MEMORIZING SCRIPTURES: GOD’S POWER SUPPLY FOR POWERFUL LIVING
By Frank Eiklor and Cecilia Contreras
LESSON 46 Part 3
INTRODUCTION
Thoughts! Our mind is filled every day with too many thoughts to count. Some thoughts are from God, some from the enemy of our souls and some perhaps merely human thoughts that might have value or be worthless.
I have found a powerful way to test any and all thoughts that enter my head. It is by testing them by what God says in His Word. “But” you say, “how can I do that. I can’t take time every moment a thought enters my mind to look up verses of the Bible.”
That’s where it pays to memorize many verses of Scripture. The Holy Spirit instantly brings the right verses to mind to help you know what thoughts are from God and which to throw away. And that is why memorizing scriptures prove to be God’s power supply for powerful living.
In these lessons we will not only learn the benefits and blessings of memorizing scriptures but also some simple instruction on how to do it. If you can memorize your name, address and phone number, you can memorize important portions of God’s mind—the Scriptures.
In our first two lessons, we learned of seven wonderful benefits we receive through hiding God’s Word in our minds and hearts. Following are more blessings God has in store for you.
8. SPIRITUAL INTIMACY WITH GOD
You’ll find a new intimacy with the Father. Quoting Scripture brings one into awareness of the direct presence of God. It’s awesome. I have often trembled, virtually unable to keep quoting or speaking in the presence of God. God loves His Word so much that He said “…thou hast magnified thy word above all thy name” (Psalm 138:2).
That is an amazing truth. Is there anything more magnified than the name of the Lord? Yet He has magnified His Word even above His name!? No wonder He also says, “Forever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89). Let God’s established Word work in you through memory, review, and obedience, and you’ll want His will, regardless of the cost.
I mentioned intimacy with the Father. John 6:63 states, “It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” God’s words are spirit and life. Creative. Life-giving. John 14:21, “He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father, and I will love him, and will manifest myself unto him.” Notice that He doesn’t say that just anyone who says, “I love you, Lord” really loves Him. It is the one who has His commandments—and keeps them—who loves Jesus and who will be loved intimately of the Father.
Where are His commandments found? In the Bible. What’s the best way to keep them? Memorize them. Never forget them. Review them over and over again. Practice them. And find a greater reward than all the world’s riches—intimacy with the Father. Jeremiah 15:16, “Thy words were found, and I did eat them; and thy word was unto me the joy and rejoicing of mine heart: for I am called by thy name, O Lord God of hosts.” I love Jeremiah. I can almost hear him saying, “Wow, just look at what I found. God’s words! I’m going to eat them. Digest them. Memorize them. Masticate every delicious morsel.”
No wonder Jeremiah could take any assault, stay true when all others were going false, love God when his nation turned to idols, and be God’s instrument to call His nation to repentance. He was intimate with the Father because he took God’s Word seriously and ate it. To me, eating the Word is memorizing, reviewing and obeying it. Making it is part of me forever is the fullest definition of eating and digesting it. Begin now and you’ll find, like Jeremiah, it will be the joy and rejoicing of your heart.
9. CONVICTION OF SIN
Memorizing and reviewing Scripture will bring conviction of one’s own sin. Psalm 119:9, “Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? By taking heed thereto according to thy word.” Just listen to the agony of the Psalmist as he says, “Lord, I live in the middle of a mixed-up, filthy and wicked world. Roads leading to hell crisscross my map. How can I find Your path? How can I keep clean in an unclean world?” And the Lord let him answer his own questions. “By taking heed thereto according to thy word.” By knowing it. Applying it. Obeying it. And a couple of verses later—as we shall see later—he certainly had in mind the memorizing and review of that Word.
As the years go by, I meet precious people who started out for God with good intentions. Years later, some are divorced, others ruined by scandal and still others have lost all joy in living. When I check them out, one of the most familiar patterns is that they did not live daily in the Word of God and prayer or keep hiding the Word in their hearts and minds.
10. SENSITIVITY TO HIDDEN SINS
I find that memory and review of the Word of God brings deeper revelations of hidden sins. Psalm 139:23, 24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting…” This is not just a typical request for the searching out of sin in a heart. Here is an honest cry of a person asking the Lord to point out if there is any “wicked way” within him. I think of a “wicked way” as different from “wickedness.” One doesn’t just backslide overnight. Sin is entered into subtly—compromise upon compromise, living a lie here and living a lie there—and, finally, the collapse into some open sin.
I want the Lord to show me any “wicked ways” in my life that will ultimately lead to “wickedness”: seeds of destruction in my life that may one day grow into trees of evil. And it’s amazing to see that the more one grows in Jesus, the more one is aware of the reality of sin and self. A wonderful Father begins pointing out things in our lives that we are too immature or dull to understand until we grow to the point where He can show us these things before they trip us up. That is one of the greatest benefits of the memorized Word.
11. PRIORITY OF PRIORITIES
Memorizing God’s Word should be one of our greatest priorities. It was to the Psalmist: “Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee.” (Psalm 119:11) There is a great truth contained in that short verse. Sin is earth’s greatest disease, God’s biggest heartache, Christ’s reason for the greatest sacrifice and the Holy Spirit’s reason for vigilant watch over His children. Sin. The most malignant of cancers that can begin eating at the vitals of even Christians whose names are in the Book of Life but who never really see sin, hate sin, and run from sin as God knows we should and could. But when we hide God’s Word inside by memorizing and reviewing it until we’re forced to obey it or leave it, what a benefit! It becomes the Holy Spirit’s greatest tool for keeping us clean. Then our lives and priority of memorizing the Word become a powerful example to others looking for answers.
12. WHEN SATAN FLEES
The Word of God is the only fire-power that Satan fears. Brevity will not allow me to give a full explanation of a classic section of Scripture, Matthew 4:1-11. Look these verses over closely. Though it may seem like old truth, see with fresh eyes its impact. Jesus was tempted three times in an all-out assault by hell. The Son of God versus Satan. Total good in confrontation with total evil. A plotting schemer versus someone weakened and hungry after forty days and forty nights of fasting.
Three legitimate needs faced Jesus; three places to bend, if not to break, and fail as the perfect sacrifice God would need as the cure-all for man’s sin. Three times He declared, “It is written” in order to defeat Satan. And when the devil tried the same thing—quoting Scripture out of context—Jesus counter-attacked with more of the Word as He, in effect, told the devil in verse 11 to “beat it.”
Isn’t is amazing that all of man’s technological and scientific genius cannot intimidate Satan. In fact, he uses that very genius to subjugate and imprison the world. But the old method is still the only method when facing the attacks of Satan: being armed with the Word of God and hurling at the accuser, “It is written.”
The best way to face specific attacks is through specific scriptures that cover those areas. To Satan’s temptation to lie, “It is written, Satan, lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds. Be gone!” (Colossians 3:9). To Satan’s temptation to look at pornagraphy or garbage on TV, “It is written, Satan, without holiness no man shall see the Lord…for whoever looks on a woman to lust after her has committed adultery with her already in his heart...Be gone!” (Hebrews 12:14; Matthew 5:28). To the temptation to worry and surrender to despair, “It is written, devil, Casting all your care upon him; for he careth for you”
(1 Peter 5:7). Submission to God is submission to His Word. The best submission is found in making that Word forever part of our lives. That happens when we memorize and review it. And when we submit to God, we can know for ourselves the powerful experience of resisting the devil and watching him flee (James 4:7).
(TO BE CONTINUED)
