):
you're going to be able to do it. And I
kind of think of it like that. Like so again,
if we want to go really, really dramatic, I'm sitting
in the jail cell and have no Bible, I probably
can trust that if I needed this exact passage that
I've been working on and right now I have eighty
percent accurate, that either eighty percent accurate is going to
(08:02):
be good enough for me in that moment, or God's
going to give it to me with better accuracy, right,
So it's I have it good enough, and good enough
can be good enough. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (08:12):
I mean I think about it as putting scripture in
the well of your brain so that the Holy Spirit
can bring it to mind if you absolutely need it.
It's there, your unconscious subconscious mind retains it, even if
your short term memory might discard it in favor of
(08:33):
something more vital to survival at the given moments. But
it's there and the Holy Spirit can take it and
bring it to the forefront. I mean, realistically, I guess
the Holy Spirit could just plant it in there in
the first place. But I do believe that God wants
us to partner with him in some way. So that's
that's how I look at it as. Even if it's
not one hundred percent the act of going through the
(08:54):
process of getting it so that it's memorized, it's going
to be there for the Holy Spirit to more easily
bring it to your mind when you really really need it.
Speaker 1 (09:01):
Yeah. So I'm choosing to go into this phase of
scripture memorization with even if I don't even remember a
single word tomorrow, what I'm doing today is still worth it.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
Yeah, there you go.
Speaker 1 (09:15):
So with that, what have you chosen to start memorizing?
Speaker 2 (09:20):
So I'm going to tell you my process.
Speaker 3 (09:22):
So I wanted to memorize the passage where Steven kind
of gives like this gospel recap it's long though, it's
so long long, and so I'm going to begin at
some point. But at some point in my looking into
like passages that kind of do like the Gospel in
(09:42):
a nutshell. Yeah, one passage came through that really isn't
what I was looking for, but it has a story.
So this is Matthew twenty six, sixty three and sixty four.
I haven't memorized all of it. But when our oldest
son was like maybe in middle school, maybe twelve thirteen
and thirteen fourteen, he was kind of wrestling with I
(10:06):
believe there's a God.
Speaker 2 (10:07):
I know the stories of the Bible.
Speaker 3 (10:09):
I know about Jesus, and I want to believe in Jesus,
but I have a kernel of doubt that Christianity is
the true religion. And I just he's always been kind
of analytical, and I was like, well, you know what,
just ask God to help you. Just tell him that
and see what happens. And so at one point in
(10:30):
that sort of general timeframe. I came into the room
in the morning to wake him up, and he said
as soon as he woke up, he didn't say a word.
He was just like, Mom, get my bible, get or
get a Bible and look up Matthew twenty six sixty four.
I think this is the passage, because I just remember
(10:50):
that when he said sixty four, I was thinking, I
don't know if it goes that high, you know, I
must don't. And I was thinking, what are you doing God,
Like this is scary, And I got kind of panicky,
because of course we want to make it, you know.
And so anyway, if this is in fact the verse,
which I think it is, I opened up the Bible
and sure enough it was there. And we hadn't talked
(11:13):
about this particular thing in a long time, like this
in a while, and so I just read it and
I said, you have said so, Jesus replied, but I
say to all of you, from now on you will
see the Son of Man sitting at the right hand
of the Mighty One and coming on the clouds of heaven.
And I said, okay. And He's like, WHOA, Like that's
that's really cool. I said, well, why and he said, well,
last night I did what you said.
Speaker 2 (11:35):
I prayed and I asked God.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I told him I didn't know, and I said, can
you just give me a sign that Jesus is real
and that he's really your son and that Christianity is
actually true? And he said, I woke up And so
he didn't have the scripture in mind. He had the
numbers like Matthew twenty six sixty four, and so to him,
(12:00):
that was God's answer. It was, okay, Jesus is the
son of Man. He sits at the right hand of
God and he's real, you know, And so that is
he's kind of stood on that as he's had doubts
and things as something where he felt God really spoke
to him. So anyway, this popped up in my and
(12:21):
so I was like, well, I might as.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Well memorize this one.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
So yeah, great, do you want to try it or
do you Okay? I haven't. We want everyone to know.
Jamie and I committed to this, but we thought that
we were going to record in a week and we're
recording two days later.
Speaker 3 (12:35):
I know, and I just started memorizing it today. But
I can do I think verse sixty three, so verse
sixty threas starts out, but Jesus remained silent, which doesn't
really go along with the rest of it. But so
the rest of it is okay, the High Priest said
to him, I charge you under oath by the Living God.
Tell us, if you are the Messiah, the Son of God.
