Many people will (mistakenly) think that anyone who memorizes a huge amount of Scripture must be some sort of “super saint”. I have this to say about that, and that’s this: Super saint? NO I AIN’T! Not even close. (To echo the Apostle Paul in Romans 7:18, “For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh”.) In fact, just the opposite of their notion is true, because the more of the Bible I memorize, the more I realize how utterly and entirely sinful I am in and of myself, in my flesh. You see, as Psalm 19:7-8 clearly states, the Bible – and especially memorizing the Bible – “enlightens the eyes”. It breaks through the blindness which besets us from birth and opens one’s eyes. To the truth and existence and nature and will of God. To the nature and detrimental, destructive, and indeed deadly consequences of sin (Romans 6:23). And to the nature of man. Our flesh. Our fallacy. Our tendencies. Why we do what we do. Why we do what we should not and not do what we should! (Romans 7:19) So you can see why I say that the more Scripture one memorizes, the more one will see the righteousness of God and the sinfulness of oneself, of the flesh, to the extent that I can honestly say that I’m the BIGGEST SINNER I know, I’m the biggest sinner I’ve EVER known, and I’m probably the biggest sinner YOU’VE ever known, at least that’s how I see it, that’s my (believe it or not blissful) Bible-borne perspective.
But thankfully Psalm 19:7-8 doesn’t stop there! Because it’s just as clear that the Bible also “restores the soul” and “makes wise the simple” and “rejoices the heart”! It’s not just a win, not just a home run, memorizing and reciting Scripture is a GRAND SLAM! And not just spiritually, but humanly… not just in the spiritual realm, but in the human realm, not just in the life to come but also this present life (1 Timothy 4:8). And I can testify from firsthand experience that all of this is absolutely true: so long as I’m doing so on a regular basis, my spirit remains utterly joyful, rarely ever leaving the proverbial “cloud nine”. I find that I see things that many others don’t (heightened insight produced by the Word within). And I find that my heart remains filled with and focused on the things above, not on the things that are on earth (Colossians 3:2), not on the things which are seen, but unseen, not the things which are temporal but eternal (2 Corinthians 4:18) – what a wonderful way to go through life! And what’s amazing is that I’m just at the START this journey of memorizing the entire Bible, after which the Lord is leading me to turn this into a full-fledged, full-speed-ahead, full-time ministry – here’s the plan…
PHASE 1: Memorize the ENTIRE Bible as a “love/thank You” gift back to Him and also to prove, to demonstrate to the world the utter and tangible power and benefits of the ingested (memorized) Word of God! And for the first few months to highlight the need and leave room for the Lord to lead like-minded Bible-loving believers to support this in whatever ways they’re able and willing and excited to do so when learning about this historic endeavor and opportunity.
PHASE 2: After memorizing all or at least the vast majority of the New Testament, the next step will commence and entail totally changing the emphasis of this website from seeking one-time and especially Monthly Partners so as to get and keep this going to just giving back by meeting the needs of others, to “fulfill the law of Christ” by “bearing the burdens of others” (Galatians 6:2) and “serving one another” (Galatians 5:13; 1 Peter 4:10).
Specifically, I will make myself available all throughout the day virtually every day so anyone will be able to:
- Ask and receive Bible-based answers to their questions about the Bible itself, God, sin, human nature, and whatever else might be on their hearts at any given time. Literally for the rest of my or their lives, they will have a ready and waiting friend and/or listening ear and/or shoulder to cry on according to their need at the time. Without reservation, and without judgment.
- Submit prayer requests to be prayed for by someone who is brimming with the living Word within him, which I firmly believe is the biggest key to effective prayer: the Word sanctifies (John 17:17) and cleanses (Ephesians 5:26) and keeps pure (Psalm 119:9) and away from sin (Psalm 119:11); now combine all of this with the fact that “the eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous, and His ears attend to their prayer” (1 Peter 3:12) and “The effective prayer of a righteous man can accomplish much” (James 5:16b) and perhaps speaking most poignantly to the amazing link between memorizing Scripture and an effective prayer life, “If you abide in Me, and MY WORDS ABIDE IN YOU, ask WHATEVER you WISH, and it SHALL BE DONE for you.” (John 15:7). How will people’s lives literally change and be transformed by the supplication and intercession by one in whom such a massive amount of Scripture will be dwelling? GAME-CHANGER. Life-changer. WORLD-changer! (Literally. Just ask the people who were living in the time of Elijah.)
