Scripture Memorization Unveiled: The Crucial Importance and Proven Techniques w/ Glenna Marshall

Ever find yourself asking how you can bridge the gap between just reading and truly living God's Word? With special guest Glenna Marshall, we embark on a spiritual journey that proves Scripture memorization is the key. Glenna shares her transformation through Bible memorization, highlighting the profound impact it can have on our daily battles with sin and our triumphs over personal struggles.

In this engaging exchange, we lay open the challenges of Bible memorization and, more importantly, offer practical solutions to help you overcome them. We emphasize the importance of understanding God's voice to discern His genuine Word and stand firm against competing, counterfeit beliefs.

Wrapping up with tips for memorizing Scripture passages, we delve into methods like repetition, using audio Bibles, writing out passages using only the first letter of each word, and creating mnemonic devices. Importantly, we stress that memorization is not merely about recitation but also about transforming our minds and hearts to align with God's Word. We offer simple yet efficient ways to incorporate Scripture memorization into your family life. Tune in and embark on this journey of Scripture memorization and let God's voice guide your life.

Book: Memorizing Scripture
Website: www.glennamarshall.com
Bible: ESV Study Bible
Journaling Supplies: Spiral Notebook
App/Website: Blue Letter Bible

Transcript

Mentor Mama: 0:07

Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. For those that may be listening for the first time, our podcast is an offshoot from our main platform, Youtube. Our channel is called Coffee and Bible Time, where our goal is to help people delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living. We also have a website and storefront with Bible studies, prayer journals, courses, and more. Hey, Coffee and Bible Time community.

Mentor Mama: 0:36

I am Mentor Mama, and today we are going to be talking about the power of Scripture memorization and the benefits of meditating on God's Word. You know, memorizing Scripture seems to be a bit of a lost art today. I know many of us can recite our favorite verse or maybe even a few, but really storing Scriptures into memory can be tough and also with the convenience of having the Bible at our fingertips on our phones, people may not even feel that it's necessary to put Scripture to memory any longer. Well, our guest today, Glenna Marshall, author of the book Memorizing Scripture the Basics, Blessings and Benefits of Meditating on God's Word, is here to discuss the importance of knowing God's Word and storing it not only in our memory but deep in our hearts. She will also share with us tools to help bolster our ability to memorize Scripture. Yay, we need that. So that applies to everyone, whether you feel you are good at that or not.

Mentor Mama: 1:58

Glenna Marshall is a pastor's wife and mother of two very energetic sons. She is the author of the Promise is His Presence and Everyday Faithfulness. She writes regularly at glennamarshall. com on biblical literacy, suffering and the faithfulness of God. She is a member of Grace Bible Fellowship in Missouri. Please welcome Glenna.

Glenna Marshall: 2:32

Thank you, I'm so happy to be here.

Mentor Mama: 2:34

Glenna, I'm so excited to have you here today because you know Bible memorization. I think a lot of people actually do really strive and want to do it, but it can feel very elusive, I think, for many people. So you actually describe in your book Bible memorization as a bridge between reading and living. Tell us what you mean by that and what led you personally to start a Scripture memorization plan.

Glenna Marshall: 3:12

So I am a big, big believer in daily Bible study. I would say maybe 15 years ago the Lord just really grabbed my heart about getting into His word and studying book by book and since then it's just a discipline. I will never give up because the Bible has transformed my life and my understanding of who God is and the Gospel, and I love it. I'll never let go of it. However, there are days where you read your Bible and for me that's early in the morning and then you close your Bible and then you get on with your day and you may not think about what you studied or read or meditated on for the rest of the day. And sometimes I feel like I'm sort of separating my life into the time I'm spending in God's word and then like just getting on with my work, and I think a lot of people can probably relate to that.

Glenna Marshall: 3:59

You have like your sacred hour and then you have your secular hours, and so I remember several years ago really just as a mom honestly struggling with anger, a lot, just dealing with disobedience of having young kids and really just childish things that my kids were doing, and I was just reacting the wrong way all the time. I just felt like I was taking everything personally and that made me feel like a failure as a mom, and I just had this sort of I guess I would call it a besetting sin of anger. I would confess daily, pray about it, ask the Lord to help me with it. It felt like, though I studied the word regularly and spent time in prayer regularly, I just could not find victory over this area of sin. And one day I was praying and confessing again and the Lord brought to mind a verse that I had memorized as a child when I was in a

