An Investment Worth Making
I’ve dabbled in the stock market. I have made some money and lost some depending on the investment. My life has not been changed either positively or negatively by my short-term attempts at investing. As I was doing some research for this post, I looked to see how much one could buy a share of Amazon when it debuted on the stock market. In May of 1997, you could buy a share of Amazon for $18.00. Today, you could buy a share for around $187 at the time of this writing. This price shocked me because I thought Amazon was over $1,900 per share.
I continued my investigation to see why Amazon’s shares are now a fraction of what I remembered. I came across an article that explained Amazon had just completed a 20-to-1 split. This means that for every share a person had before the split, they received an additional 19 shares after the split. Investors still had the same amount of money but more shares. The company hopes that this lower buy-in price per share will allow a wider range of investors to buy in.
An article from CNBC published in August 2018 says that if you invested $1,000 in Amazon at $18 per share, your investment was worth $1,341,000. No one will argue that an opportunity to increase your money by 134,347.06% over 21 years is not an investment worth making. Yet, the opportunities for making bank and working toward financial security through investing continued to exist after Amazon. Just a few minutes spent on any company’s website that offers investing strategies and insights will highlight their most recent successes in an attempt to get you to buy a subscription to their services.
Becoming a good investor takes time, research, and capital. Investing also involves risk. However, wealth can still be made for those willing to learn about companies and economic forecasts, diversify their portfolios, or pay a trusted company to do much of the leg work for them.
Unlike investing websites and subscription services that have convinced me to buy them, I’ve never been good at selling people anything. However, when it comes to this habit of memorizing Scripture, I hope that I can convince you of its importance and benefits for your life as a disciple of Jesus so that you will see hiding God’s Word in your heart as an investment worth making.
Child’s Play
The thought, or at least practice, of many churches and Christians today seem to limit the task of memorizing Bible verses for the children. For the seeming majority, once a child moves into the youth ministry and “big church,” the discipline of memorizing Bible verses fades or vanishes. Case in point: when we had AWANA on Sunday nights, we celebrated children hiding God’s Word in their hearts (and rightfully so); however, as adults serving in this ministry, this spiritual discipline was not practiced in many of our lives.
Another failure of mine in this area during those years, besides regularly memorizing verses, was never making Bible memory a part of our student ministry. I neither emphasized its importance in the believer’s life nor practically explained how to do it and make it a habit. Unfortunately, though I greatly benefited from having many verses committed to memory because of being in AWANA as a child, this habit of memorizing Scripture was absent for over a couple of decades in my Christian walk and ministry philosophy.
You may ask, “How can one be a pastor and not practice Scripture memory themselves?” An even fairer question might be, “How could you teach or expect those you led to memorize parts of the Bible but not have the practice of committing it to memory yourself?”
Again, fair questions. First, let me remind us all that we are simply sinners saved by God’s grace when we believed (Ephesians 2:8). We are all becoming more and more like Jesus one degree at a time (2 Corinthians 3:18). Even we as pastors are continuing to grow in Christlikeness as we do life with Him each day. I am thankful for God’s patience with me in this area of my walk with Him, and you most likely are in an area of your life, too.
Looking back on those years of my life and ministry, I have tried to conclude why memorizing the Bible wasn’t a practice of mine as a Christian for twenty-plus years. Transparently, I can summarize it as being too busy doing and growing the ministry instead of being a disciple who made disciples. Another way of saying the same thing more bluntly is that ministry was my idol. I was too busy investing in the ministry instead of being intimate with my Lord.
Busyness and misplaced priorities played roles in neglecting this discipline in my life, and so did the benefits of technology. If I needed to find a verse, I could google some of its words and see it along with the reference. If I got a text or call from someone needing a verse on a topic, all I had to do was turn to my device’s keypad, and I had an instant answer for them (and they thought their pastor was a genius for knowing where to find what they were needing). Let’s face it: technology’s advancements have made memorizing many things less necessary and less desirable to practice.
Lunch and a Lesson
The Holy Spirit began refining my perspective and, eventually, the practice of Scripture memory through a good friend. At the time, he was working with our state convention and oversaw the ministry of Family Discipleship. He was faithfully and tirelessly working to help churches and pastors see the need for homes as the primary place for discipleship.