(12:58):
You have said it was, you have said it is so,
Jesus replied, You have said so, Jesus replied, So that's
as far as I got. Sorry, it's not very kind
of anti climactic, that is. And then he goes on
to actually say, but I say, from now on, but
I haven't gotten to that part yet, how about you.
Speaker 1 (13:15):
Yeah, yeah, I also started today because, like I said,
we committed for a week, and to be fair, I
had a couple of those.
Speaker 3 (13:23):
Blocks to have to get over, which is in itself informative.
So that's a good thing.
Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah. Yeah, it was really useful to have that post
it and just john him down because I knew that
you and I were going to be talking about scripture memories.
I'm like, okay, here's all the blocks that had come up.
Let me see if there were any more on my
posts that I forgot to mention for me accuracy was
a big one. It was like, if I practice it
just to my but I say a word wrong, I'm
(14:02):
not going to know, and then I'm just going to
be reinforcing the wrong word.
Speaker 3 (14:07):
I had that too, because I kept looking back instead
of trying to memorize it myself. I kept looking back
at the thing because I didn't trust myself and I
didn't want to say it wrong because I didn't want
my brain to like imprint that yeah ession.
Speaker 1 (14:20):
And I think that just again becomes where good enough
is good enough, Like you say it is so, or
you say that it is so, they mean the same thing,
and so it doesn't matter like which you use. You know,
the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want versus
the Lord is my shepherd. I shall not be in
(14:41):
one like, hey, that one's just which shepherd translation you've
decided to go through, But b it means the same thing,
so it doesn't really matter. So yeah, I have learned
to accept the fact that like, yeah, percent, that's a
bee getting a B and Bible memory is going to
(15:03):
be good, Like I'm okay with my eighty percent, and
if feeling like I need to get one hundred percent
is actually what's keeping me from doing it at all?
That I would way rather be a B student and
get eighty percent of a big chunk of scripture memorized
and never opening up my Bible because I'm afraid I'm
(15:24):
not going to get a hundred.
Speaker 3 (15:25):
Well, and you have to think, if you're in that
prison cell with no Internet and no Bible, will you
get the point across missing a couple of words. And
I am not in any way saying that we should
paraphrase scripture, but the bottom line is if you get
the idea of what it's saying, then that is, you know,
at some point, it's absolutely better than not having access
(15:47):
to it at all.
Speaker 1 (15:48):
Absolutely right. Like memorizing the Beatitudes, for example, it's more
important to know that God has called the Peacemaker's blessed
than to know the exact threeason why, because like when
you read the Beatitudes, there's like, you know, eight or
ten different virtues and then eight or ten different reasons
why they're blessed. But they're all fairly enterchangedabolans, you know.
(16:12):
Not that again, not that we want to mistreat scripture,
but it's not a sin for me to say, blessed
are the peacemakers for theirs is the kingdom of heaven
if like if actually the Kingdom of Heaven belongs to
the meek, and I, you know, and I mess them
up right, like I think God is gonna give me
some grace there. And all right, so I had chosen
(16:36):
to go to Romans eight, and I'm gonna be starting
at twenty eight, and I am I've just decided I
found one of my really old, like old school nibs,
and I'm just gonna stick with that. So all right,
let me get myself started. I'm to where like I
need to look at it to get myself started. It's
(16:56):
almost like the training meals you know what I mean,
and then I can and then they like, okay. And
we know that in all things God works for the
good of those who love Him, who have been called
according to his purpose. For those he fore knew, he
also called to be conformed to the likeness of his son,
and those he fore knew he also called. I got
(17:18):
some of those wrong, okay. If he foreknew them, he
predestined them. And then for those God for knew he
also called. Those he called he also justified. And as
he justified, he also glorified, And that's kind of what
I mean. It's like they all sort of mean the
same thing. So if I like I switched up in
my brain the order between being called and predestined, is
(17:40):
God going to be mad at me for that? No?
Am I going to sacrifice somebody's eternal soul if I
am witnessing to someone in a jail cell where there's
no Bible and I say called before predestined, when really
it was predestined before called no. Right, So and that's
a pretty big step for me to learn to be
okay with Okay. Yeah, So that's that's kind of been
(18:05):
my journey. So now that we've done our versus the day,
I guess it's time to open up in a worder.
Speaker 3 (18:10):
All right, God, we just thank you for your word,
and we just thank you for the ability to let
go of perfectionism for the sake of just loving your
word and being open and excited about committing it to memory.
And we just pray that today we would just be
able to appreciate even more the gift of scripture.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And for those of us that have a hard time.
