Getting Started With Scripture Memory

One of the toughest challenges in getting started with memorizing scripture, for me, is choosing which verses to memorize first.  The perfectionist in me could get so caught up deciding which verses are the “right” or the “best” verses to memorize that we would never memorize anything at all!  Today I am going to share some verse lists that have helped me get started with scripture memory!

The Navigators puts out a very popular list of Bible verses to memorize called the “Topical Memory System.”  When I first began being interested in scripture memory, I read so many testimonials of people saying they had memorized these verses decades ago and that these particular verses had been a great help to them over the years.  This is a list of 60 verses covering the following topics:  Live the New Life, Proclaim Christ, Rely on God’s Resources, Be Christ’s Disciple, and Grow in Christlikeness. 

SimplyCharlotteMason.com provides a list of suggested verses for getting started in memorizing.  Topics in this list include:  The Student Motto (“I am, I can, I ought, I will”), Christian Living, Classic Passages, Creation, Old Testament, Proverbs, Psalms and Salvation.

BibleGateway.com offers a list of the 100 most-read verses on their Bible Look-Up site.

If you peek at the table of contents for the book "100 Bible Verses Everyone Should Know By Heart" by Robert J. Morgan you will find 100 more great verses for Bible Memorization.  Some are the obvious, familiar verses and others are not-so-obvious.  I’ve read most of this book (not all!) and I enjoyed it.  The first half of the book offers inspiration for Bible Memorization and the second half gives the list of verses and offers a little devotional-style story relating to each verse.

One great method for finding verses to memorize is to jot them down either in the back of your Bible or on index cards as you come across them in your personal reading.  I use 3” x 5” index cards and then file them in the back of my Scripture Memory Review Box where I won’t lose them:

Another great book is “The Well Versed Family” by Caroline Boykin.  This book encourages families to memorize the Bible together… a concept I hadn’t thought of before!  The Little Farmhands and I are loving this!  This book has memory verse cards with suggested verses on perforated pages in the back.  We are having a giveaway for this book right now, so be sure to click here to enter, if you haven’t already!

Happy Memorizing!

How to Memorize Scripture

There are so many wonderful resources and methods available these days for memorizing scripture that it can be overwhelming!  So, I thought I would take a few minutes today to share with you how we memorize scripture as a family here at the Good Old Days Farm.

Our system is a combination of a couple of other systems that I found online. 

I write down our memory verses on 3” x 5” index cards.  Now, a lot of people like to use business-card size cards, but I don’t.  For starters, they’re small and I can’t see the print very well.  The other reasons I like to keep my memory verses out of my pockets is that too many verse cards have gone through the washing machine that way!  So we stick to 3” x 5”’s. 

The Little Farmhands can’t read yet, but they illustrate the verse on their index card as a visual cue and we post it up on the refrigerator with a magnet:

(See the illustration for Psalms 119:11?  The brown boxes on the left are Bibles.  The purple “x” means “no sin.”  And on the right are the two Little Farmhands “not sinning”!)

I have a tin 4” x 6” index box that sits on my kitchen window sill.  I took a ribbon and sewed some lace to it and then glued that to a magnet.  (Must have a pretty magnet!)  Now I can magnet my index card to my metal box.  As I am washing dishes I can look up and easily practice my verse.

  

The key to successful scripture memory, I have discovered, is not just learning to memorize.  I can memorize a verse in a couple minutes.  The key is being able to recall the verse later.  I need to somehow get the verse to go from being written on that index card to being deeply ingrained in my mind.

FAST Missions has some free scripture memory resources including a free mini-course called the “Crash Course” that you sign up to take.  I love the review system that they teach!  If you are interested in Scripture Memory I would encourage you to take their free mini-course.  Here’s my review system in a nutshell:

-After learning a new verse, date it.  Then, we review it every single day for 60 days.
-After 60 days of daily review, we know the verse very, very well.  Then we practice it weekly for a while, then monthly.

SimplyCharlotteMason.com recommends a cardfile box system similar to ours with printable dividers.  Her review system is slightly more complicated than the one I use, but it is also very effective.  Here is a picture of my cardfile box set up that was inspired by that site:

(You can't see the weekly dividers, but they're in there behind the "Daily" divider!)

You see?  First I have a new verse ready to go at the front of the box.  Then, the verses I practice daily for 60 days go right behind that.  Next there is a set of dividers for each day of the week (You can’t see them in this picture, but they’re there!).  At the back is a set of dividers numbered 1-30 for the verses I would review monthly.  So, for example, today is Friday, April 8.  I am learning my new verse, reviewing all the daily verses, reviewing all the weekly verses for Friday and also reviewing all the monthly verses for the 8th.  I added a section to the back of my box for “Future Verses To Memorize.”  When I come across a verse I would like to memorize, I just write it down on an index card and put it back there.  Then I always have plenty of verses to memorize!

