Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 24

WE DID IT!!!!!

24 verses! Can you believe it?! Congratulations!!!

Here are the 9 ladies that stuck it out for the whole year:

Jenny A.
Ginny D.
Belinda G.
Deb G.
Karen K.
Danae L.
Joy P.
Cari
Mindy M.

Last year when I did the Scripture Memory challenge, I didn't go to the official celebration that Beth Moore had in Houston because I had a newborn. Instead, I had my own celebration. On New Year's Eve I recited all 24 verses to my husband and bought my favorite ice cream (Ben and Jerry's Cherry Garcia) as a special treat. It was fun to celebrate even though it was just something little.

A couple of people have asked me if I'm going to host this challenge again next year. I was only going to do it if Beth Moore wasn't going to have it on her blog, but, good news...Beth just posted her first post about Scripture Memory Challenge 2013:

http://blog.lproof.org/2012/12/its-spiral-time-sisters-lets-spiral-up.html

On her blog she has a really cute spiral notebook you can use for the verses for anyone who is interested. I was going to automatically buy one for each of you, but I didn't want to assume everyone wants to continue next year. If you need a break, no worries! However, if you would like to participate again next year on Beth's blog, please let me know and I will get you a spiral. If you are local, I'll make sure you get it before January 1st. If you are not local, you can email me your address and I'll mail it to you.

Please email me if you would like a spiral. I would like to order them ASAP: andynmegan@yahoo.com

Again, I'm so glad we all did this challenge together. I hope you were super blessed by it.

Oh, and I almost forgot my last verse:

Megan. L from San Marcos "We take captive every thought to make it obedient to Christ." 2 Corinthians 10:5b NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 23

TWO MORE VERSES LEFT!!!

Megan L. from San Marcos "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy and my burden is light." Matthew 11:28-30 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 22

Does it freak anyone else out that the next time we post our verses it will be December? Really?! How did that happen?

I'm so excited about the handful of you that stuck with it this year. Only three more verses to go!

Megan L. from San Marcos "I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws." Ezekiel 36:26-27

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 21

Only four more verses to go! Can you believe it? We are in the home stretch now!

Don't forget to go back and review your old verses. I've been trying to do this lately, and I'm definitely rusty on some of the verses from earlier this year. You may want to pick an easier verse this time around so that you have time to review.

I really like picking verses based on what lessons God is teaching me at the time, so it's neat going back over the verses from the year and seeing all the areas God's been working on in my heart.

So this is what God is working on with me right now:

Megan L. from San Marcos "Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world." James 1:27 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 20

Beth Moore often encourages women to pray scripture over their families. Paul has prayers in his letters to his churches that are excellent to use for this. I memorized one earlier this year, and I want to add another one to my memory list.

Here's a list of Paul's intercessory prayers for the saints. All are from the NIV.


Ephesians 1:17-19 "I keep asking that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the glorious Father, may give you the Spirit of wisdom and revelation, so that you may know him better. I pray also that the eyes of your heart may be enlightened in order that you may know the hope to which he has called you, the riches of his glorious inheritance in the saints, and his incomparably great power for us who believe."

Ephesians 3:16-19 "I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God."

Philippians 1:9-11 "And this is my prayer: that your love may abound more and more in knowledge and depth of insight, so that you may be able to discern what is best and may be pure and blameless until the day of Christ, filled with the fruit of righteousness that comes through Jesus Christ—to the glory and praise of God."

Colossians 1:9-12 "For this reason, since the day we heard about you, we have not stopped praying for you and asking God to fill you with the knowledge of his will through all spiritual wisdom and understanding. And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God, being strengthened with all power according to his glorious might so that you may have great endurance and patience, and joyfully giving thanks to the Father, who has qualified you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the kingdom of light."

2 Thessalonians 1:11-12 "With this in mind, we constantly pray for you, that our God may count you worthy of his calling, and that by his power he may fulfill every good purpose of yours and every act prompted by your faith. We pray this so that the name of our Lord Jesus may be glorified in you, and you in him, according to the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ."

Philemon 1:6 "I pray that you may be active in sharing your faith, so that you will have a full understanding of every good thing we have in Christ."