Speaker 3 (18:36):
Getting back into memorizing things, I just pray for the
supernatural ability to open ourselves up to learning something new
or to relearning something that's gotten difficult over the years,
so that we can not just to check something off
of a list, but to seriously just for the process
(18:57):
of getting to know you more deeply and and actually
incorporating scripture into our being in a way that just
makes us love you more.
Speaker 2 (19:06):
Amen.
Speaker 1 (19:07):
So interestingly, one of the blocks that I thought I
would come against that I really didn't is this question
of like, how do I choose what to memorize first?
Did you have that or were you just kind of like, Okay,
this is the one I'm going to.
Speaker 2 (19:22):
Do it sort of?
Speaker 3 (19:23):
I mean, it took me a little bit of time because,
like I said, I had in my head, Okay, I
want to memorize something where I can just present the
Gospel in a nutshell to somebody in I'm picturing the
prison cell. That's my goal, is what are my wants
and go tos if I'm on a deserted island with
twenty people. And so my block was that it's long
(19:47):
the one that I thought I wanted to start memorizing.
So I'm going to And then I realized about myself,
I'm I'm going to start small and so it wasn't
that bad, but it was a little bit of a process.
Speaker 1 (19:58):
Huh yeah, I I figure that that would be one
of my biggest blocks because it's almost like, by choosing
Romans eight, I'm saying that Romans eight is better than
Isaiah Forte. Who am I to say that? But it
sort of did, like, Okay, I think it was just
God being like, here's where you should start. So if
people do have that as one of your blocks, I
(20:19):
would just prabay and ask God to show you. And
for me, it was just kind of really natural where
to begin with that. Another option could be think about
times where you wish Bible recall would come to you.
So maybe it's at night and you feel anxious, so
then maybe you could just google good Bible versus for anxiety.
(20:40):
You know, you could do it kind of topically or
issue based, or maybe you have a hard time with
a specific sin. Maybe you are hot tempered and you
can just look up what are some verses that speak
about anger and make that one that you do. But
by choosing, you're not saying that that verse is more
(21:02):
important than another. It's just what God is bringing to moments,
you know, just like if I eat spaghetti for dinner tonight.
I'm not saying that spaghetti is inherently better than lasagna.
You know, they're just two different meals.
Speaker 2 (21:15):
They just are. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (21:17):
Well, where I started when I first started memorizing scripture
in college was the Navigator's Topical Memory System. And we're
not like promoting it in terms of like we don't
get a kickback. I think it's a free resource. But
it's the topical memory system. And they actually have categories.
So if you have something that you want like living
(21:38):
the New Life, they have you know, Christ, the Center,
Obedience to Christ, the Word, prayer, fellowship, witnessing like they have.
They have it topically organized so you can choose like
which ones, and they do have kind of a method
to what you memorize, kind of to equip you to
share the Gospel more fully, more easily. And so yeah,
it's it's a pretty Oh I guess you do have
(22:00):
to buy it, so but I think you probably you
can buy the cards that you can tear apart, but
they have all of them listed so you can create
your own cards based on their resource. So all of
that to say, if you need to use something, it's
that's a really easy one to use. But there are
tons of them.
Speaker 1 (22:19):
Absolutely, we have Google now, we even have chat GPT.
So you could even say, I'm the fifty year old
woman trying to get back into Bible memory, and I
like this translation and I want a passage it's not
too long that talks about this, and it'll give you
a bunch of options, and you could pick one right
from there. Maybe double check that I have not had
(22:39):
chat GPT. Ever, give me a Bible verse. It's not
a Bible verse, but I have had chat GPT, just
like make up facts that are true.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
Me too, Oh my gosh. And it'll always say, oh,
you caught me.
Speaker 2 (22:51):
Yes, I'm just.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
Like what, So double check it before you do it.
But that is an option as well. So when you
memorized the one that you started working on, did you
just start looking at it and learning it or did
you have any other systems for how to do the
(23:13):
act of memorizing.
Speaker 3 (23:15):
I did just basically. I would do the first few words,
cover it up, say them, and then I did the
first few words plus a few more. Now, though as
you say that, I remembered what you said about memorizing.
The large amounts of scripture, it might be beneficial to
memorize the first few words, then memorize the next few words,
(23:39):
and then put the two together.
Speaker 2 (23:41):
I'm thinking for my brain because when I just keep
adding and adding and adding, one.
Speaker 3 (23:45):
Of my blocks is ooh, that's too long, like when
I start to see the string getting longer and longer.
So I think, maybe, like you what you did, only
I do it on a micro scale of like, okay,
first few words, then the next phrase, just memorize that
phrase and then put the two together. So I think
that's what I'm going to do for the remainder. But
what I had been doing was reading a little bit,
(24:07):
then adding a little bit more, adding a little bit more,
and it was challenging.