- Find a BIBLICAL – Bible-loving, Bible-believing, Bible-practicing – church near them, right in their local area! I am already in the process of putting together this network of churches; denomination will be irrelevant, the only criterion will be the extent to which they demonstrably adhere to the principles set forth in the Bible about “how one ought to conduct himself in the household of God, which is the church of the living God, the pillar and support of the truth.” (1 Timothy 3:15) With a primary focus on how supportive they are of Bible memory. I expect even just the human-interest/intellectual aspect of this project to attract countless people who aren’t even religious or are very early on in their spiritual growth who’ll need and want to find a church that will foster and maximize said growth.
- Find the businesses in YOUR area that are owned and/or managed by fellow Christians who love the Lord and His Word and realize the importance of and support Bible memory. Galatians 6:10 and 1 Timothy 6:2 make clear that it is our responsibility as Christians that our everyday choices inure to the benefit of fellow believers whenever possible, so I’m going to make that super easy and convenient by posting a nationwide (but searchable by state/county/city) LIST of Christian businesses so we can all choose THEM whenever we need a product or service; once assembled, it will appear on the “Find A Christian Biz” / Yellow Pages section here at BibleMemory.ORG so please check back for that in the coming weeks.
PHASE 3: Turn this burgeoning history-in-the-making effort into a full-speed-ahead, full-fledged, full-time ministry to Educate, Encourage, and Empower others to memorize and recite Scripture on a regular, systematic, verse-by-verse, book-by-book basis! Tall goal, but totally doable, because something very interesting happened as I memorized my very first book of the Bible, the New Testament book of James. That goal seemed not just tall but downright monumental. Undoable. Right? Wrong! Because, amazingly, the more of it I memorize, the EASIER it gets! The more of it I memorize, the more I am able to memorize. By the time I came to Chapter 5, I knew this large task was indeed going to be accomplished. BIG difference than when I was facing Chapter 1 Verse 1.
This is a fantastic real-life demonstration of Matthew 19:26 which says, “With men, this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.” Including memorizing the ENTIRE Bible! You see, in the physical realm, the more water you pour into a glass, the less capacity it will have for more water to be added. But in the spiritual realm, when it comes to God and His Word, the Bible, the exact OPPOSITE is true! The MORE you pour into your mind, the MORE capacity you’ll have for additional verses and chapters and books to be added! Not less. And this amazing power is exponential in nature: I saw a large increase in capacity from James 1 to James 5, but double or triple the capacity by the time I finished memorizing Hebrews 1-5, and then quadruple or quintuple the capacity by the time I finished memorizing Hebrews 6-10, and so on. This finding is literally historic, and indeed the closest thing to a bona fide miracle in recent history of which I’m aware: it’s verifiable, it’s tangible, and – due to the “living and active” nature of the Bible (Hebrews 4:12) – it’s even repeatable. While the specific extent of this phenomenon might vary from person to person, the essence of the Word does not. Ever. This is how I’ll be able not just to Educate and Encourage the masses to memorize and recite Scripture on a regular, systematic basis but also to EMPOWER them to do so (the Word through me). (Believe me, once a person gets a taste of this, his or her life will never be the same. Human metaphors don’t really do it justice but in terms of the Christian life, it’s like trying filet mignon for the first time after a lifetime of eating hamburger.)
This will primarily be accomplished by producing a course, a syllabus, an entire series of videos, CD’s, and even audio cassettes, which will take all of this and make it SUPER EASY and CONVENIENT for people the world over to learn and apply this at their own pace and as their individual schedules permit. I am utterly convinced that another worldwide spiritual revival will occur, but I’m even more certain that it will only occur as people start ingesting the living Word of God by memorizing and reciting it regularly – “all the day” (Psalm 119:97) and even “day AND night” (Psalm 1:2-3).
