Power Verses

Today Lighthouse Christian Center is preparing to launch something new and exciting for us:  Power Verses!  During 2013, we'll be memorizing passages of Scripture each week.  My background with the Bible started in Christian education.  My parents sent me to a Baptist school that believed in the importance of hiding God's Word in your heart.  I learned the Christmas story from Luke and a few Psalms among other passages.

As a young man, the Holy Spirit stirred a desire in me to meditate on God's Word.  I would carry a note card with a few verses on it when I cleaned or did chores.  I memorized the Sermon on the Mount while vacuuming the foyer at church.  Older and a little wiser, I'd probably say don't do something like that if you're getting paid to do something else!

I went through another period of intense Scripture memory just a few months before I found out that Lighthouse Christian Center was without a pastor - God knew what he was doing in my life, even when I didn't!  Lately, I just want to fall back in love with God's Word and take as many people with me! If you're interested you can click this link to find out more.  Let me leave you with 7 reasons for memorizing Scripture...

Why Memorize Scripture?

1.  Memorizing Scripture Allows you to meditate on the Word of God, all the time.  

Psalm 1:2  ...but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

Meditation on the Word of God leads to deeper insight and wisdom.  If you’re going to meditate on God’s Word day and night some of it needs to be in your mind.

2.  Memorizing Scripture increases faith.  

Romans 10:17 (NASB) So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

This can happen when you’re going over and listening to the memorized Word in your mind.

3.  Memorizing Scripture Shapes your world view.  

Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Would you like to be able to have the heart of God on any given matter?  Would you like to have the thoughts and attitudes of God on today's issues?  Memorizing and consequently meditating on God’s Word can manifest, and put to use the mind of Christ that’s in you!

4.  Memorizing Scripture makes God’s Word more readily accessible when overcoming temptation and fighting the enemy.  

Matthew 4:10a Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written...”
Jesus gave Satan the Word - an unstoppable force!  You don’t argue with the devil.  You give him the Word and forcefully invite him to leave!

5. Memorizing Scripture makes God’s Word available when comforting and encouraging others.

Romans 15:4  For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.

6.  Memorizing Scripture gives access to the truth when presenting the Gospel to others.

John 17:17b  Your word is truth.

7.  Memorizing Scripture teaches me the language that Jesus speaks.  

John 15:7  If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

If you want to learn a foreign language memorize the Word.  It’s foreign to anything this world has to offer!  He speaks to me from His Word.  I speak to him through prayer.  And if my prayer is Word-based, then how can I not pray in his perfect will?

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ (www.biblica.com)

Scripture marked NASB, take from the New American Standard Bible^®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,
1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation
Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)