Glenna Marshall: 4:50

Bible drill program at my church that I grew up in, and it was Psalm 119:11, I will hide your word in my heart so that I will not sin against you. And everything sort of crystallized for me in that moment that one of the ways that we really fight sin or put it to death or stay away from it is to store God's word in our hearts, to meditate on it, to remember it, to think about it, to memorize it. And I thought, okay, I feel like this is a very simple thing that I have missed for most of my life and I have absolutely nothing to lose. And so I started with I believe it was Psalm 46 at the time I started memorizing it once I memorized that and moved on to another Psalm I think that was Psalm 1, moved on to some other Psalms, then moved on and took on the book of James. It took me about a year, so I memorized the book of James. And then I moved on to Colossians, which took almost two years.

Glenna Marshall: 5:45

And then for the last year I've been in the book of 1 Peter, and I'm not fast, I don't move very quickly through the memorization, but I noticed, maybe for the first time in my life, that there was major victory in this area of sin that I had been struggling with for so long, and it really was, that God's word always proves true, his word is always right and he is wise to give us the instructions that we need, and so I felt like memorization sort of bridged that gap between my study of the word and my practice of the word.

Glenna Marshall: 6:18

So, instead of just closing my Bible and being done with the word for the day, then I would have these touch points throughout my day where I was meditating on Scripture and coming back to it because I was trying to memorize it. I was very simply trying to memorize it, coming to it at different points during the day, and so when you're returning to Scripture over and over, it just transforms the way that you think, which then transforms the way that you live, and it was such a life-changing process that I just could not stop talking about it. And so, like most writers, if there's something you can't stop talking about, then you end up writing a book about it.

Mentor Mama: 6:55

That's a great story and just a very practical encouragement, I think, for all of us. That shows that if you can devote your time to this, it really can draw you closer in your relationship with the Lord. Do you find, Glenna, that when you're working whatever you're working on currently like you can still remember all of the things that you memorized in the past, or does it kind of just sit with you during that time that you're doing it?

Glenna Marshall: 7:29

I would say it's a little bit of both. Most of the transforming work is done in the process of memorization, and I always say that the goal is not to be able to stand up and recite it, though that certainly is a neat thing that you can do, that can be encouraging to people that you recite it. For I think that the good work, memorization, happens in that daily rehearsing of phrases and sentences and paragraphs, these verses that we're storing up in our memory, because as you're working on it, you're thinking deeply about it. You're thinking why this verb, why that adjective, why this character trait of God? Why is it worded like this? I mean, at least for me, when I'm trying to memorize, thinking about the order of the words in the sentence helps me to sort of wrap my mind around it, and as you do that, I mean these are God's holy and inspired and inerrant words, and so this is what he uses to sanctify us. I mean Jesus talked in John 17 that he prayed actually for all believers to be sanctified by truth, and that God's word is truth, and so this is one of the primary means by which God will make us like Jesus, and so there's real power in meditating on God's word. So really think it's the practice, that daily work, where a lot of that transformation is happening.

Glenna Marshall: 8:47

But I mean, you know, maybe a couple of years removed from the book of James, there are still big portions that are embedded in my memory for life. If you give me the first couple of words, I can start to go with it. One of the real benefits of that is like I understand the flow of the book of James. Spending a year memorizing it, I can think three. Well, chapter one talks about this and then in chapter two he moves to this argument and you can sort of give yourself a good holistic overview of a particular book of the Bible.

Glenna Marshall: 9:19

And so while I probably, you know, three or four years removed from memorizing James, I probably could not sit and recite the whole book for you right now, most of it is still, you know, in my memory, in my heart, and I refer to it, comes up to mind all of the time in conversations, when I'm studying, when I'm writing. And I think that when you do that, when you give yourself long portions of time to think on particular passages of scripture, you're just, you're giving yourself like, think of, like a bank vault of God's word that then the Holy Spirit can bring to mind really for the rest of your life. It's just a gift you're giving yourself that the Lord is pleased to use. I love that so much. Yes absolutely.

Mentor Mama: 10:04

You know. I think that that kind of takes maybe a heavy weight off of people's shoulders because maybe they feel like they have the expectation that you know, oh, something that I, you know, memorized three years ago I can't remember now what's wrong with me, so but I love that conceptually. It's within your heart now and, like you said, the Holy Spirit will refer you back to it right when you need it. Well, let's talk about some obstacles that people have about Bible memorization. What would you say are some of those and what are the keys to unlocking their potential?