By the way, this would be a great time to let you know that as I’ve been memorizing Scripture, a very specific METHOD of doing so is coming into focus, which, as noted above, I can testify firsthand is making it MUCH EASIER for me to memorize and retain – not just the Bible but EVERYTHING: to-do lists, schedule and meetings, various events that occur, etc., a true “sponge” effect! – and I’m 99.9% sure that it will do so for virtually anyone and everyone who applies it. It’s still coming together but seems to be getting close to the point that it can be rolled out. This one aspect alone of this one phase alone could easily and literally change the world and people’s everyday lives.
PHASE 4: Set up new and/or work with established addiction centers to specifically address the huge need for healing, curing, and then preventing from recurring (relapse) the massive crisis of addiction to pain killers, opioids, and other drugs, as well as the dreadful disease of depression. I am absolutely certain that the best and probably only way to truly beat, to truly eradicate, overcome, and conquer an addiction is to turn to something even more addictive – and I am equally certain that the most addictive thing in the universe is the BIBLE, the living and active Word of God, the Word ingested. No doubt about it. The main challenge is that so relatively few ever really give regular and systematic Bible memory a try, but I – with your and the Lord’s help – intend to change that!
It won’t happen overnight but I have no doubt that change is indeed coming. And just in case you don’t think the Bible extends or has relevance to the physical realm of human existence, I humbly give you Proverbs 4:22 which, referring to the Bible, the “my words” of verse 20, clearly states that His words “are LIFE to those who find them, and HEALTH to ALL their WHOLE BODY.” Is that an amazing verse or what?! We have a super-duper health “pill” readily available to us (the Bible is the most-published and available book of all time) yet SO FEW EVER ACTUALLY SWALLOW IT! To their utter “missing out” yet few if any are even aware of this because nobody has trumpeted it from the proverbial mountaintops but with your help I intend to change this, too, and do just that!
I didn’t start memorizing entire books of the Bible as a child but did memorize a lot of single Bible verses and – totally not surprisingly in light of that verse/truth/fact – I haven’t had to see a doctor or go to the hospital my entire adult life. Not even a single time. No emergencies. No health surprises. Not one. I don’t think the two are unrelated or that this remarkable health history is mere coincidence or the result of “good genes”; no, I’m certain it’s that verse at work.
No, it won’t happen overnight but down the road I look forward to organizing some clinical/medical trials to demonstrate that this is universal and not just specific to me. I dare say that other than imparting the Gospel or giving one’s own life to save another’s, there is no greater act of love and kindness and therefore Christlikeness (since He epitomized and epitomizes both) than to free a person from the cruel slavery and bondage of addiction or depression, to provide them with the answer, the antidote, something that actually and permanently WORKS! So even just this phase of the action plan will likely be enough to revolutionize the nation and world.
CONCLUSION: If you like what you’ve heard here and found yourself nodding in agreement several times, please read on…
While There’s Still Time, Before It’s Too Late, Just As You Are
/in Uncategorized /by Bible MemoryAs you know, the nation has seen an alarming (humanly speaking) (not for those of us who are aware of God’s utter sovereignty) rise in crime for the past two years and the past one in particular.
Today it was a mass shooting in a Brooklyn subway car in our biggest city.
Sad, senseless, and somehow almost expected given the current state of things.
Here’s a tweet from someone who was on the subway train right beside the one in which the shooting took place, backed up by how close the gunshots sound…
… but even more stark than the gunshots were how downright unpanicked these people seem to be. As though they were super-duper certain that they wouldn’t die or get hit by one of those bullets.
This is EXACTLY in line with what I wrote in not one but two recent posts, particularly this one in which I discuss 2 Peter 3:3-7 which notes that end-times mockers will assume, will be self-assured, will be, yep, super-duper certain that the world won’t come to an end.
Because it never has. But Peter’s point is that just because something has never occurred doesn’t mean that it won’t occur. Just because something has never happened doesn’t mean that it never will.
That’s true about the world’s end, and it’s equally true about how and when each of us will slip into eternity.
It has famously been said that “the only sure thing in life is death and taxes.”