Speaker 1 (24:11):
Yeah, eventually you know what your brain capacity is and
you need to basically make it into a smaller chunk
than what max is out your brain capacity.
Speaker 2 (24:23):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (24:24):
One of the I don't think this is a block,
This is just a logistic problem that I come across
when I memorize, is how do I know if I'm
getting it right? Because if I'm just here doing it right,
Like we think of Bible memory as something that a
kid does in Sunday school and there's a teacher there
and you're chanting it with the group, and all of
those things are so good for memory, right, like speaking
(24:47):
of it out loud, doing it kind of more chanty,
doing it in a group, so there's reinforcement. But if
you're just sitting there with your Bible, most of those
aren't available to you. You I would come up with
a chant. I think that's actually very beneficial, but I'm
too self conscious to do that out loud, even if
I'm home alone, which you know, there's another block that
(25:10):
I could eventually get over.
Speaker 3 (25:11):
Yeah, well one thing if you're not if you're open
to it, I remember it was for a Wana. There's
a CD that you can get and if you are
not opposed to singing little kids songs, it was so effective.
And it's not like great music. It's not great tunes.
It's very repetitive and generic sounding. But you would be
(25:34):
amazed if you haven't already learned things through Auana music.
Speaker 2 (25:38):
Or no no, no, no, I'm sorry. Was it a Wana?
Or was it Good News Club?
Speaker 1 (25:43):
There's tons of resources and most of them.
Speaker 2 (25:46):
Are both Good News Club.
Speaker 3 (25:49):
But yeah, even the most sing songy generic tunes stick
in your head better stick in my head absolutely well.
Speaker 1 (25:57):
And there are some albums for Bible memorization that are
more geared toward adults. So honestly, for me, if I
were to do it, I'd be like, give me the
kid stuff. It's more fun, it's more catchy. But there
was definitely a time in my life where I would
have been almost insulted by that and it just wouldn't
have resonated with me. And so I do know that
(26:19):
there are lots of people who make scripture memory versus
set to music, and sometimes they're more paraphrase and sometimes
they are definitely like verbatim to the word, And you
just have to decide what you're most comfortable with. Do
you know the band Shane and Shane, So they have
an entire album. It's just an acoustic album called Psalms,
(26:42):
and it's beautiful and they're all inspired. All the lyrics
are inspired by Psalms, but they're not like verbatim from Psalms.
But I know there are also people who for adults
take John three sixteen and set it to music. But
like I said, to be fair, the kid's stuff is
catch here, it's going to be in your head more. Yeah,
(27:05):
to me, I'm at the stage of my life where
it's more fun anyway. So yeah, the one thing that
I could definitely see myself wanting to add that I
wouldn't be self conscious about doing home alone is signing.
So the whole thing that I came across it was
like called predestined, justified, glorified, and like it's like, what
order do those go in? I think I could definitely
(27:28):
if I learned the sign language for those, or even
just some kind of hand q that helps me do
it in order, I think I would memorize it more,
or if I really wanted to, I could come up
with a mnemonic, right, so I could be Okay, first
it's called then it's predestined, so CP. So now I'm
(27:53):
thinking about cerebral palsy, which is kind of a sad
thing to be thinking about, but that's what I'm thinking about.
So you know, I can I can tell myself it's
a three were palsy verse. So okay, those he called
he predestined because see has to come first, right, There
are lots of mnemonics there. One of the things that
I find for when you get logistically to just if
(28:14):
you're learning a passage by yourself, and you don't have
a great way to test yourself. There are apps that
will do this, or I like to do it in paper.
What I like is to write down the first letter
of each word and then just put it on a
(28:34):
note card and look at the note card and see
if I can do it all of that way. It's
basically the equivalent I know a lot of Sunday school teachers.
You'll write the entire verse on the board yep, and
everyone will say it out loud, and then you'll just
erase one word at a time, and when you're with
a group, and when you're doing it in a kind
of sing songy tone, by the time every word's been erased,
(28:57):
you can do the whole thing. So I like having
the first letter of each word as a cue. And
then what you can do is, once you get comfortable
with that as you can turn it into the first
letter of a phrase and then like the first letter
of averse or the first letter of a paragraph, just
kind of to keep you on track. But right now,
(29:21):
if your only options, like for me, my only option
is to have it in my head or to have
the whole thing in front of me in the Bible right,
and so there's there's not an imagery, but I know
there are apps that will do this as well, and
so it can be specifically a Bible memory app. I
don't have any to recommend, but I know there exist,
(29:43):
or I know there are apps designed to help people memorize,
you know, like a speech or something. There are some
where you can if you're an auditory learner, you can
record yourself saying it and then what it will do
is it will read it back to you but leave
out certain words, and then in your brain you're filling
them in. So basically you're doing the same thing that
(30:04):
Sunday school teacher is doing by erasing one word at
a time. Another way you could do it. Another kind
of logistic hurdle I come across in this is if
if it's just me, I don't know if I'm saying
it right or wrong right, so I might think I
have it totally right, but I might be forgetting an
entire middle section. So I know there were apps where
(30:26):
you can record yourself and it will tell you, or
you know, you could even just there are so many
voice memo apps. You could just record it as a
voice memo and then go back and check it against scripture.
