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?