Wrong! Because as true as anything is this fact: a day, an hour, a minute, a split-second will come when each and every person will slip into eternity and leave this world, leave this physical life behind.
Based on their faces and body language and overall demeanor, it looks like they don’t believe that or at least didn’t believe it was going to happen today.
Even though bullets were literally flying around them (33 based on current news reports).
It’s really, really, really hard for us humans to think we’re going to be dead and gone someday. Even though we understand this intellectually, it’s hard to think it’s going to happen anytime soon in any case.
Until it’s too late and that event is upon us.
Like the hoards of people who were simply going to work at the World Trade Center or Pentagon on a bright, beautiful, blue-skied day in September 2001, as they had countless days before.
Then it happened. WHAM! Eternity.
The fact is that each and every person will one day slip into eternity.
The key is for each and every person to be prepared for that. To prepare NOW, while there’s still time, before it’s too late.
Friend, if you’ve never done that, then right now, as you read this, you’re unprepared for eternity.
But the good news is that IT’S NOT TOO LATE to rectify that! It might be a decade or a year or a week or a day or a minute from now, but since you’re reading this, it means there’s still time, however much or little is known only by God but why take a chance, especially when the stakes or as big as they get: eternity. Forever and ever.
If you’ve never done so, I lovingly encourage you to just say something in the spirit of this to the Lord: “Jesus, I believe that you are the Son of God and God Himself who not only became flesh for me but, though You knew no sin, became sin on MY behalf so I can experience the righteousness of God and spend all eternity in heaven with You an all Christians when my time here on earth ends. I know even just from the news items day in and day out that this can happen at any time. As unlikely and unexpected and hard-to-imagine as that is, I confess that it’s true and therefore I confess my sins and ask You to change my heart and replace the anger and hatred which fills it with the true love which can only come from You. I give the rest of my life to You, and want to live not for my desires or pleasure anymore but rather for Yours… from this day forward, ‘not my will but Thine be done!'”
It’s not about mouthing those words, it’s about the spirit, it’s about the heart, that’s what counts in God’s eyes.
If you’ve already done that in the past, I encourage you to renew your commitment to and love for Him.
If you haven’t done that in the past, I encourage you to do so…
Right here. Right now. Just as you are.
.
.
If you sense that the Lord might be leading YOU to support the historic event unfolding in real-time here at BibleMemory.ORG and thus become my fellow worker and thus share in all of the fruit and blessings (3 John 8) and literally MAKE HISTORY together, here are the best ways to do so:
1. Become a one-time or monthly partner by making a donation via PayPal’s fully-secure Bible Memory page!
2. Encourage as many people as you can to support this historic event by having them go to BibleMemory.ORG/support (please make sure they understand that it’s .org, not .com) – doing so by word-of-mouth is great, and to do so with a single click on your social media simply click here then scroll down a few inches to the green box and select your platforms, it’s that quick and easy!
3. Add your name to my Prayer List!
4. Encourage as many of our fellow Christians as you can to pray for this historic event by having them go to BibleMemory.ORG/pray (please make sure they understand that it’s .org, not .com) – doing so by word-of-mouth is great, and to do so with a single click on your social media simply click here then scroll down a few inches and select your platforms, it’s that quick and easy!
5. Share this post on your social media by clicking on one or more of these platforms:
.
.
Living by an Airport
/in Uncategorized /by Bible MemoryAs referenced in past posts, I currently live by an airport. Three thoughts about this.
The first one is that I don’t just live by an airport but directly in one of its two take-off routes such that half of all flights each day fly right over my home.
My hi-rise home… meaning the airplanes, those huge hunks of steel and fuel, come RIGHT AT my window and then climb just enough to barely clear my building.
For a variety of reasons, for the past twenty years I have regularly kept the unbelievable events and lessons of 9/11 near the front of my mind, and always at least in the back of it. I’ve actually upheld that famous slogan, “We will never forget.”
I haven’t.
One reason is that while I – like all 330 million Americans and billions worldwide – was glued to the TV that unforgettable day, I watched in knee-jerk horror and pain yes for ALL of the victims of that morning and afternoon but none more so than when, that evening, the news channel scrolled – slowly scrolled – the name of my very best friend throughout my entire childhood and into high school and in a very real way ever since.