To make it a little easier on myself, I'm just sticking with one verse this time around:
  

Megan L. from San Marcos "And we pray this in order that you may live a life worthy of the Lord and may please him in every way: bearing fruit in every good work, growing in the knowledge of God." Colossians 1:10 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 19

After I found that great list of Scriptures to memorize that I shared in the last post, I stumbled across this great idea to make a book of Bible verses to read to your kids. The lady talks about how this idea that came to her after her son started saying all the nursery rhymes out of a book she had been reading him...

am i the mom of a genius?? i know better. this is normal. God gives kids such an ability to learn and absorb and remember. sometimes i wish i could remember how good it felt to remember. 

so, instead of filling Hunter's growing mind with dead rhymes, why not fill it with life breathing Scripture. 

and Scripture Scraps was born. it came to me all on its own, without pinterest even, during a car ride, where i was the driver... i hoped and prayed i would remember this idea until i had a chance to stop and write it down. well i did remember. so this must really be something.

You can click on the link to see the book she made for her kids. I LOVE this idea and immediately made one for my kids. I am not that crafty, so I just typed the verses on the computer. I included a lot of the Scriptures from that 50 Most Important Scriptures to Memorize list, and I also made sure to include other verses I've been working on the past couple of years. That way I can review my old memory verses and the kids can learn them too. Of course I haven't actually printed the book out yet, but it's on my to-do list! ;-)

So my verse for this time is one of the verses I used in the Scripture Book:

Megan L. from San Marcos "Let us then approach the throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need." Hebrews 4:16 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 18

Thanks to my lovely sister, I found a new blog that I really like. It's called To Love, Honor and Vacuum: Real Marriage. No Pretensions.

The blog is written by a Christian author from Canada, and it is obviously mostly about marriage. I was so happy that my sister recommended it to me because like I told her, Andy has been easily winning the "best spouse award" around here and I want to give him a run for his money.

One of the most popular (and most "pinned") blog posts from To Love, Honor, and Vacuum is her post called, "50 Most Important Bible Verses to Memorize"


It's a great list of verses to memorize if you ever have trouble coming up with a verse you want to work on. It's also a great list to have your whole family work on (if you are that ambitious!). I really like the author's comments about memorizing the 50 verses (She also recommends a few chapters to memorize):

Look at it this way: if you spend one year memorizing the fifty verses, and the next year reviewing those fifty and memorizing a chapter, and then go back to those fifty verses again to make sure you have them down, and then the next year go back and do a different chapter, and so on, over the course of ten years you’ll have 50 verses and 5 chapters so committed to memory there is no way anyone could ever forget it.

And I think knowing fewer verses, but knowing them inside and out, is sometimes more beneficial in the long run than trying to make yourself learn a verse a day or something.

So, for my verse this time around, I wanted to use one from her list.

Megan L. from San Marcos "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ he is a new creation; the old has gone, the new has come!" 2 Corinthians 5:17 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 17

In the book Discipline of Grace, Jerry Bridges talks about the importance of preaching the gospel to yourself every day. This helps us walk that line between trying to be good enough to somehow earn God's love and taking God's grace for granted. We are sinners, saved only by a costly grace through Christ alone.

Bridges recommends meditating on Romans 4:7-8 as one of the verses to use as you preach the gospel to yourself and I'm going to use it as my memory verse this time around.

Megan L. from San Marcos
Blessed are they whose transgressions are forgiven, whose sins are covered.
Blessed is the man whose sin the Lord will never count against him.

Romans 4:7-8 NIV

Here are more verses about God's awesome and total forgiveness:

He washes you. (Psalm 51:7)
He takes your sin far away. (Psalm 103:12)
He seals your sin in a bag and covers over it. (Job 14:17)

He treads it underfoot and hurls it into the depths of the ocean. (Micah 7:19)
He wipes it out. (Isaiah 43:25)
He chooses not to remember it. (Hebrews 10:17)
He puts it behind His back. (Isaiah 38:17)

Lord, help us live as those who know the gospel and live according to its power!