If you want pretty, printable dividers, SimplyCharlotteMason.com offers a free printable PDF file.  Just Click Here and scroll down to the bottom of the page.  (If you want your dividers to stick up over your cards you will need to add 1/4” to the bottom of the divider when you cut it out.  I forgot to do that with the Days of the Week cards and that’s why you can’t see them in the picture!)

Inspired to start memorizing scripture?  Don’t forget to sign up for our Giveaway of "The Well-Versed Family" by Caroline Boykin!  The Giveaway ends April 12, 2011 at midnight.  Later during this giveaway I will be sharing some of our family’s favorite Scripture Memory resources that you may not have heard of before, so stay tuned!

The Well Versed Family: Review & Giveaway!

Lately, I’ve been feeling really convicted about teaching the Little Farmhands to memorize scripture.  Here at the Good Old Days farm we focus a lot on being physically healthy, but it is just as important to be spiritually healthy, too!  The Little Farmhands know tons and tons of Bible verses set to music… I know for a fact that the oldest Farmhand knows at least 150 scriptures set to music (We have some great CD’s that I’ll be telling you about later this week!)… but if anyone ever asked them what a certain verse says, they would have to sing the answer.  That’s good and we will continue to learn scripture songs, but they’re ready for the next step!

So for the next week and a half or so we are going to have a Scripture Memory Theme here on the Good Old Days Farm blog!  I’ll be sharing some excellent resources that have really helped our family to imprint scripture in our minds and hearts.  I’ll also share some of our favorite tools and techniques for memorizing as well as suggest some Bible Verses to help you and your family get started!



I’ve known it was important for my children to memorize scripture, but for some reason it never occurred to me that this is something we should do together as a family.  I stumbled across Caroline Boykin’s book “The Well-Versed Family” while looking for resources to help me teach my children.  Just as the subtitle “raising kids of faith through do-able scripture memory” promises, this book makes scripture memory do-able!  It was just what I needed to get started!

Caroline Boykin makes a compelling case in the first half of her book for the need to memorize scripture.  I love the title of the first chapter!  “What’s Down in the Well, Comes Up in the Bucket!”  She gets this title from Proverbs 4:23 “Above all else, guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.”  Poorly guarded and polluted wellsprings (hearts and minds) leave our children defenseless against temptation.  She outlines many benefits to memorizing scripture and shows exactly how memorizing helps us to know God.  You will be inspired and challenged by Boykins’ vision for making Scripture memory a passion rather than just another project or (as she puts it) “a holy hobby”!

The second half of “The Well-Versed Family” is full of practical tips to help children memorize.  Suggestions like coming alongside your child and memorizing the scriptures with them have changed the way our family approaches memorizing!  She also gives suggestions for incentives, review techniques and helping children to understand what the verses actually mean.  She includes memory verse games and activities (such as Bible verse card games and games like “verse scramble” and “I Spy…. a verse!”), 84 scripture memory cards on perforated pages (yay!  Because I always have a hard time knowing which verses to pick to get started!) and 5 simple, but very memorable family devotions explaining how scripture memory relates to real life.

One of my favorite parts of the book is when she talks about visiting her grandparents when she was about 9 years old.  They had a goal to help her and her sister memorize 100 verses from the Bible.  One hundred verses sounds like a lot (and it is more than many people memorize in a lifetime!) but they did it!  Boykin talks about what a wonderful gift those verses were and how now that her grandparents are deceased, those verses continue to bless her. It inspired me to give the same gift to my children! 

“The Well-Versed Family” was easy to read (even for this sometimes sleep-deprived mommy!), but hard to put down.  If you are considering starting (or reviving!) a scripture memory program in your home, I strongly recommend this book!

You can read more about “The Well-Versed Family” (including testimonials about how this book has inspired other families!) by visiting the Well-Versed Family website or preview it on Amazon. 

You can purchase “The Well-Versed Family” at Tate Publishing for $12.99 for the paperback edition and $7.99 for the ebook downloadable edition, or you can purchase it through Amazon for $12.73

Or

Win an autographed copy of “The Well-Versed Family”!
Caroline has donated a copy for one of our blog readers!
To enter, do any (or all) of the following.  If you do more than one, leave a separate comment for each entry:

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• Leave a comment suggesting a Bible verse or passage you think would be good for a family to memorize together!  (I will compile all the suggestions and post it for everyone to share so please try to pick a verse that hasn’t already been suggested!)

Giveaway closes at midnight on April 12, 2011.  Open to US Residents Only.  Please be sure to leave a way for me to contact you if you win!
This is not a paid review,  It is my personal opinion based on reading “The Well-Versed Family.”  A big thank you to Caroline Boykin for donating a copy of the book for the review and the giveaway!