His family and he moved from the East Coast to California after his freshman year and he continued to excel in everything – academics, sports, being involved at church, dating (girls adored him, not unlike Tom Cruise or Val Kilmer at the time) – so it came as exactly ZERO surprise that he ended up getting into the U.S. Air Force Academy (not an easy feat as I’m sure many of you know to just get into that place, much less excel).
I had lost touch with him in the fifteen years that followed but when I saw his name slowly march its way up my television screen as being one of the people killed at the Pentagon on 9/11, well, I immediately made the connection, it totally fit that he would be at the Pentagon.
First name, middle initial, last name… I made the connection intellectually but emotionally it was as though Babe Ruth had come back from the dead for a nanosecond and hit me. With a sledgehammer.
I had never experienced emotional pain like that in my life. And in my life. I.e., something of such a massive scale which directly and dramatically affected me.
I say nanosecond because after my eyes, moving left to right, saw his name, they ended up on his age. 54… NOT A MATCH! Not even CLOSE! WAY OFF!!! I was so thrilled, so glad, so grateful. Never before, never since, and almost certainly never again had I, have I, nor will I hit extreme sorrow and extreme joy in the same split-second.
There are several other reasons that “day of infamy” (and heroism! Todd Beamer and group, among many others) has always stayed, never strayed too far from my mind, but that was the biggest, most personal one by far.
Ergo, today as I watch airplane after airplane flying RIGHT AT my window in the first few seconds of takeoff before climbing just enough in the next few, I can relate to what those people at the Pentagon and especially the World Trade Towers experienced just before impact. (I can fully relate to their anticipation, definitely not to their horror.)
(It brings me back to week-before-last’s post about 2 Peter 3:3-7, i.e., I can also relate to or, more accurately put, understand why the end-times mockers will just assume that the end will keep on “missing”, that it will permanently be delayed, never happen, since that’s how it’s always been, since that’s what’s always happened so far. I.e., those taking-off, low-climbing, fast-approaching airplanes have never hit my building and I’m sure they never will. The difference of course is that my assumption, my projection of the past onto the future will almost certainly prove to be right, while theirs will definitely prove to be wrong.)
The second thought about living right by an airport is this: God is SO great that what He creates is able to create. Even His creation is able to create all sorts of things, like airplanes and space rockets and microwave ovens and smartphones and pyramids.
The third thought about living right by an airport occurred to me again just yesterday.
I was out on one of my 2-4 each week several-hour walks/jogs (mainly the former 🙂 ) and part of my route was right along the river across from my building and the airport so while walking one gets the added, bonus benefit of the never-gets-old-or-boring sight of watching plane after plane approaching as they land. They fly right over the pedestrians’ heads, engines roaring mightily as they slowly decelerate as that particular flight is about to conclude. They’re so low, it’s as though you can reach out your hand and touch the airplanes.
It’s quite an exhilarating experience and sight and sound but also wondrous: how on earth can the massive combined weight of all those passengers and luggage and cargo and especially the metal, my goodness, all that metal stay afloat even as the speed decreases? How is it possible that the planes don’t just fall straight down onto the land or river thirty feet below? Intellectually I know why, I understand the physics of speed and thrust and wings and flaps and that good stuff from high school science classes. But it’s still hard to completely “wrap my mind around” exactly how the physics are able to actually work.
I think that’s how it is for all of us when it comes to God’s sovereignty and man’s free will.
I KNOW that BOTH are totally true, fully in effect at all times. Yet not a single person born of mother and father has ever been able to explain the synthesis of those two seemingly diametrically-different concepts… to oneself much less others.
And yet I’m not 51% or 75% or even 99% certain about both truths, I’m 100% sure.
But how can only those who have been “called” and “chosen of God” (Jude 1; Colossians 3:12; among many others) be saved, get into heaven? How does THAT mesh with man’s “free will”?
This is the essence of faith: like how a huge, heavy airplane can remain afloat even while slowing down, we might not be able to fully explain exactly how the seemingly competing facts mesh and gel, but we know that they absolutely do.