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 16

Whoops! In the business of our last week of summer, I totally forgot to post a verse! I'm going to miss summer, but it will be nice to get back into a more normal routine. Hopefully that means I'll get better about the spiritual disciplines in my life!! I'll post my verse in the comments. What is your verse this time around?

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 15

If you're anything like me, you've been spending way too much time watching the Olympics and neglecting real life. Yikes! It's ironic that watching amazingly disciplined world-class athletes makes me want to sit on my couch and watch them on TV all day and then stay up too late at night. Lord, help me have some self-control!

Megan L. from San Marcos "He is the Rock, his works are perfect, and all his ways are just. A faithful God who does no wrong, upright and just is he." Deuteronomy 32:4 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 14

Summer time is a hard time to stay focused and disciplined (at least for me!). Here is some encouragement for us all to keep striving:

"It is a common temptation of Satan to make us give up the reading of the Word and prayer when our enjoyment is gone; as if it were of no use to read the Scriptures when we do not enjoy them, and as if it were no use to pray when we have no spirit of prayer. The truth is that in order to enjoy the Word, we ought to continue to read it, and the way to obtain a spirit of prayer is to continue praying. Then less we read the Word of God, the less we desire to read it, and the less we pray, the less we desire to pray." George Mueller

Here's my verse:

Megan L. from San Marcos: "Whoever has my commands and obeys them, he is the one who loves me." John 14:21 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 13

Summer time sure is a crazy, busy, fun time for us! To give myself a little break, I'm going to review a verse I memorized last year. It's one that I really need to meditate on more. It's so easy for me to get caught up in this temporary world and I so easily lose an eternal perspective on things.
 

Megan L. from San Marcos: "Since then, you have been raised with Christ, set your hearts on things above, where Christ is seated at the right hand of God. Set your minds on things above, not on earthly things." Colossians 3:1-2 NIV

And to go with this verse, one of my favorite quotes:

"If you read history you will find that the Christians who did the most for the present world were precisely those who thought the most of the next. It is since Christians have largely ceased to think of the other world that they have become so ineffective in this." C.S. Lewis

Oh Lord, that I will remember where my true home is and how fleeting life here on earth is!

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 12

This was from Beth Moore's post exactly one year ago when she was doing the Scripture memory challenge on her blog:

 Hear bells and whistles and lots of music, maybe even a few beginning bars of the Hallelujah chorus: YOU MADE IT EXACTLY HALFWAY!!!! You are officially over the hump after you get this entry behind you.

Way to go, Sisters. Way to go! It’s a pretty good feeling, isn’t it? Don’t think for a second that the enemy didn’t try to steal away your focus and commitment. If you made it this far, you fought with him and won. This is a big victory. Celebrate it with your very faithful God.

Isn't Beth a great cheerleader!

I had no idea what to expect when I started this Scripture memory blog in January, but it's exciting to see that we are halfway done and there are more people commenting than just me and my mom. :-) Thanks, ladies! It's been a fun adventure so far!

So, here's my verse:

Megan L. from San Marcos: "Train yourself to be godly. For physical training is of some value, but godliness has value for all things, holding promise for both the present life and the life to come." I Timothy 4:7b-8 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 11

I just finished the book Knowing God by J.I. Packer. It is a fantastic book that I really should read every year. The funny thing is my husband bought the book for me for my 21st birthday (while we were dating), and it took me almost 11 years to finish it. Yikes! As soon as I finished it, I started reading it again from the beginning. My goal is that it won't take me 11 years this time! Knowing God and the Bible study I just finished on Paul was the inspiration for my next memory verse.
                                 

Megan L. from San Marcos: "But whatever was to my profit I now consider loss for the sake of Christ. What is more, I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord, for whose sake I have lost all things. I consider them rubbish, that I may gain Christ and be found in him, not having a righteousness of my own that comes from the law, but that which is through faith in Christ—the righteousness that comes from God and is by faith. I want to know Christ and the power of his resurrection and the fellowship of sharing in his sufferings, becoming like him in his death, and so, somehow, to attain to the resurrection from the dead." Philippians 3:7-11

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 10

During the day when I am working in the kitchen or cleaning the bathrooms (when that actually happens!), I like to listen to Beth Moore online. This website has a ton of lessons archived from radio broadcasts:

http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/living-proof-with-beth-moore/listen/ 