Speaker 3 (30:50):
And one of my favorite ways to memorize scripture was
with a partner, Like I had a friend and we
would get together once a week and so she would
have it in front of her and I would say
it and she would, you know, go like this, and
if I made a mistake, and that would.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
Cue me to try again.
Speaker 3 (31:07):
It was you know, you can get a live human
to just kind of bounce back. I had forgotten the
whiteboard thing when I was a Sunday school teacher, and
that was my favorite way because it was so really
so easy for me because I would just yeah, and
that way, like you're not just reading all or nothing.
You're taking away and you're practicing and reinforcing.
Speaker 2 (31:27):
That was my favorite way.
Speaker 3 (31:28):
I think I'm actually I have a whiteboard that we
haven't used forever. I saw it in my son's room
the other day. I think I'm going to actually do
that and use it for my Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:37):
Yeah, that one's a useful one. Or when I did
Sunday school, I think we even did this sometimes in
middle school youth group in order to incorporate more motion.
You would all stand in a circle. We'd have a
ball like a beach ball, and you would throw the
ball and say a word, oh yeah, and that person
would catch it and say the next word and throw
it to someone else. Because I am such a firm
(31:59):
below and I know it works two varying degrees. It
works for me so much better when there's a physical component,
and for some people that's less important. But I don't
think in most I don't think it's ever detrimental to
add the physical component. It's just some people it helps
them like a bajillion times like me, and some people
it might help you a little bit extra. But so yeah,
(32:21):
that would be I would say, if I really wanted
to add one more component for myself, it would probably
be in the tricky parts where I get caught up
learning some of the sign language or some kind of
hand motion to help me run through that.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
Yeah, as long as you're consistent, it doesn't matter what
the hand motion is. You can make up whatever you
want as long as you do it the same every time. Yeah,
although it would be very cool to learn sign language, Yeah, I.
Speaker 1 (32:49):
Mean, it'd be a nice way to learn some signed vocabulary,
so I may as well do it that way. Unless
there's a huge reason to make it a different way. Yeah,
So well, I want.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
To hear your testimony.
Speaker 3 (33:02):
I want to hear the part where you found yourself
unable to memorize scripture.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I've never heard this story.
Speaker 1 (33:09):
It wasn't until we started talking about Bible memory that
I even like considered this part of my testimony. And
I got super emotional even thinking about it, because it's
slight losing a sense, Like that's how significant it was.
So in our previous episode about Bible memory, I did
(33:33):
talk a lot about like growing up with a lot
of Bible memory, incorporated into our family life and incorporated
into my spiritual disciplines, and so it was definitely just
part of me and of like being someone who likes
to listen to music is just part of me. And
then I went to college and for a couple of
(33:54):
years I didn't have a church, and I was also
just really intellectually bombarded with so much outside questions, like
the questions that your son had. But it wasn't it
was never like is God true? That was never it,
but it was you know, think about every single like
(34:18):
liberal college campus and all of the questions that would
come at you. And if you've come from a pretty
sheltered Christian life, like you're just ready for all of
those questions.
Speaker 3 (34:30):
Yeah, right, taking like a New Testament and Old Testament
literature classes, and one of the professors was an atheist
and he wanted us to be shaken. He saw all
these young, wide eyed Christians and he's like, hey, guys,
this isn't a Bible study. This is a class. And
it was paradigm shifting for me.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
Even to learn how non Christians would view the things
that I just never even thought about. Yes, it was like,
what do you mean that your God told his closest
follower to slaughter his son on a mountain? Like we
learned that as a cute story of God's provision and all,
wasn't Abraham so faithful?
Speaker 3 (35:12):
We don't realize the actual act and what it would
have happened, And.
Speaker 1 (35:17):
Yeah, yes, and so yeah, it was just intellectually such
a difficult time for me. Plus I was so absorbed
in my studies because I needed to get the A
plus and everything. I wasn't okay with being a B
student at that point, and so like my brain was
(35:39):
just so tired, and I really think that's what it was.
