5 Ways to Memorize Scripture

"All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness..."

2 Timothy 3:16

Did any of you any attend AWANA as a kid? AWANA is a fantastic program that my church holds for youth from 3 years old to 5th graders, and the goal is to teach kids to memorize Scripture - good stuff, right? Every week, the kids come excitedly to church proudly sporting their AWANA vests which bear colorful patches and pins showing how many verses they've memorized. I'll never forget my experiences at AWANA and I still haven't forgotten the Bible verses I learned as a kid.

After I outgrew AWANA, my drive to memorize verses faded. But, honestly, I shouldn't have stopped. As we grow older, we need God's Word more and more in our lives. I can't tell you how many times I wish I knew Bible verses right off the top of my head to give someone for advice or encouragement. Memorizing Scripture is an imperative part of our walks with God - after all, how can we witness to others, teach others, learn about the mind and heart of our Maker without memorizing the Word?

So, how do we go about doing this? Here are five helpful hints on memorizing Scripture that have helped me:

1. Pick a verse and write it down. You may want to start off by memorizing one verse (or passage) a week. Once you find one you like, take the time to write it down - not just some quick scribbles on a Post-it note - but find some nice paper and write it slowly, neatly, and meaningfully, taking time to soak in the words. This will help to begin engraining the verse in your mind. Repeating this step is really helpful.

2. Read the verse aloud. Find a quiet spot and read the verse or passage slowly. Experimenting with different voices sometimes helps (and it makes it more fun ;). If you're a musically gifted person, put the verse to song (WARNING: the song will get stuck in your head for a while). Also, reading it aloud with another person can help.

3. Put the verse in places you can see them. Go to town with sticky notes! You could use the bathroom mirror, your car, a message board, your dresser, the toilet, even your forehead. The point is to make sure that this verse can be seen anywhere you go. That way there's the constant reminder and it starts to become natural to see it - thusly, becoming engrained in your mind.

4. Pray the verse back to God. Doing this step will make it personal for you. For example, if you are memorizing Romans 3:23 you could pray "Father, I know I have sinned and I fall short of Your Glory, but I thank You that You redeem us and give us the gift of eternal life." 

5. Teach the verse to another person. Doing this will not only help the student learn the verse, but you learn it better as well. 

Memorizing Scripture is 100% necessary for a healthy relationship with God. Why wouldn't we want to memorize God's most innermost thoughts? We can respect His Word by applying it to our lives in this way, learning his teachings so that "we might not sin against [Him] (Psalm 119:11)."

How do you teach yourself to memorize Scripture? What's a verse that means the most to you?

Photo Credit: 193.365 - Bible-keh!, a photo by Josh Liba on Flickr.

Reading List for Homeschool High Schoolers

If you're being homeschooled through high school, one of your greatest anxieties (fears? terrors?) might be college. Sure, it sounds exciting, but it's also intimidating, isn't it? After all, universities are designed for kids who have been in public schools their entire lives, and it's possible that what we've learned at home just won't cut it in the "real world."

Well, as a homeschool graduate who has also earned a bachelor's degree in English, I'm here to give you some solid advice that should make you feel a lot better.

Student, a photo by CollegeDegrees360 on Flickr.

First, breathe. 

It's OK, you can have confidence in your parents, your curriculum, and your own abilities, and of course God. It's natural to be nervous about transitioning from home education to a public or private college, but it doesn't have to be a bumpy ride.

One thing that will help enormously is to be familiar with the books that you will be studying in-depth once you get to college. Since my major was in English I spent a lot of time reading and analyzing Non-Western literature, British literature, and American literature—a lot of books in other words. Though there were many that I had never read before, it helped that I was familiar with the classics and had been exposed to many of those works.

Though there can be no complete reading list for the college-bound student, here are some titles that I think you'll find very helpful to read (or at least get the CliffsNotes on) before striking out into the stormy waters of higher education. Even if you're not going to college, these are some of the most well-known books in the Western world and can broaden your horizons, deepening your insight and giving you some common ground with your public schooled friends. 

Disclaimer: Not all of these books have a Christian worldview, or are even very pleasant to read, but they offer valuable opportunities for testing your faith and applying what you have learned. If your parents don't want you to read some of them, by all means don't. There are many other valuable reads that I have left out, but this should get you started. 

How many of these have you already read?

• The Norton Anthologies: These collections of excerpts and whole works are invaluable to the serious student. Poetry, Drama, Nonfiction, stories from the Middle East, Latino or Australian literature—you could spend decades reading these anthologies alone. Old editions can be bought fairly cheaply on sites like eBay and Amazon. 
• Aldous Huxley: Brave New World
• Amy Tan: The Joy Luck Club
• Angelou, Maya: I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings 
• Arthur Miller: Death of a Salesman
• Benjamin Franklin: The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin
• Charles Dickens: Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, David Copperfield
• Charlotte Brontë: Jane Eyre
• Chinua Achebe: Things Fall Apart
• Edith Wharton: The House of Mirth, The Age of Innocence
• Ernest Hemingway: A Farewell to Arms, The Old Man and the Sea and perhaps The Sun Also Rises
• F. Scott Fitzgerald: The Great Gatsby and perhaps Tender is the Night
• Franz Kafka: Metamorphosis 
• Frederick Douglass: Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass
• George Orwell: Animal Farm, 1984
• Harriet Beecher Stowe: Uncle Tom's Cabin 
• Henry James: Daisy Miller: A Study.
• Herman Melville: Moby Dick and "Bartleby the Scrivener"
• James Fenimore Cooper: The Last of the Mohicans, The Pioneers, The Deerslayer (then read Mark Twain's "Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses")
• Jane Austen: Pride and Prejudice, Emma, and perhaps Sense and Sensibility and Persuasion
• John Steinbeck: The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and perhaps The Pearl
• Joseph Conrad: Heart of Darkness
• Kate Chopin: The Awakening 
• Leo Tolstoy: Anna Karenina. War and Peace
• Mark Twain: Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and perhaps A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court and Innocents Abroad
• Mary Shelley: Frankenstein
• Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter and The House of the Seven Gables
• Ralph Ellison: The Invisible Man
• Richard Wright: Native Son
• Robert Frost,        Ezra Pound, Carl Sandburg, William Carlos Williams, Langston Hughes: Selected poems
• Shakespeare: Romeo and Juliet, Hamlet, Macbeth, Twelfth Night, and others
• T.S. Eliot: "The Waste Land"
• Tennessee Williams: A Streetcar named Desire, Glass Menagerie 
• Upton Sinclair: The Jungle 
• Virginia Woolf: To the Lighthouse
• Walt Whitman: Leaves of Grass
• Washington Irving: "Rip Van Winkle"
• Willa Cather: My Ántonia
• William Faulkner: As I Lay Dying, The Sound and the Fury
• Zora Neale Hurston: Their Eyes Were Watching God

Besides my personal college experience, these are some helpful resources I referenced:

• thehomescholar.com
• goodreads.com
• homeschool-rewards.com
• homeschool-rewards.com
• homeworktips.about.com
• als.lib.wi.us