Know Scripture Better Than "Hotel California"

I know the lyrics to all six verses of "American Pie." I can recite every word that Sandra Bullock yells after Peter Gallagher when he tells her “Merry Christmas” in While You Were Sleeping. I’ve read some texts so many times that there’s no point in saving them. I can sing, note for note, the guitar solo from “Hotel California.”

Recently, I decided to write down all the references to scripture verses that I’ve memorized. It barely took up two dozen lines. There’s nothing wrong with movie monologues and song lyrics, but I am absolutely ashamed of how little I know the Word of the God I follow.

At first, I felt convicted about that lack of knowledge for months before I did anything about it. There was plenty of space in my brain devoted to making up excuses for not taking up space in my brain with Scripture:

I’m a student, so I have to study. I’m a leader, so I have to spend time with the people I lead. I barely sleep, and I’m pretty sure it’s somewhere in the Bible that God grants sleep to those he loves, so I’ll just think about memorizing that verse each night before I go to sl—zzzzzzzz.

The journey of committing to scripture memory, though, has been well worth the effort.

Consume Scripture

What we consume, think about, and constantly bring our thoughts back to is ultimately what shapes us. Christ tells us that our mouths speak “out of the overflow of the heart,” and ultimately, we want both the words of our mouths and the meditations of our hearts to be pleasing to God (Luke 6:45, Psalm 19:14). What better way to make our words and meditations pleasing to him than to align them with his words?

When I began seriously committing myself to memorizing Scripture, I found that it began to change the way that I thought and felt, and therefore how I spoke and acted. When I lost sight of why I was doing ministry, I remembered to set my heart and mind on things above. When I was so mired in my sin that I could not find words for it, I could ask God to search me and know my heart and to lead me in his ways.

To all my fellow busy sleepless students, I have one thing to say:

It is possible to get Scripture into your minds, and it is worth it.

It’s not as hard as you might think to isolate a few minutes each day for this. Do you walk to class? Do you eat breakfast? Do you shower? Spend that time chewing on a small chunk of Scripture.

Avoid These Mistakes

Most of the mistakes, regarding memorization I’ve made along the way, were made because I wanted to do it myself. But, if I want God’s word to truly be written on my heart—and not just on the short-term memory part of my brain that gets erased each finals week—I need to ask him to help me do that.

Pray before you enter Scripture. Ask him to make his word alive to you and a part of your life.

Memorization needs to be paired with meditation. I could learn to recite the Beatitudes, but if I have not considered what they mean, then I haven’t tapped into the wealth that those words hold for me.

Take the time to sit with God’s Word. Slow down and savor it. Let it settle, and ask him for wisdom. This is an opportunity to spend sweet time with your Savior, and if you give thought to the words you are memorizing. You will recall them more easily and find that your streams of thought carve out new paths that align with his Word.

And if you need a tool for memorization, you might find that they go with the Hotel California guitar solo pretty well too.

Jen Herrmann is an InterVarsity student and chapter president at the University of Oklahoma. She's double majoring in Professional Writing and Film and Media Studies.