Like I went years without reading a novel, which I'll
look back be like that is so sad, and because
like my brain, Like I did take some literature classes,
but after I graduated, like I went two years without
picking up a single book other than the Bible. It
was just my brain was tired. And so I think
(36:04):
those were some of the things, Like if I had
to go back and be like, you know, how did
this happen? A I wasn't being regularly fed the Word
because some of my Bible memorization, I was fortunate enough.
And I think this is just like genetically in personality,
like I could pick it up just by hearing it,
you know, And so I didn't always have to sit
(36:26):
down and force myself to memorize. I did that as
a practice, but like there were a lot of verses
that I knew just because I heard them in sermons
and stuff. And since at that point I'm going back
on my rant, I was hearing them all in the
same version of the Bible, and I didn't have twelve
conflicting versions on my head.
Speaker 2 (36:43):
The versions just or the passage just stuck.
Speaker 1 (36:46):
So I wasn't getting fed a regular input of scripture.
I was still reading the Bible myself, and I would
still for a bunch of it, like there was still
like a dorm Bible study. I would ATTENDANTU. But there
wasn't like a church community where I was sitting and
listening to a sermon. So I don't know if that
had to do with it. I'm sure some of it
(37:08):
had to do with one hundred percent of my mental
energy was focused on schoolwork, and so maybe my brain
was even trying to protect me. It was like, you
don't have room to keep these memory versus in your
head and learn all of these nomenclature rules for organic chemistry,
so let's just put these aside, kind of like the
(37:29):
cleanup crew in Inside Out, where they're just cleaning her
brain from memories she doesn't need anymore. Yeah, I think
my brain, Yes, I think my brain was probably like, okay,
if getting an A is her primary goal, which at
that point it was, and I have to choose between
remembering this random fact about Raskalnikov in Crime and Punishment
(37:53):
versus what does Romans six say? Okay by Roman six,
And then I think we add on to that just
you know, stress, emotional stress from being away from home,
physical stress. I ate really poorly. I tried to I
decided that I wanted to try to be vegetarian, but
basically that just meant I ate like pasta, like for
(38:17):
a semester, so like, you know, no veggies, no protein.
So I think I think there were so many things
that went into it. And then in addition, using my
brain and my faith together heightened this sense of unease
(38:41):
that I felt being in that environment. So again, I
think my brain was kind of like, Okay, we'll talk
about faith when we're not talking about intellectual stuff, and
we'll talk about intellectual stuff. You know. I think my
brain was trying to do me a favor by really
compartmentalizing the two. And so like I believed in God,
still followed the Bible, still acted like, you know, an obedient,
(39:05):
moral Christian girl, but I could not recall a Bible verse,
like it would have been hard for me to tell
you what John three sixteen said, and that's you know,
I mean, that's one of the ones that's just you know,
from being three years old and up. And it wasn't
(39:26):
as if I knew that I had lost it. It
was more like so it's hard to explain. Like again,
I think my brain got so compartmentalized that it probably
just didn't think about the fact that I didn't have
Bible recall, and it came out. It came to a
(39:49):
huge head this summer before my senior year of college.
So for people who have followed this story on Christian
true crime junkies, I told my whole testimony of joining
a really abusive, authoritarian cultish church. This is the summer
before that happened, and so this is where it all
(40:13):
kind of came to a head. So what happened was
I went on a mission trip that summer. It was
a first mission trip, actually the only mission trip I've
ever been on, and I went to Russia. And at
the time, I had just taken the MCATs, I was
waiting to get my MCAT scores, or I think I
had just gotten my MCAT scores before I left, and
(40:35):
I had at least started the process of applying to
medical schools, and this mission trip to Russia was kind
of going to be like the one the one thing
I did before. I just like jumped right back into
the grind of a really growling school year and finished
up my senior year. And while I was there, I
(40:59):
was lying in bed. It was kind of like first
thing in the morning, I was probably jet lagged or something,
so like I was lying in bed but not asleep,
and the verse came to me and it said, do
nothing out of selfish ambition or rain conceit. And it
was the first time that God had allowed Bible recalled
(41:19):
to come to me in years, like maybe since I
left for college, like after high school. And it was
so convicting because I knew, like simultaneously what God was
telling me, and what God was telling me was that
my medical school plans were just selfish ambition. It was
(41:42):
just because I wanted to prove that I was the
best student. And in the early two thousands, what did
you do if you wanted to prove you were the
best student? You got into medical my doctor. Yes, And
it was so convicting. It was also difficult, like it
was it was a bagi things. Simultaneously, it was the conviction.
(42:02):
It was one of the heaviest senses of conviction. I've
ever experienced. It was also oh, no, my parents are
going to be really mad, So there was fear there.