Glenna Marshall: 10:52

Well, I would say most people when you talk to them about memorizing Scripture. I think most Christians believe it's something that they should do and maybe even want to, but are so intimidated by the thought of memorizing that the first response I always get when I'm talking about this is oh, I have a terrible memory. I just I can't do that. I mean, but really that's what literally everyone says. So it's not that we're all very exceptional with our poor memories. I think we all feel sort of the limitations of our memories. But I did a little bit of brain science research while I was writing my book and because I wanted to understand the brain's capacity to memorize and I cannot go very deep into the weeds of the brain science portion because I'm not a scientist or a doctor or anyone in that field. I was fascinated by what I learned because God has designed our brains in an amazing way. I mean, aside from the way that our brains control everything that our bodies do, our brains are designed to both remember and forget information. There's a portion of our brain, the hippocampus, that is there for us to hold on to information for very short periods of time, like if you're trying to remember a passcode to get into an online account, you know they send you a passcode. You need to type it in. You don't need that number forever, you know like there's just stuff you don't need to remember. So your hippocampus can let things go, but it can also begin to encode memories and move them to multiple locations in your brain for long-term storage. And what I discovered in my research was that the more details that you attach to a memory or the memorizing process, the easier it is to retrieve that memory. And it's not like going into your brain and finding a file it's not exactly how it works. It's more like reliving the memory. That's what your brain does. It's like you know, if you think about a childhood memory, you can remember certain components, like what you wore, what you ate on a day at the beach. There are sort of keystones that you remember because and maybe that's an experience you had with the sibling, who remembers the same trip to the beach, but with completely different details because what you pay attention to is what you remember. And so, thinking through the process of how to memorize scripture, if we add details to our memorization process, it is easier for us to sort of retrieve those memories. So what that means for memorization is not just standing over and over and trying to say a verse just wrote. It means pulling in other learning styles, like audio bibles, like using mnemonic devices, like employing the first letter method, writing the text, saying it aloud.

Glenna Marshall: 13:42

And then one of the things that was so crucial for me was to attach Bible memorization to a task where my hands were maybe busy but my mind wasn't.

Glenna Marshall: 13:55

And there are lots of times during our day where you're doing things like washing dishes or folding laundry or taking a walk or working out at the gym, or if you have a commute to work, where you're sort of engaged in what you're doing but your mind is kind of free to wander.

Glenna Marshall: 14:09

If you will take a task and notice I'm not saying create new time, I'm saying redeem time that you already have and use memorization then you're sort of giving your brain a way to default to memorization.

Glenna Marshall: 14:24

So what that looks like for me is I get up every morning, I do my Bible study in prayer time, I go to the gym with my husband, we come home, get kids off to school and then I get in the shower and in my shower, taped to my shower wall, are my scripture passages and they're in ziploc bags so they don't get wet. And every day I step into the shower and my brain immediately goes to memorization, because I've been doing it for years and so I'm taking that five, 10 minutes every day, working on reviewing what I've already learned and adding new phrases every few days, and that process of just adding details to memorization has really helped me understand that your brain is designed to memorize. You just have to tap into some of those ways to sort of unlock that, and so it feels like a hurdle. But I mean, god made your brain and it's amazing what he has done in creating your brain and I believe that he is pleased to help us in the practice of memorizing his word.

Mentor Mama: 15:23

That is such a cool idea. I never thought of that. Yeah, some of the places that I do it, I think, like you said, maybe on a walk or at the gym or something like that, but that's just such a fun idea Because, you're right, we can definitely multitask when we're in the shower. Oh my goodness. Okay. Well, you know, one of the things, Glenna, that I really loved about your book was your chapter that talks about knowing his voice, and you sort of describe this chain reaction the longer we walk with Christ, the more we recognize his voice and the more we listen to his voice, the more we trust it. And as we trust it, you said, we become more confident to stand firm on what we know to be true, and that just really resonated with me. Tell us more about this and how Bible memorization can play a role in discerning God's voice.