Three thoughts from a guy who lives and walks right by an airport.
.
Share this post with, well, EVERYONE!
.
Talk about a great golf lesson!
/in Uncategorized /by Bible MemoryThis has been quite a week for sports fans: Monday saw the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament (“March Madness”) wrap up with a thrilling, two-heavyweights, down-to-the-wire Championship, and today provided as entertaining and impressive a day of golf as I’ve ever seen, at the finale of The Masters.
Lots and lots of unusual things I’ve never seen in golf and probably never will again… like BOTH players on the final round of a major tournament making an Eagle on the same hole but then having those very same two players turn right around a few holes later and BOTH chip in a birdie from the same sand trap near the end of the round.
And then there was the fact that a different player shot the (tied-for) BEST score for the front or back nine in the history of that hallowed tournament.
And too many other such unusual things to list here and now but you get the gist.
The only thing it lacked was an exciting finish, as the 54-hole leader from yesterday never yielded his lead all day today (though he did provide some last-minute excitement when he missed not one but two tap-in putts on the very last hole) but the biggest takeaway for me was two sides of the same coin of a great life lesson.
First, the other half of the “last group” to tee-off was of course the fellow in second place at the end of yesterday’s third round and he came out of the gates red hot, scoring a birdie and going from being down three strokes to just two.
But it was pretty much all downhill from there for him on this crucial, pivotal, determinative fourth and final round.
He started out beautifully but his ending? Not so much.
Or put poetically:
Great start.
Fell apart.
And that reminded me EXACTLY of a fateful fellow from the Bible named Demas. Fateful, and fatally foolish. Why? Because he was given, he experienced one of THE ALL-TIME GREATEST roles in life: being in the innermost social and spiritual circle of none other than the Apostle Paul. We know this because Paul specifically named him, gave him a personal “shout out” at the end of not one but TWO of his Epistles which would later be included in the Canon of Scripture (i.e., I have a strong hunch Paul also gave him similar “kudos” at the end of many of his letters which weren’t canonized).
Wow! Wow!!! Getting a personal shout-out from the Apostle Paul himself for being one of his closest “fellow workers”… wow!!!
I’d be soooo jealous of that if I didn’t know what else Paul would later say about Demas:
Great start.
Fell apart.
Just like that golfer today.
The other side of the lesson coin from today’s golf finale was the fact that the start-to-finish leader the entire round just happens to also be the #1-ranked golfer in the world.
This is quite common in other sports, too.
Do you suppose it was mere coincidence that NFL quarterback Tom Brady won so many Super Bowls (and MVP Awards) during his legendary career with the New England Patriots? And then when he signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers he led that team to a Super Bowl victory, too?
Nope. Not a coincidence. Rather, it speaks to his consistency.
Or do you suppose it was mere coincidence when Michael Jordan led his Chicago Bulls to not one, not two, but three straight NBA Championships in the 90’s? And then, after taking two years off to try his hand at baseball after the untimely and very sad and senseless death of his dad, his best friend in the whole wide world as we used to say as kids, after two years off he came back and, yep, you got it, led his Chicago Bulls to not one, not two, but three straight NBA Championships AGAIN to make it six straight for him personally and six out of eight for daaaaa Bulls.
Talk about consistency!
And that could be said of Wayne Gretzky in hockey and Cal Ripken in baseball and Roger Federer or Rafael Nadal or Novak Djokovic or back in the day Pete Sampras or Bjorn Borg in tennis (and I have to include one of my personal favorites, Andre Agassi… not nearly so many titles as these other players but it seemed that for an entire decade or more he was almost always in the top two or three).
And even in the universally-viewed-as-random/luck world of poker, ever notice how the very same players end up at the final table and win tournaments year in and year out?
In all of these cases, it’s not a coincidence, it’s consistency.
As personified today by Scottie Scheffler at The Masters.
As personified most perennially by the Apostle Paul. (No surprise that he too seemed to be a true sports fan, given the many references to sports throughout his various Epistles.)
May we strive and recommit ourselves to follow the example of Paul, not Demas. Not just to start well but to end well.
.
Share this post with, well, EVERYONE!
.