Bible memorization is hard. It requires time, willpower, concentration, and that means we

need good motivations for doing it in the first place, which is exactly what John Piper

offers us. And his sermon titled, If My Words Abide In You, which he preached on January

4, 2009, here's a clip of what he said. The reason I began this message by reciting

Psalm 1, Psalm 16, Psalm 103, Romans 5, 1 to 8, Romans 8, Matthew 6, 1, 25 to 34, for a

screen in 13, is in the hope and the desperate prayer that God would do for you what he did

for me 31 years ago. I was 31 years old and I walked into the gym at Bethel College

for chapel. I was teaching and I sat down and our Lewis stood up, the Old Testament professor

and he recited Matthew 6, 25 to 34. That's all. He looked at us and recited it. I was stunned.

I was 31 years old and had never seen anybody in church recite the scriptures. It blew

me away, set me on a trajectory of Bible memory. And all I want to do in this simple message

is to give my testimony and mingle it with Jesus' testimony of the value of memorizing

scripture, I'm pleading with you. So here's my testimony. I can give it to you in eight

sentences without exposition. Number one, memorizing scripture makes meditation possible

at times when you can't be reading the Bible and meditation is the pathway to deeper understanding.

So if you're going to meditate on the law of the Lord day and night, you need to have

some of it in your head. Number two, memorizing scripture strengthens my faith because faith

comes from hearing and hearing by the word of God. And that happens when I am hearing

the word in my head. Number three, memorizing scripture shapes the way I view the world

by conforming my mind to God's viewpoint on everything. Number four, memorizing scripture

makes God's word more readily accessible in overcoming temptation to sin because God's

warnings and promises are the way we conquer the lies, the deceitful lies of the devil.

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