I just hit print on my first order of James Memory Workbook! I am so excited to commission this for a special high school student who enjoyed my Philippians Memory Workbook! This has been long-awaited for this student as well as myself when I said I wanted to do this over two years ago I think…basically right after I finished James! Somehow I knew that wasn’t going to be the last memory workbook and I am so thankful it is not!
I am of course printing myself a copy as well to write through so that I can memorize it as well before I start the next workbook…although I am already brainstorming which book of the Bible to work on next! However, I want to wait until I finish or at least make a good headway through James until I begin the next one. I am also working on reviewing Philippians so that my hard work of the past does not go to waste. I have been enjoying a new Scripture memory method I recently came across that is put together by the Charlotte Mason organization. I will link a video to the explanation here and you can see for yourself how simple and yet deep this method is for not only memorizing but just as important reviewing memorized passages of Scripture!
My journey toward memorizing Scripture began with a Bible study book by Susan Heck called “With the Master In Fullness of Joy: A Ladies Bible Study on Philippians.” If you haven’t been through any of Susan’s Bible studies I highly recommend going through this one by yourself or with a friend. She has such a unique way of approaching Scripture that is so refreshing and so encouraging to get you started on studying Scripture yourself with sound theological ways of looking at the Bible. Well, somehow I started digging deeper and found that she wrote a very small booklet about the importance of memorizing Scripture…no, no…not cherry-picked out-of-context verses…I mean entire chapters…no, entire BOOKS of the Bible! It sounds absolutely fantastic in our culture today that celebrates the-shorter-the-better language of one-liners and abbreviated text messages, and yet it what people have been doing for thousands of years…memorizing LARGE portions of Scripture and other information for the express purpose of internalizing it, meditating on it, and allowing it to seep so deep into your very soul and being that it transforms you into a new way of life and a new way of thinking. After only about a chapter or two into the Bible study book on Philippians I knew without a doubt that I wanted to move forward in the Bible study by not just memorizing the one or two suggested verses weekly, but every single verse I studied!
Now, although this may sound like a lot, when you look at Susan’s chapter divisions you’ll notice that she divides each chapter into several small sections, usually at paragraph breaks in the original text. So with the ladies from my church only meeting every other week it was a very simple task to memorize just a few verses each time we got together! I knew I wanted to make it stick so I thought that I would put together my own system of memorizing Scripture in a systematic way. I love notecards and I wrote every verse on its own notecard and whole-punched them and carried them around to memorize, but I wanted to also write out the verses again and again since another method of memorizing would only help solidify what I was learning.
And the thought came to me from my fifth grade Sunday School teachers. I will never forget the first week attending a new church in fifth grade. I remember my teachers’ names, they were a husband-wife team with whom I am still friends with their daughter today, and they played a game on the whiteboard that made me immediately love the new church. It was the “fill-in-the-blank” game where you write out a memory verse on a whiteboard and everyone recites aloud the entire verse. Then one by one you erase a word (and of course the children all got to help choose and erase) until you’re left with blank after blank and soon you realize you’ve memorized the entire verse and said it several times, maybe 10 or more, out loud.
So applying that memory to my current situation I set about creating a document to memorize JUST the first chapter of Philippians. My husband loved the idea and wanted a copy of it too so we could memorize it together. I worked through a few kinks and the method started working so well! To this day he says that of all Scripture memory methods he’s ever tried this one has stuck the best for his brain and he was surprised how easy it was to get started. I don’t even remember if I really thought about doing the entire book, but I wanted to see how it would work with just one chapter. I loved it so much and it worked out so well that I ended up sharing my project with the other ladies at the Bible study and several other women wanted to do the same thing so I made extra copies and they paid for the hard costs of paper and binding which I did myself. Soon people were asking about chapter two so I knew I had to keep going until I had four separate booklets at the end of the year, one of each chapter of Philippians.
Fall had come around and I signed up to join the next Bible study where we started going through Susan Heck’s Bible Study book on James called “With the Master in the School of Tested Faith: A Ladies Bible Study of the Epistle of James.” In October we were invited to a wedding of a couple getting married from our church and I was so excited about my new project that I wanted to include it in their wedding gift. Instead of giving them four separate booklets I decided to compile it into one large workbook, spanning 256 pages! I gave them two, one for each spouse, to work through together in their newly married life.
Well…long story short, I got more requests, more orders, and this little side business is still going. And tomorrow I deliver the first two copies of my “James: Bible Memory Workbook” to a high school student and his mom who I think are going to go through it together. How neat! I’ve had several other moms of high school students request copies to use as part of their homeschool Bible class and I can’t think of a better way to spend my time helping students and parents and people of all ages and backgrounds learn to love our Savior more through the meditation and memorization of time-tested God-given Scriptural truths that point us ever onward, ever heavenward, and ever eternityward.
If you are interested in memorizing a few verses or a chapter or an entire book, reach out and get a copy of any of my Bible Memory Workbooks and I promise you with 100% guarantee that if you put your whole heart, soul, and mind into the diligent task of memorizing Scripture it will not return void, for every word is “God-breathed and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for training in righteousness, so that the man of God may be equipped, having been thoroughly equipped for every good work.” Get equipped. Memorize Scripture. Memorize more today!