Chapter 15: Caution Lights

Every good road has a few caution lights.  This is true even with Scripture memorization.  These are some of the ones I’ve discovered in which we must be careful.

1)  Forgetting to pray and seek the Lord—It’s easy to get so goal-focused that we forget to include the Lord in the process.   Seek the Lord not just with your mind and heart but with your spirit as well. 

2)  Putting goals above process.  Set your direction firmly but your time frames with grace.  You don’t want to become so driven that you lose the process of absorbing and digesting the Scriptures.   

3)  Boasting/pride—When you begin to tell people how many Scriptures or books of the Bible you’ve memorized, it may be a good sign that you’re goal has superseded the ultimate goal of increased relationship—Jesus. 

4)  Not taking times of rest—Remember that taking a break from a section of Scripture is a part of the memory process (caution too much rest is equally not beneficial). 

5)  Appropriate pacing—Memorizing large portions is not a sprint but a marathon.  When you run a sprint you go as hard as you possible can go.  When you run a marathon you rein yourself in so that you can go the distance.  Go at the speed of developing your relationship with the Lord.

6)  Make sure there is review—No process is perfect in keeping the Word fresh.  It’s the process of review that helps keep it alive.

7)  Falling back into habits of rote—It’s quicker to go with rote and it has short-term success.  But for long-term success I’ve found this method much more fruitful.

8) Trusting the process—This is a five step process (1)—Researching the relationships, 2)—See the Movie, 3)—Tell the story, 4)—Attaching the words, 5)—Getting it Out) and for this method to work, it all stands or falls together. 

9)  Not writing down discoveries.  When I don’t write it down, it becomes quickly forgotten.  I’ve kicked myself many a times for the discoveries I’ve lost.

10)  Thinking you don’t have enough time.  “One of the great uses of Twitter and Facebook will be to prove at the Last Day that prayerlessness was not from lack of time.”  John Piper.  Same could be said of all spiritual disciplines.