Glenna Marshall: 16:30

Well, I think about you most people have heard that analogy that when you work in a bank as a bank teller, they teach you how to identify counterfeit money by teaching you what real money looks like. They don't have time to show you every kind of counterfeit bill that exists, because there's all kinds, and so what you do is you learn the genuine artifact. And when you know the genuine artifact then you can distinguish it from the counterfeits. And that is so true for talking about what is true and what God's word actually says, there's so much, even within Christian culture. That is, you know, maybe the fringe side of biblical truth, or it's just close enough to biblical truth, but it maybe sounds good. I recently was watching a video on social media where I think it was Christianity Today had gone to a Christian college and they interviewed students and tried to see if they could tell the difference between Bible verses and AI, generated quote-unquote scripture, and let me tell you some of them were difficult to know for sure. It sounded like scripture, but maybe the slant was just a little bit off and sometimes the students weren't sure and they chose the AI version as the biblical truth. And I just I think that's so interesting, because even something that's kind of adjacent to Christianity can sound true and right, but if you don't know what God's word actually says, you may not know for sure. And so I think that the way that we know who got it.

Glenna Marshall: 18:15

Well, he has revealed himself in scripture.

Glenna Marshall: 18:16

That's how he has revealed himself to us in Christ and through his word, and so for us to know him intimately, we have to submit ourselves to this means of grace that he has given us to know him, which is through scripture.

Glenna Marshall: 18:32

And the longer that we do that, the more time that we spend in his word, then I would say, the more deeply we understand who he is, the more readily we can see and distinguish a truth from a lie. And so I like to think of that passage in John 10 where Jesus talks about the sheep know the voice of the shepherd and they won't go off with a stranger because they don't recognize his voice. And I think that it's a beautiful picture of, and really the sheet being safe in the father's hand. I just I love that picture because, truly, the longer and the more time we give to his word, thinking about it, meditating on it, then, like we do know what's true, we know who we're following, we know who our shepherd is and we're not so easily swayed by the lies of our culture, even the ones that sound okay. And there's safety in knowing the voice of your shepherd.

Mentor Mama: 19:29

Yes, absolutely. You know that's incredible, that that we can hear and know God's voice. And if we take this time, like you've suggested, in really memorizing scripture and how the bible says, you know, we need to train under it, we need to obey it, and all of these things are what draws closer and closer to the Lord, and if we can recognize his voice, we stand firm on what we know to be true. And and in this day and age, we really really need to be doing that, because I hadn't even thought of an AI generated scripture verse like that just blows my mind, really and so we do need to be very grounded in God's word. Well, is there a actually a biblical precedent for memorizing God's word, or is it just enough to read our bibles?

Glenna Marshall: 20:41

Well, it's definitely not less than reading your bibles. I definitely don't want to say, hey, memorize and don't read. No, I think we need both study reading, repetitive reading, and memorization. I mean, the more of God's word that we get into our life, the better. But there's not like a command. You know you must memorize Scripture. That command is not there, but there are many biblical precedents for Scripture memorization.

Glenna Marshall: 21:07

There is a passage in, I believe, Deuteronomy 11. I want to say where God has given his people the law and he tells them what I want you to do with my word that I've given you is to talk about it when you wake up in the morning, talk about it with your children, talk about it, think about it as you're walking by the way, as you rise in the morning, go to bed in the evening. I want you to write it on the doorposts of your home. And basically, what he wanted them to do was to talk about his word over and over, so that they wouldn't forget who he is. And that really is such a beautiful example of what the purpose of meditating on God's word and reading it and coming back to it over and over is, so that we remember who God is Because the minute we forget who he is, that's when we question him and we're suddenly like Adam and Eve in the garden saying, did God really say, you know? But if we are anchored in his word, remembering it all throughout our days, then we know what he said and we know who he is and we know how much he has left us and sending Jesus to us. And so there's that passage there.

Glenna Marshall: 23:10

And then Psalm one is just this beautiful analogy, kind of a word picture of a man who avoids sin. He stays far from sin by the lighting in God's word and meditating on it day and night. And the Hebrew word there for meditate, literally translated, means to mumble aloud to oneself, which is what we are doing when we are memorizing. We're just saying it out loud, over and over, because repetition is one of the keys for memorization. And because of his commitment to God's word, to meditating on it, he flourishes like a tree planted by a river, bearing fruit and flourishing in faithfulness instead of giving himself to sin. So you have that passage that's also really helpful in just sort of extolling the virtue of memorizing and meditating on scripture. You have Psalm 119, which is an entire book devoted to celebrating God's word. Just what is it? 176 versus something like that. And it's written in an acrostic pattern which would have been done for the purposes of memorization for the original audience.

