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!"