I was listening the other day to her series called, "Measureless Love" (a six part series starting on March 26, 2012). The series was all about God's measureless love for us. She reminded us how amazing that concept is coming from a God who is so meticulous about measurement (like all the measurements for the temple and in Job 38:5 when God talks about marking off the dimensions of the earth's foundations, etc.). It was a really powerful series, and this was the main passage she used and my memory verse from this time around:

Megan L. from San Marcos: "I pray that out of His glorious riches He may strengthen you with power through His Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the saints, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge--that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God." Ephesians 3:16-19 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 9

Hi Ladies! I hope everyone is hanging in there with this Scripture Memory Challenge!

My friend, Rebecca, who is doing this challenge is an amazing digital scrapbooker. A couple of days ago I got the following email from her:

Hey there! I just wanted to share this with you in case you want to share it with your scripture memory blog readers. I created some digital notecards that I'm using for my memory verses, which I then print out. I've packaged up the designs and made them available on my digi scrap blog, they are free for anyone who wants them. 

http://reboscraps.blogspot.com/2012/04/freebie-friday-journal-cards.html

Rebecca

If you go to her blog you will see how stinkin' cute the notecards are. And they are free! Sweet. Thank you so much, Rebecca!

Now for my verse:

Megan L. from San Marcos: "Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." Colossians 3:12-14 NIV

I feel like this verse is the key to sanctification. If I could just get this mastered I would be all set! ;-) I also love how Paul starts with reminding us of God's love for us--that we are "dearly loved." What a beautiful phrase and the best motivation for striving toward holiness.

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 8

I forgot today was April 15th! Yikes! At least my taxes are done! Leave your verse and I'll add mine to the comments when I figure out which verse I'm going to do.

Thanks to Katy Whitcher for the reminder! :-)

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 7

Happy April Fool's Day!

I once saw a bumper sticker declaring April 1st as National Atheists Day. I didn't get it until I saw the verse referenced at the bottom: Psalm 14:1

"The fool says in his heart, 'There is no God.'"

If you are looking for a verse to memorize, that might be a fun one to learn for April Fool's Day.

Here is my verse for this time around.

Megan L. from San Marcos: "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us. Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God. Consider him who endured such opposition from sinful men, so that you will not grow weary and lose heart." Hebrews 12:1-3

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 6

Ladies, I can't tell you how much I am enjoying reading all your Bible verses and comments. It is such a blessing to read what verses people choose and why they choose them.

Last year I participated in a prayer challenge online. The lady leading it shared this quote with us:

"People do not drift toward holiness. Apart from grace-driven effort, people do not gravitate toward godliness, prayer, obedience to Scripture, faith and delight in the Lord. We drift toward compromise and call it tolerance; we drift toward disobedience and call it freedom; we drift toward superstition and call it faith. We cherish the indiscipline of lost self-control and call it relaxation; we slouch toward prayerlessness and delude ourselves into thinking we have escaped legalism; we slide toward godlessness and convince ourselves we have been liberated." D.A. Carson

I thought it was so powerful and such an encouragement to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling." (Philippians 2:12) I hope that this will encourage you as you work to memorize your verses this year.

Thankfully, as we "work out our salvation," it's still all grace and that's the basis of our assurance. In that vein, here's my verse:

Megan L. from San Marcos "Let us draw near to God with a sincere heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled to cleanse us from a guilty conscience and having our bodies washed with pure water." Hebrews 10:22 NIV

Can't wait to read yours...

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 5

I hope everyone had a great Leap Day and enjoyed having an extra day to practice your memory verses! ;-)

I'm going with this verse from Proverbs this time around:

Megan L. from San Marcos: "A gentle answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up anger." Proverbs 15:1 NIV

I was talking about the verse with my five year old a while ago and instructing him to speak gently when playing with his friends and sister. Then I realized, I probably need to work on that too!

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 4

In case you didn't see the update on the last blog post:

Apparently, "Join this blog" does not set up an email reminder. Instead, to get email updates, click on the new Subscribe via Email link in the sidebar and enter your email address. Sorry for the confusion.