Glenna Marshall: 24:22

And so I think of, I believe, Colossians 3, where Paul talks about letting God's word dwell richly in you. And I think about that Colossian church which was planted by a paphras who had heard the gospel in Ephesus. When Paul preached it, he took the gospel home to Colossae. People came to faith in Christ, planted a church. Their knowledge of scripture would have been so limited because this was mostly a Gentile church, so they didn't even have like the history of the Torah and Psalms and the wisdom literature that the Jewish Christians would have had.

Glenna Marshall: 24:57

And so when Paul is saying to them, let the word of God or the word of Christ dwell in you richly, I mean, whatever they're getting, they have got to internalize it. It is all that they had and probably internalize it in that group corporate setting as a church. What they're hearing preached and taught, they are memorizing and holding on to because that's all that they had. And I think that is such a great example to us that when I mean especially us who have so much access to God's word. Hold on to it with all of you, with all that you have and all that you are. Let it live in your heart. And so, while you won't see a command that says, ellen, you have to memorize scripture, you will see biblical precedence for that, and I also think of Jesus who could recite it, you know, and it met him right there in the desert, when Satan was tempting him to sin. Jesus fought back with God's word and he knew how to wield it well, because they're his words.

Mentor Mama: 25:54

Yes, I think too of Mary, the mother of Jesus, and how you knew that she had God's word treasured in her heart. Yes, those are really excellent precedents for not only reading but memorizing, meditating on God's word. Let's get real practical here. What are the tips that our listeners can actually do to aid them in this memorizing process?

Glenna Marshall: 26:29

Well, I mentioned repetition, which is absolutely key. That is one of the things your brain likes and needs the most to hang on to new information. We all learned to do that in school. You know, maybe just a cram for a test, but memorization is absolutely crucial. However, there are a lot of different ways to employ repetition for the sake of memorization, and the first thing you're going to have to do, no matter your learning style, is you're going to have to choose your passage.

Glenna Marshall: 26:57

I always recommend choose a passage you're somewhat familiar with, especially if this is your first foray into memorization, because we want to set you up for success from the beginning. So maybe don't choose an entire chapter out of Leviticus. Maybe don't do that. Go to a Psalm that you love, and I mean I recommend Psalm 1. It's six verses, it's very strong on word pictures, and so it's a little easier to memorize because it has a flow and a progression and you can sort of see it in your head when you're memorizing it. And so what you're going to do? Choose your passage. You need to write it out because you need to put it somewhere where you're going to see it regularly. For me, that's in the shower. I also have a version above my kitchen sink where I wash dishes that maybe you know take to your bathroom mirror or at your desk at work, something like that.

Glenna Marshall: 27:46

And then you're just going to have to start, and this is where you know people get tripped up. I don't know how to start. This is you want to take the very first phrase, and so let the commas, the semicolons, the periods, let the punctuation sort of be a guide as phrase, like a starting and stopping point, and just take that first phrase and say it. I want you to read it out loud 10 times. Then I want you to close your eyes and say it out loud 10 times and you do that for a couple of days until you can say it without any prompting, without looking at your paper. That may take you a day, it may take you a week, and that does not matter. You go at your own pace. This is absolutely not a race. Then, when you feel like you have that phrase, you move on to the next phrase and you do the same thing, read it out loud 10 times. And I really do encourage out loud because remember Psalm 1, that meditate means to mumble aloud to yourself. Again, vocalizing it will help your brain hold on to it longer. So say it out loud 10 times and try to recite it and then go back and add it to what you've already learned. That 10 times rule is just so good for repetition and you're going to do that until you get to the end of your passage.

Glenna Marshall: 28:55

This is just a very kind of slow plotting process, but the slow plotting part is that's where the Holy Spirit does his good work, as you're thinking about those words and thinking about what they mean and maybe praying them to the Lord. So that's like your very basic. But for kind of using different learning styles. For some people they may need to turn on their audio Bible and listen to it and say it with the narrator 10, 15 times. I use Dwell Bible Audio app. I love it. It's a fantastic resource for memorization because you can put things on repeat. You can also choose your narrator as well.

