Hooray!

I just signed myself up for the Scripture Memory Team celebration in January!

I've been working hard on memorizing Bible verses this year. Two a month. (Technically more than that, because sometimes there have been two or three verses at a time.) I only have FIVE more to go!

I never would have believed that I could memorize that many verses. I believe the Holy Spirit put it in my heart last December to give it a try. I chose to focus most of the verses around fear and God's love for me. I can't even begin to say how many times I have resorted to those verses in these last ten months.  I've shared the verses with friends and family. I've flipped through my spiral note card-book when I needed to focus on God's word. Let me tell you, He speaks!

Houston, Texas here I come! (And if the weather is super nice there in January, I just may not come back to the Frozen Tundra of the North.)

Amplified Memory Work

I have been doing something this year that I have never, ever done before.

I'm working on memorizing Bible verses. My goal for this year is to memorize twenty-four verses. As of today I am on Verse #15.

Last December, I was reading this blog post from Beth Moore. I have read Beth's ministry's blog for a number of years and was familiar with the scripture memory work she has promoted through that. For some reason (duh! I know it is the Holy Spirit at work here), as I read through that post and read Beth's suggestions and ideas for memorizing, I thought to myself, "I could do that!" Then I looked around the room to see if someone else had said that, surely it wasn't me..I don't do scripture memory.

But here I am at the beginning of the eighth month in the year and tonight I picked out the fifteenth verse.

Beth said in that December 17th, 2012 post:

This is work worth doing, Sweet Thing. Never – NOT ONCE – have I ever known anyone to get to the end of a Scripture memory commitment and say that it didn’t make any real difference. 

Not a single time.

That has been so very true for me. Just last Monday as I was visiting a dear friend in the hospital, I was able to share one of those verses with her:

Isaiah 41:13 For I am the Lord your God, who takes hold of your 

right hand and says to you, "Do not fear; I will help you."

There have been nights when I haven't been able to get to sleep because of insomnia (hello fifties) or just too many things rolling around in my head (hello worry-wart) that I have gotten out of bed and found my little spiral book of verses and my Kindle. Then I read my verses, one-by-one, and work them into my memory. Then I go into my Kindle to the Amplified version of the Bible and look up each verse to see what it says in that translation. That had helped me understand the meaning of the verse in a different way.

The last time I did this, I reviewed Isaiah 30:18 --

 Yet the Lord longs to be gracious to you;

   He rises to show you compassion.

For the Lord is a God of justice.

    Blessed are all who wait for him!

I just love the word pictures this conjures up in my head: The Lord longing to be gracious to me, He actively shows me compassion.

Then I read this in the Amplified version:

And therefore the Lord [earnestly] waits [expecting, looking, and longing] to be gracious to you; and therefore He lifts Himself up, that He may have mercy on you and show loving-kindness to you. For the Lord is a God of justice. Blessed (happy, fortunate, to be envied) are all those who [earnestly] wait for Him, who expect and look and long for Him [for His victory, His favor, His love, His peace, His joy, and His matchless, unbroken companionship]!

Read it again. 

Go on. I'll wait.

What a picture, huh?

For the word of God is alive and active. ~Hebrews 4:12