I'll keep it short and simple this time. Here's my verse!

Megan L. from San Marcos: In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may see your good deeds and praise your Father in heaven. Matthew 5:16 NIV

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 3

UPDATE: Apparently, "Join this blog" does not set up an email reminder. Instead, to get email updates, click on the new Subscribe via Email link in the sidebar and enter your email address. Sorry for the confusion.

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Time for verse three! I hope you are all enjoying this challenge so far and finding the pace doable. If you need some extra encouragement, I found this blog post about setting goals to be helpful:

4 Things That Will Keep You From Goal-Setting Success

The post seemed very applicable to our challenge. The first thing she listed that will keep you from goal-setting success is biting off more than you can chew. For those of you who want to memorize a longer passage of Scripture but don't want to feel overwhelmed, it might help to break the passage into smaller chunks and memorize the passage over the course of a few months. I did that last year with Psalm 103 because I really wanted to memorize the whole psalm, and it worked really well!

Now before I share my verse for this round, I wanted to clarify a couple of things about which there was some confusion.

1. There is not an email reminder when it's time to post your verse. If you would like to "follow" this blog, you can go to "Join this blog" on the sidebar. That should set you up to receive an automatic email reminder every time I post something.

2. Some people have accidentally posted their verse on the wrong post. This is not that big of a deal because I get an email whenever anyone comments on any post so I can still check you off for that verse. However, to avoid confusion, I will close comments on the older posts. Going forward, only the most recent post will allow comments.

Now, on to my third verse:

Megan L. from San Marcos: "For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord." Romans 8:38 NIV

Praise the Lord! That verse is so powerful. I love it! Can't wait to read yours...

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 2

From our first verse, it looks like we have about 35 people participating. How awesome! I pray that we won't lose a single person as we go through this year. In fact, I pray we'll keep growing. If you know people that would still like to join, remind them that it's not too late since officially the goal is posting 21 out of 24 times.

A wonderful "problem" of having so many people participate is that we have quite a few duplicate names. From now on, let's post our first name, last initial, and where we live. That will help us keep people straight and hopefully help us get to know each other more easily in this little online community. So with that in mind, here's my verse for this time around:

Megan L. from San Marcos: If anyone considers himself religious and yet does not keep a tight rein on his tongue, he deceives himself and his religion is worthless. James 1:26 NIV

I really enjoyed reading through your selected Bible verses last time. It was neat to read what some of you wrote about why you picked your verse. I'm excited to read round two, so have at it!

Scripture Memory 2012: Verse 1

HAPPY NEW YEAR!

I'm so excited to start this memory verse challenge, and I hope you are too!

It’s time to choose your first memory verse (out of 24) for 2012! If you haven’t done so already, please read the instructions from the post on December 19th. It will tell you everything you need to know.

Just a quick refresher: sometime today, post the Scripture passage you have chosen by leaving a comment below. Be sure your comment includes the following details:

First name, verse, reference, and version.

To get things started, here is my first Scripture entry of 2012:

Megan: Therefore, there is now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus, because through Christ Jesus the law of the Spirit of Life set me free from the law of sin and death. Romans 8:1-2 NIV

Since I have a 4 day-old newborn, I made it easy on myself this time around and used a verse I did from last year. Please feel free to take it easy whenever you need to as well. Use a verse you already know or find a very simple, short verse. This helps make the challenge not feel overwhelming. Remember what Beth said in her instructions: "it's a marathon, not a sprint!" Another time you might want to have more of a challenge and memorize a multi-verse passage. It's completely up to you!

Be sure to handwrite the verse in your spiral notebook of index cards to help engrave it on your mind. You might want to write your contact information on the inside cover in case you leave it somewhere and God causes someone gracious to find it.

If you are the kind of person who likes to underline, highlight, or otherwise mark in your Bible, I thought it was neat last year to underline and date each verse as I memorized it. Now it's fun when I'm reading the Bible to come across verses I memorized last year. I stop and make sure I can still say them so that they stay in my long-term memory.

And one last encouragement from Beth: "Through the power of the Holy Spirit, we can do this! Remember, KEEP IT SIMPLE AND MEANINGFUL!"