Glenna Marshall: 29:35

Some other things that I really love, especially for like a long review. Like, let's say, you've been memorizing Psalm 1 and you want to sit down and review the whole thing because you think you've got it. You can say it out loud or you can get a piece of paper and a pen and you can just go through and write out the Psalm using the first letter of each word. What's good about that is that it's fast. You don't have to write the entire Psalm, which could be pretty time consuming. I do recommend doing that once in a while, just because it's good for your heart to slowly write out God's word. But the first letter method allows your brain to move at the pace that it likes, because your brain actually doesn't need every letter of the word. I mean, you've probably seen those memes on social media where it's like a printed text upside down and the words are all scrambled. But it gives you like the first letter and the last letter of each word and you know what it says, because your brain can fill in the blanks. Similarly, for that with a passage you memorized, just use that first letter method, write it out, the first letter of each word, and you can do reviews that way. That's one of my favorite methods for review. I actually use that one a lot, something I do that's helpful for a list. You see lots of lists in the Bible, especially in, like Paul's letters, lots of lists of you know, maybe a list of sins and then a list of fruit of the spirit or something like that.

Glenna Marshall: 30:55

This is where I recommend using a mnemonic device. I was memorizing a year or two ago, in the first part of First Peter, where Peter talks. He's identifying himself as the author of this letter and then he talks about his audience. This is who he's writing to and he says to the elect exiles of the dispersion and Poccus Galatia, capetosha, asia and the India. So these are ancient cities and I don't know where they are or who they are, so I don't have like this way to order them. So I just created a sentence where you know I have a corresponding word for each of those first letters of those ancient cities.

Glenna Marshall: 31:37

That sentence would not make sense to anyone else in the world, but it made sense to me and that's what helped me memorize it and I can say them in order to this day without looking because of a simple mnemonic device. And so I just you know whatever works for you. This is what I really want people to be encouraged to do Try lots of methods, find what works for you and use it regularly, and your methods might look very different from mine. That is okay. God has created us with, you know, individual personalities and different kinds of brains, and so try a lot of different ways and then settle in on what works for you and just go at it every day. Give yourself a few minutes to work on it.

Mentor Mama: 32:16

Those are great tips. You know one of the tips you had in your book too, and you've kind of touched on it a little bit. But like to memorize what your pastor is preaching on and I know like our pastor preaches through a whole book of the Bible. So I know that.

Mentor Mama: 32:34

You know he's going to be there a while because he's only preaching on maybe you know up to 10 verses or something like that, and when I read that it's one of your suggestions, it really made me excited because, like you said, like it's not only me memorizing the words, but it's also me internalizing what he's also teaching and preaching on. So awesome tips.

Glenna Marshall: 33:07

I can say too, I mean as a wife of a pastor. If you were to tell your pastor, hey, you're preaching through this book and I'm memorizing this passage, it will mean so much to him. Just to know that the congregation is engaged with, is engaging with the text on a regular basis would be so encouraging to him. And then I mean just exactly what you said, as, as he's preaching each week, like, my pastors are going through the book of Hebrews and I have some portions of Hebrews memorized, and so when they get to that text, I mean I will be on the edge of my seat and so so you know, so ready to listen to what they have labored over in their study and in prayer and what I have labored over in my memorization and prayer. I just think that's a way for us to be mutually encouraging to one another in the church.

Mentor Mama: 33:58

Yeah, yeah, definitely. Well, it Tell us about what this memorization process looks like for you. I know you talked about your sheets in the shower, so do you have a process. You mentioned a few things. Put it all together for us.

Glenna Marshall: 34:19

Yeah. So for me it's just very uncomplicated, honestly. Not necessarily easy, but not complicated. I do most of my memorizing in the shower. That's where I've memorized all of James and all of Colossians and that's where I'm working on First Peter. And then sometimes, if I'm in the car or taking a walk, or sometimes even at the gym, I use my Dwell Bible Audio app and I'll just listen to the text over and over, and that can be really good for, like, let's say, I'm in the middle of First Peter 3, I'll listen to the whole book so that I can think about First Peter 3 in the context of the whole book. Just kind of puts it all in perspective.

Glenna Marshall: 34:57

Some other things that we do in our house is we memorize with our kids. I have an eight-year-old and a 15-year-old, both boys, and so we have memorized together and we do that at the dinner table and it doesn't take much time, and we try to make it into a game. And kids, their brains are just sponges, and so they memorize so quickly, and I remember my youngest is a new reader and most of what he's memorized, though, he memorized before he knew how to read, and so all of his memorization work has just been based upon what he hears, which is just using that auditory type of learning. And so we sit at the table, we eat dinner. My husband usually reads either from the Bible or from the family devotional that we're working through. We have a time of prayer. I mean the whole thing takes about five, 10 minutes and then we pick up where we left off in our memorization. So we've been working through Romans 8 for a long time and we do things like just reciting that 10 times over and over again. Or sometimes we'll make it into a game, like I'll start with the first word and my husband will take the second word and then we'll just go around the table and then we'll reverse the order or somebody else starts, so that you get different words. And what's good about that is that you sort of have to be thinking ahead of what word comes next, what word's going to land on you. My kids really like that, and memorizing with your family is a sweet thing to do.