And also I was worried about what the other people
that we were on this mission trip would say because
in all of the pre mission trip stuff. It was like,
(42:23):
now this is the caricature of what I was told,
So this is more extreme. Now you're going to get
there and this is going to be so new for you,
and you're going to get so excited about serving the
Lord that you're going to think he wants you to
be a missionary. But it's okay, it's just the emotions.
You're going to get caught up in emotions. Just know
that it's going to pass. It's just a face, sweetie.
(42:46):
That's really what they wear into cancers. I get is
an important warning. You don't want people to make rash,
life altering decisions from a heat of the moment emotional level. Right,
Just like I can't tell you how many people I've
met who when you ask them how they got to Alaska,
they say, well, I went on vacation here once and
(43:07):
either never.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
Lever came back or yeah, never never went back home,
or yeah, or like went home, packed up and knew
that I had to live here forever.
Speaker 1 (43:16):
Yeah. Right. It's kind of a trope.
Speaker 2 (43:18):
I mean it is.
Speaker 1 (43:20):
And there was that trope of being on the mission
field and thinking that God was calling you to be
a full time missionary. But oh, that's just your emotions.
And so I was afraid of getting pooh pooed if
I were to go and tell the people that I
was with that I had had this extremely convicting moment
because basically I knew it. I had wanted to be
(43:42):
a missionary from the time I was very, very little,
and the medical school was the nope, you got to
have an actual career. And so basically, as it was
getting downloaded into my brain to do nothing out of
selfless ambition, it was don't go to medical school, disappoint
your family, pooh pooed by the people on your mission trip. Oh,
(44:04):
and by the way, you're going to become a missionary.
And that side of it never happened. That's a whole
other story that had more to do with medical stuff.
But it was, like I said, the very first time
that a Bible verse came to me in years. And
so then I got home, I did have that renewed
thing that they warned me against and that everybody poo
(44:26):
pooed of, like I got to read my Bible, I
gotta do all this stuff. And in the same way,
I hate when people make fun of or belittle like
teenage crushes. I hate when people make fun of or
belittle like a spiritual high after a retreat or after
an experience like this. Okay, is that the way I'm
going to feel for my entire life about the Lord? No?
(44:48):
Is it a gift that I felt that way when
I got home from Russia. Yes, and so I was
spending a lot more time in the world. Now. What
I was terrified of was that I was going to
have to go and rememorize every single Bible verse that
I had ever known. But I think, really, when I
look at it, I don't think it was that the
(45:08):
versus left my brain. I think that they were just
trapped and sealed, and so the act of getting them
back it was scary and daunting. But once that safe
got opened, it first slowly came back and then it
was just there again. So it happened faster than I
(45:28):
expected it too for it to come back. But it
absolutely made me realize what a gift it is, because
I had just taken it for granted in the same
me that I don't look at my hand and be like,
I'm so thankful I have a hand to day right right,
Like that's kind of how having scripture just you know,
I used like people used to joke that, you know,
(45:51):
that I was kind of a walking concordance because if
they would be like, what's that one verse about that
one thing? And this is pre google and I could
be like, I could either tell them it was or
I could flip into my Bible and find it pretty quickly. Yeah,
And to me, it didn't enter my head that that
was like the Lord give it and the Lord taketh away.
It didn't enter my head that that was something that
(46:12):
I could.
Speaker 3 (46:13):
Have lost and might have been like, you know, maybe
you even were just like, yeah, this is something that
I made happen, as opposed it's probably to make this happen.
Speaker 1 (46:25):
And so I deserve to have these verses at my
fingertips because I worked to memorize them, and I did
spend a lot of time in the Bible in my teens,
and so yeah, there was a sense of well, you know,
I hate to attribute this to myself, but I'm sure
there was some you know, if you worked hard, you
could have this too, you know, But then to have
(46:48):
it just taken away and then given back with a
snap of the fingers was very humbling.
Speaker 3 (46:54):
That's very cool, that's really neat to see. And I
think we can apply that to a lot of things
in our life lives that you know, you and I
talk a lot about the dangers of focusing so much
on the strengths of others that we don't recognize the
strengths and ourselves. And I think for you that was
a huge strength and a huge thing that you just
(47:14):
like you said, it's like, you know, writing with your hand.
You don't think about that hand being a gift? Do
you think about it as just how things are?
Speaker 2 (47:22):
So I don't know.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
It's a reminder to be able to kind of without
having things taken away. If we could take a moment
and just reflect, like what are the gifts God has
given you?
Speaker 2 (47:32):
What are the things that you're using well now for
His kingdom.
