21 Days of Deep LivingSample

By Heart

The benefits of the love of learning are many, to name a few: your mind is kept active, you are creative, new skills boost confidence and self-esteem and the list goes on.

This love of learning is also vital in our relationship with God. Learning and memorizing Scripture is a powerful tool we must adopt as it will serve us well on this Journey.

When children begin to learn their alphabet and connect the letters to their accompanying sounds, children are demonstrating their ability to think in abstract terms. They recognize that symbols like 'A' and 'B' have a set meaning. Knowing the sounds associated with each letter in the alphabet helps children build a solid foundation for a variety of tasks from reading to writing and helps develop confident learners. Children begin to learn as soon as they can demonstrate understanding.

Likewise, as believers it is important that we learn and memorize cornerstone Scriptures of our faith; Scriptures such as John 3:16, Galatians 2:20, 2 Corinthians 5:17, Romans 8:28 - these help us create a solid foundation for our spiritual growth. They are the basis we need to understand God’s Character and the basic doctrines that support our faith. These Scriptures have a set meaning and having the ability to recall and declare them wherever and whenever arms us as believers for the inevitable spiritual battles, opposition from the world, temptations, and confusion that we will face.

Circumstances and life will change. We will all find ourselves in valleys and on mountain tops but as we walk this Journey let your heart be a store for God’s Word. As Luke 6:45 says “A good person brings good out of the treasure of good things in his heart; a bad person brings bad out of his treasure of bad things. For the mouth speaks what the heart is full of.”

It is said that memorization is a critical learning technique that builds lifelong mental abilities. It trains the brain to retain more information, focus, and work with better agility and speed. This type of learning helps us store foundational concepts to use in the future, freeing our brains to grasp new concepts. So when it comes to memorizing Scripture we have to get practical:

• Try reading the Scripture multiple times throughout the day and over a week (Try sticking up post-it notes of the Scripture around your house so you can read it again and again throughout the day)
• Try writing down the Scripture multiple times
• Play the Scripture out loud via a Bible app and listen to it on repeat.
• Seek to have a greater understanding of the Scripture and how it applies to your everyday life; this will also aid in remembering it

First Peter 2:2 says “Like newborn babies, you must crave pure spiritual milk so that you will grow into a full experience of salvation…” For babies, milk is the essential building block for growing strong healthy bones and in turn a strong healthy body. If we want to go deeper in God’s Word, we must be intentional about knowing the Biblical basics - The ABC’s of the Gospel. We must desire to be good students of God’s Word by learning and meditating so that we can pass the many trials and tests we inevitably will have in this life.

Therefore do not neglect the act of knowing Scripture by heart; with it, we are building ourselves up, we are strengthening our faith and we are allowing ourselves to experience the fullness of His Word and Will. Use this time of prayer and fasting to get up to speed and learn the Word without looking!