Glenna Marshall: 36:21

I remember earlier this year, back in March, my grandmother passed away and when we had her funeral I remember we were at her gravesite, at the burial, and my husband was. He had preached the funeral service and then he was going to pray and read some scripture at the gravesite and he read that passage from Romans 8 about what shall separate us from the love of Christ. And I had looked over in my son, my young son, who's seven at the time, was sitting next to my dad and he is just reciting Romans 8 with my husband as he read it aloud, and I just thought, man, we're just giving our kids a storehouse of God's word so that when they're old enough to think through life situations or to ask questions or work out their faith with fear and jumbling, the answers are there in their hearts. And so we just pray that the Lord will do the good work of future discipleship with what we're giving them now.

Glenna Marshall: 37:24

And so, anyway, so that I mean really just my little touch points of memorization. Sometimes I work on it while I'm folding like a laundry mountain, working my way through just reciting out loud Another time that I memorize. Frequently I have a lot of trouble sleeping. I have a lot of issues with chronic pain from an autoimmune disease. I am not a great sleeper and also deal with some anxiety because of that, and so I do a lot of scripture review in the middle of the night, and I figure, if I'm awake I can think about God's word, and so that's what I do.

Mentor Mama: 38:01

What a great, great suggestion. I know for me too. I love to if I wake up in the middle of the night to recite over and over in my head I usually talking about Psalm 23 as I'm going over and over and over and over, and over, and over and over Same.

Mentor Mama: 38:21

I'm not hoping I'm going to fall back to sleep, but it is encouraging to bring those well-worn, so to speak, memorized verses to your mind right when you need them. And that's another good example of why having them memorized and you don't have to break out your Bible and turn on the light, that's right, it's right there.

Mentor Mama: 38:48

Well, as we start to kind of wrap things up here, Glenna tell us you said that recitation is not the goal of memorization. For those listening here, we just want to make sure they understand what would you say is the goal.

Glenna Marshall: 39:08

Transformation is the goal. I think about Paul's exhortation in Romans 12 to not be conformed to the patterns of this world, but to be transformed by renewing your mind. We can renew our minds with all kinds of things, with the entertainment that we watch, the books that we read, the news that we watch, the social media that we scroll. I mean, you're going to renew your mind with something. But when you renew your mind with God's word, you're sort of rewiring the way that you think, because you are thinking the way that God thinks. You are thinking, reading, meditating on His thoughts, His words. Invariably that is going to change who you are. It's that Jesus talked about. What goes into the heart is what comes out of the mouth. It's the overflow of the heart that the mouth speaks. And so if what you're pouring into your mind is just worldliness, cultural things, then that's what's going to come out in your actions, your responses. But when you fill your mind with God's word, through the help of the Holy Spirit, he changes you. And so this is the goal of memorization is to renew your mind, to think like Jesus, to act like Jesus, to respond to temptation or suffering like Jesus. We're not going to be able to do that apart from Scripture. And God has given us Scripture, as Peter tells us, for everything we need for life and Godliness. God has given it to us, and so memorizing Scripture is one of the ways that we become more like Christ, we're thinking like Him, and that will change the way that we act and the words that come out of our mouth, and equips us for gospel conversations, for encouraging fellow believers, Helps us know how to fight sin and say no to sin by saying yes to God's word, Helps us know how to endure and remain steadfast when life is really hard. And so it is a neat thing to be able to recite God's word.

Glenna Marshall: 41:16

My mom was in town last weekend and she said guess what? I've just finished memorizing 1 Corinthians 13. So let me recite it to you. And it was so sweet to hear my mom recite Scripture that she's been memorizing. I love that. There is a beautiful blessing and I think recitation can be really powerful. It is God's word. But our goal in any spiritual discipline is not to stand up and say, hey, look at me, Look what I did, which is not what my mom was doing. She was like let me bless you with the Scripture. That's different, but the thought of standing up and reciting for some people is enough to turn them off to Scripture, because the thought is paralyzing with fear.

