We Pray. We Sing. We Memorize.
I want my heart to be satisfied in God. I want to overflow with the joy of the LORD. I want him to be my chosen portion, my cup, and my pleasure forevermore (Psalm 16).
Yet, the reality of life on this side of heaven is I will need to fight for my joy in God. In a sermon I listened to recently, the Spirit used John Piper to remind me of a tool I have neglected in the fight for joy.
“God is not a god of magic. God is a god of word. He’s a person: he affects you not with wand-waving magic. At 11:00 o’clock, when the crisis is at work, or the baby’s crying, and the soup is overflowing, and you stand up and thump your head on the cabinet, and you sit on the floor and cry, he doesn’t wave a wand over you right there, he brings to your mind promises. Many are the afflictions of a mom and the Lord delivers her out of all of them. If the mom doesn’t remember that word, if it’s not stuffed away in her brain somewhere so that the Holy Spirit can call it up, she’s just going to stay on the floor and cry.”
If you are anything like me, you may have been assuming that God would magically grant you joy in your day to day. This quote stopped me in my tracks. Joy is not found in a feeling God randomly sends down, it’s found in his word. He is a God who has chosen to speak, and a restored soul is found in his written words (Psalm 19:7).
So, how are we to stuff God’s word into our brains? I want to be a woman able to call scripture to mind when I’m in the trenches. How do we dwell, think on, and study scripture when the to-do list is miles long?
Pastor John’s answer: Bible memory.
I know, you may be rolling your eyes and having flashbacks to Awana or the kid in Sunday school who always won the sword drills. Is memorizing scripture really attainable for moms? It’s hard enough to look at the Bible at all, it takes sacrifice and effort to have intentional time to read the Word, how are we supposed to memorize it?
I would love to share with you two tools that have been shared with me to aide with scripture memory. These are both things that I have seen modeled by my parents and grandparents before me, so I can assure you that they stand the test of time and prove themselves to be beneficial in the fight for joy.
- Pray the Word
Sometimes I find myself wondering if I am praying in a way that aligns my heart with God’s will. I was reminded recently that there is no doubt I am praying God’s will if I am praying his words. What an amazing gift that we can pray God’s words back to him, confident that we are conforming our desires to his! Not only is this a gift, but it is also a powerful tool in the battle to get God’s word to stick in our brains and not fade away a couple hours later.
When I was a fourth grade teacher, I would often ask my students to rewrite their vocabulary word definitions in their own words, or to explain a concept like they were explaining it to their little sister, or retell their notes to the student next to them. The reason I did these exercises was because our brains absorb and retain information better when we form it into our own vocabulary.
Praying scripture back to God is another form of this. When we go line by line through a section of scripture and pray the main points as they apply to our life, we are absorbing the meaning and memorization will naturally come.
When I meditate, ponder, and reword a verse into a prayer to my Father, the verse becomes a part of my thinking, it reworks my brain and conforms me into the image of Jesus. Then when 2pm rolls around and the temptation is back, the fear is lurking, or my toddler is screaming, I can pull that verse to mind and lift a cry for help.
A couple ideas for application:
- Choose one Psalm to pray over yourself and your family for two weeks. Pray it every morning when you wake up.
- Put one verse on your mirror and commit to pray it when you are brushing your teeth or getting ready.
- Ask other women to hold you accountable. Choose one section of Scripture together and do a weekly check in.
- Welcome in your kids. Put a verse on the fridge and tell them we are going to pray this before we eat breakfast.
Here is a quick example of how you could pray Psalm 16:1-2:
“Preserve me, O God, for in you I take refuge.
I say to the LORD, “You are my Lord; I have no good apart from you.”
Preserve me, hold me, and keep me afloat as I wait. You are my refuge and my hiding place. Please hide me in your arms. Help me find rest in your presence even when I fear. I say to you and to my own heart, “You are my Lord and my Master. You decide how I run my life.” I trust your good commands. Please help me believe that I have no good apart from you. Help me desire you above all else.
- Sing the Word
Memorization by music is an amazing ability of the human brain. You have no idea how many Taylor Swift songs I have ingrained into my brain from my middle school years. I wasn’t trying to memorize them, it just happened, because (much to my brother’s chagrin) I listened to them all the time.
What if scripture memory music floated across our brains as much as our favorite middle school sing-along? This is often recommended for kids, but moms need it too!
In my current season I am battling some fearful middle of the night moments. I can testify that in that dark fog music cuts through. I may not be able to remember what I read in my bible reading that morning, but the Holy Spirit does bring to mind the scripture memory song that my daughter loves. The Holy Spirit uses our brain's ability to remember melody to snap our heart back to reality.
We are in an age where the tools for this are abundant. You can go on Spotify right now and type in a well known verse and multiple different versions will pop up! I know that a lot of them are geared toward children, but why should that matter? We can disciple our children and ourselves through those songs.
Let’s have homes that are brimming with scripture melodies. Let’s be moms who are quick to sing the word when kids are complaining. Let’s drive cars where we belt together the truth to fight sin. Let’s sing and memorize God’s word.
We must stop waiting for the joy of the Lord to fall on us like pixie dust. We must use God’s primary tool for joy, his word.
Let me close with one more quote from the previous sermon I mentioned.
“I know of no mighty woman or man of God who does not memorize Scripture — none.”
Let’s be mighty women of God who are filled with the joy of the LORD because his word is on our tongues.
More Resources:
- The Village Kids
- Psalm 119 Album by Exodus Music
- Dwelling on Truth with Natalie Abbott and Vera Schmitz- Journey Women Podcast
- Psalm 119 prayer calendar: I made this a couple months ago to have something to print out and put on our table.
- Perservering in Godward Joy by John Piper: This is the direct link to the sermon I quoted.