While eating lunch with him one day, I asked him how things were going with his endeavor. He replied that churches were using great verbiage, but there was not much more than that in many churches. When I asked him what he meant, he explained that many would say they wanted to make disciples but still needed to identify the type of disciples they wanted to make.
Recognizing the confused look on my face, he explained how the Hebrews in biblical times thought very concretely and we in the West today think abstractly. For example, today, we say that “God is love.” While this statement about God is true (1 John 4:8), it is an abstract thought. However, in the Old Testament, we see that the people of the ancient Near East spoke about God in concrete terms. We see that God is like a shield, refuge, and rock. These concrete images of God describe who He is or what He does for His people. We can picture these statements about God in our minds.
Connecting the dots, he then said that the problem for many pastors and ministries is that they have not defined what a disciple is in concrete thoughts or tangible actions. Foolishly thinking I was a head of the game, I explained that we describe a disciple of Jesus in four words: love, grow, serve, and share.
- A disciple of Jesus loves God.
- A disciple of Jesus grows in community with other believers.
- A disciple of Jesus serves others.
- A disciple of Jesus shares Him with others.
I was surprised when Mark pushed our definition of a disciple further. He asked questions like, “What does it mean to love God? What are things that we do to show that we love Him?” While initially frustrated with his continued probing, his sincere questions led me to write out concrete habits and practices of a disciple. In our church, these habits and practices are known as the Discipleship Target; it lets us know the type of Jesus follower we want to develop.
One way that a follower of Jesus loves God is by internalizing His Word through memorization, meditation, and obedience (Psalm 119:11; John 14:15). If memorizing is a way to love God through loving His Word, I wanted to restart this practice as a way to love God and grow in Christ and also to model this as a way of life to God’s people (Matthew 5:19).
Is Memorizing Scripture Really a Habit of a Follower of Jesus?
It is difficult to persuade many churchgoers to read the Bible, let alone memorize it. For a believer who desires to be a full-fledged follower of Jesus, simply reading the Bible will not be enough. We get into the Word by reading it; the Word gets into us when we memorize it. One who memorizes Scripture seriously takes Paul’s plea to “let the word of Christ dwell in you richly” (Colossians 3:16).
In New Testament times, every Jewish male was required to memorize the first five books of the Bible, and some believe that those training to be Pharisees had to memorize the whole of the Old Testament. Committing all of the Jewish Scriptures to memory might seem far-fetched to our modern minds, but it seems very doable when compared to knowing that ultra-Orthodox Jews committed the entire Babylonian Talmud—all 5,422 pages—to memory.
Paul knew much, if not all, of the Old Testament by heart, as the Jewish Scriptures permeate the 13 books of the New Testament he authored. I would argue that he had it all committed to memory as a zealous pharisee (Philippians 3:4-6) who at one time prided himself in his religious achievements. Jesus also memorized much of the Old Testament. Many would make the case that He had it all committed to memory. He regularly quoted it in his teaching and preaching without using notes on the spot. Jesus, God in the flesh, knew the Scriptures. The Word Incarnate knew the Word Written. Our Lord quoted from twenty-four Old Testament books, nearly 180 different times, in the New Testament.
In traditional Jewish education, students would attend synagogue schools by the age of six. By around ten years of age, they would have learned and memorized the first five books of the Bible, called the Torah (yes, even Leviticus!). Joseph and Mary took Deuteronomy 6:4-9 to heart (see also Luke 1:46-55), as seen in Jesus’ knowledge of the Scriptures in Luke 2:47. Jesus too, even as a young boy, knew the importance of knowing His Father’s Word and having it dwell within Him and thus was committed to His studies and teachers’ efforts.
It’s clear that Jesus was in the Word of God but also had God’s Word in Him as a result of memorizing it and allowing it to work in His life. Being a disciple of Jesus is more than knowing what Jesus did and taught but doing the things that Jesus did, including hiding His Father’s Word in His heart. Jesus knew investing the time and effort to commit Scripture to memory was worth the investment. We will examine why memorizing Scripture is beneficial in the lives of believers and how to begin and establish this life-changing practice in the rest of this series. However, since we are to follow Jesus as His disciples – to learn from His teachings and example, we will conclude this time with this truth.
Memorizing Scripture is worth the investment because Jesus valued it enough to invest in memorizing Scripture Himself.
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