Glenna Marshall: 41:53

But if you think the goal here is for me to become more like Jesus, that sort of changes your motivation. We're not here to be legalistic and say look how much I've memorized. What we're here to say is word. Your word is a treasure. Help me pile it up like a treasure in my heart so that I can be like you, because that's the goal of sanctification, and we know that sanctification is God's will for our life. We know that from Paul and for Sasslanians, and so we can trust that this isn't one of the means by which God will make us like Christ. And so I think reframing our understanding of the why behind memorization can protect us from legalism, but also can really motivate us in the best way we memorize, to remember who God is and to be transformed more and more into the image of Jesus, amen.

Mentor Mama: 42:44

Well, let the transformation begin. I hope, if you're listening today, just really take this to heart and pick something small. Get started today. Get a Ziploc bag and put your memory verse in there. I really want to try this. That's right. How can people find out more information about you and your book?

Glenna Marshall: 43:12

Well, my book is available wherever you buy books, especially online these days. You can find me just at my website, glennamarshall. com, and I am out there on the internet, so it's easy to find me.

Mentor Mama: 43:25

Excellent, and we will also have those links in our show notes, all right, so before we go, I want to ask you some of our favorite Bible study tool questions. What Bible is your go-to Bible and which translation is it?

Glenna Marshall: 43:41

Okay, so I have a very big, thick ESV study Bible and the reason I use an ESV is because that's what my pastors preach out of, and so I, just for the sake of continuity, that's what I study from and that's what I memorize from as well. I'm also a big fan of an ESV as well, but my main one is the ESV and I love it because the study notes, particularly at the beginning of each book of the Bible, are so thorough and are so helpful for context. You don't necessarily have to go out and buy a commentary for every book of the Bible. I feel like the notes are very thorough for historical context.

Mentor Mama: 44:22

Okay, and that's a great great tip. You know, and I think maybe some people don't realize it, but when you are reading a new book of the Bible, don't skip over that stuff at the beginning, right?

Glenna Marshall: 44:34

That's right.

Mentor Mama: 44:35

It's really so important for understanding the context of the passage. Okay, how about do you have any favorite journaling supplies or anything that you like to use to enhance your Bible study experience?

Glenna Marshall: 44:50

So I am very I guess you would say analog. When it comes to Bible study tools, I don't use anything fancy. Here's what I do. I use a set of study questions that I developed years ago. I have a weekly study group that meets in my house on Tuesdays and we just read straight through books of the Bible. We use these study questions and we just work through the text every single week and a lot of repetitive reading and answering questions, and for me it's a spiral notebook and a pen, although I will say I'm 42. I feel like I've been looking for the perfect pen for 42 years and I haven't found it yet.

Mentor Mama: 45:39

Oh gee. Well, let me know when you do, Okay. Last question what is your favorite app or website for Bible study tools? My mom turned me on to this one.

Glenna Marshall: 45:54

I have really enjoyed the last couple of years the Blue Letter Bible app.

Glenna Marshall: 45:59

I have it on my phone and my iPad. Even though I really try not to use electronics during my Bible study time Occasionally, I'll make an exception. Mostly because you can go to a verse. You can look at it in several different translations without having to have 10 Bibles out in front of you, but also you can go to phrases, that go to phrases or words and look at the Hebrew or the Greek word and see where else that word was used throughout scripture. You can listen to it pronounced from strong's concordance in Hebrew, and sometimes that can just be helpful to know what type of noun or verb am I looking at and is this? Because not everything comes across in English exactly the way that it does in Hebrew or Greek, and so I'm not a student of Hebrew or Greek and don't anticipate becoming one, but that can be helpful once in a while just to sort of deepen your understanding. So, blue Letter Bible app and it's a free app.

Mentor Mama: 47:11

Did you say you had one more or just another idea after the Blue Letter Bible?

Glenna Marshall: 47:18

Oh no, it's just a free app, which is why I like to recommend it.

Mentor Mama: 47:25

So Blue Letter Bible is an excellent app and we will have the link for that as well in our show notes. Glenna, thank you so much for being here with us today and truly reminding us of why memorizing Scripture is so important, so helpful and really just encouraging those of us to believe in ourselves that, yes, we can do this. So I really appreciate you coming so much.

Glenna Marshall: 47:52

Well thank you so much.

Mentor Mama: 47:53

It was a joy and for our listeners. Be sure to pick up a copy of Glenna's book called Memorizing Scripture. You will find the link in our show notes. Thank you for joining us today. We appreciate you all so very much. Have a blessed day.