Speaker 3 (47:36):
Or otherwise for you know, your creative process, your gifts,
your talents.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah, yeah, I think a good kind of listener holmework
could be ask yourself a Christian who knew you well,
what would they say, like, Oh, that comes so easy
for you, and you're like, doesn't it for you know,
kind of like Elwood's what like it's hard, Like ask
yourself what is that thing for you, and then assume
that that is a gift from the Lord, So a
(48:04):
drop any pretense of pride about it, but be realize
that there's a lot of responsibility. There was a long
time where I thought that God withheld that from me
as punishment because I wasn't walking with him like he
wanted me to be. And I think that there is
a sense of whoever has will be given much and
(48:27):
whoever doesn't use what they have, what even what they
think they have, is going to be taken from them.
It's you know, it's Jesus's version of what Uncle Ben
tells Peter Parker. With a great gift comes a great
sense of responsibility. So think about the one or two
things that are easy to you or at your worst,
what you might be judging about others for like, this
is so easy for me, why can't why can't you
(48:49):
do this? And then recognize, Okay, that actually is probably
a gift. That's probably not something I've fostered in myself,
because yes, I foster your Bible memory work. But I
wouldn't have done that if God hadn't made it easy
for me. Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 3 (49:07):
Yes, No, I totally get it, and I feel like
it just makes me realize that there are things that
we might just be thinking like it's this isn't really
work of the Lord.
Speaker 2 (49:19):
This is this is cheating because it seems so easy.
Speaker 3 (49:23):
Of course, in order to serve God or to you know,
use my talents, I should have to put some skin
in the game. I should have to be like, work
hard and sacrifice and be a little bit miserable for
it to count right, right? And I think, while, yes,
we don't need to just be only focusing on things
(49:44):
that come easily, but I don't know to appreciate like, Okay,
this is how God made me. And if I love
doing this thing all the better, you know, let me
just keep doing it and doing it well and keep
working at things I love.
Speaker 2 (49:58):
I don't know.
Speaker 1 (49:59):
I don't know, yes, And if my story might be
you know me, I'm not a fearmongerer, but I would
not mind my story being used as a tiny bit
of And what would you do if God took that away?
You know? Or is there a chance that if you're
not using the gifts God has given you that he
might take them away?
Speaker 2 (50:17):
There absolutely is.
Speaker 1 (50:18):
I don't think that he does it capriciously. But if
you know, let's say, if doing hospitality is something you
love and just comes so natural and you're so good
at it, and maybe you're even tempted to look down
your nose at people that it doesn't come as easily too,
And then you go four years or that ever inviting
(50:41):
anybody into your home because of this, that or the
other thing. Don't be so brash to assume that the
minute you decide to pick it back up again, that
it's going to be there for you. Yeah. I think
of it almost like how the ancient Greeks would think
of a muse, like the creative muse. They were seen
(51:01):
as extremely capricious. It was like here one day, gone
the next, and you never know, so you're always thankful
when it shows up. And I don't say that we
think of God that way, but I think there should
be a tiny bit of healthy humility when we think
about the gifts that we've been given. Just because God
gave you a gift today doesn't mean he can't take
(51:22):
it away. And that means that we do needs to
be good stewards of it, and we shouldn't be prideful
of it. And if you're not using it. There might
need to be a tiny bit of healthy fear and
just that uneasy feeling in your gut. Ooh, maybe maybe
(51:43):
I'm not living up to God's expectations for me. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (51:47):
No, that's a really good point.
Speaker 1 (51:49):
Yeah. Well, anything else do you want to add regarding
either just kind of spiritual gifts or back to the
Bible memory side of things.
Speaker 2 (51:57):
I don't think so. I just I'm excited to be
back into it. It's fun.
Speaker 1 (52:02):
Yeah. Yeah, I'm really glad that we got into that
discussion about it and I got kind of a reason
to get back into it too. Well. With that, let's
close with our blessing and an addiction. May God fill
your heart with greater joy than all the world could
ever offer. May He fill you with joy and his presence.
May God Himself be your joy and your delight through
(52:24):
sorrow and sadness. May the joy of the Lord be
your strength. May the Holy Spirit himself annoint you with
the oil of joy gladness to strengthen and encourage your
spirit to stay and forevermore.
Speaker 3 (52:34):
And our benediction is from Psalm sixty seven, verse one.
May God be gracious to us and bless us and
make his face to shine upon us.
Speaker 2 (52:43):
Amen.
Speaker 3 (52:47):
We'd like to take just a quick second to thank
the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us
on the podcast. If you go to lifeaudio dot com
you will find dozens of other faith centered podcasts in
their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting,
and so much more. That's life audio dot com.
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