(Disclaimer: This transcript is auto-generated and may contain mistakes.)

Matthew Stuckey here and I wanted to make a quick video giving you some thoughts on Bible memorization and the importance of Bible memorization and how to actually memorize the Bible. And so just to give you a little bit of background on myself I got saved when I was 18 years old started doing some memorization when I was 19 and I've tried a lot of different systems and I'm in my mid 30s I'm still memorizing the Bible just recently over the last 12 months. I memorized the book of Romans, then the book of Hosea, 1st John. I'm currently memorizing the book of Genesis. I'm in chapter 10 right now and I just mentioned that to let you know that I'm not claiming to be the the greatest person to memorize in the Bible or have more Bible memorized than anybody else but I'm just letting you know that my methods have been successful for me. I'm not saying they're necessarily going to be successful for you. Obviously people are different. I would encourage you to listen to other people that have been successful memorizing the Bible and even other sources outside of Bible believe in Christians that give maybe tips on memorizing and they might give you some tips that you could find effective and you could try them out and you know it could really help you memorize. Now why do we memorize the Bible? What's the importance? I do believe that memorizing the Bible is the best way to really study the Bible. When I memorize the Bible I often find various sermons and ideas just stuff just clicks in my head like it it hadn't before. It's really just the best way I think to study the Bible. Sometimes there are deep topics where you have to cross-reference and look stuff up but memorizing the Bible you're going to find things that you've never seen before and you know it really is the way to meditate on God's Word day and night is when you're memorizing the Bible and you have some scriptures that you're thinking about in your head throughout the day. So I believe Bible memorization is really a great practice for all of us as Christians. However anyone who has memorized the Bible will also talk about the frustrations and the difficulties because it's not easy. It's time-consuming it takes effort and then you forget a lot of things that you know. The other thing I want to mention is this this video I am NOT going to give you tips on how to retain what you already have memorized. I used to spend a lot of time trying to retain what I have memorized however I don't really use that technique anymore and kind of my reasoning is if you memorize something for the first time it's it's very interesting it's just like if you were to watch a movie or read a book for the first time it's more interesting because you don't know what's happening. You're learning more because everything is is fresh in your head and so I feel like you know if I just try to spend all my time retaining what I already have known what I've already memorized I'm not going to learn as much information. Obviously the Bible is infinite so you can still learn but you know I'm not going to learn as much information as if I just picked a brand new book like Hosea to memorize and the other thing is what it often happens is it kind of results in you getting kind of frustrated and burnout and you don't find it entertaining because obviously beating a video game for the hundredth time is not as exciting as beating it for the first or the second time. So what I do is when I memorize something I actually write a sermon on all the chapters that I memorize and obviously as a preacher that's kind of an advantage I have because eventually I figure I'm going to preach through these books but what you could do is just write down all the notes and the information you learn so that way it wasn't a waste memorizing the book but you've got the information that you learned and then you can move on to something new and learn a lot of new information. Okay so those are my tips and my ideas of why I don't try to retain the chapters. I feel like it's very difficult and I feel like I can learn more with something new but that is up to you if you want to try to retain and learn new information. This video though is only giving you tips on how to learn new information. So what are the three tips that I have? Number one, quite simply, remove distractions. If you want to memorize the Bible you must get rid of distractions. You're going to be repeating something over and over again trying to memorize it and if you have distractions, if you have cell phones, if you have computers, if you have TV, if you have entertainment, if you have lots of people talking, it is just going to distract you from actually memorizing. You must find a way to remove distractions. What I personally do is I go out for a walk on most occasions when I'm memorizing the Bible and I'll usually have my cell phone with me and I'll be memorizing the verses and memorizing the words and just saying them over and over again and I'll go to a place that is not super crowded so I don't have to be super focused on traffic and things such as that but you know basically I'll just kind of walk back and forth and just memorize. Now one reason why I like to do this is because I like to exercise, I like to stay in shape and as a father of two kids who's busy with work and life, you don't necessarily have as much time to work out anymore so it kind of serves a dual purpose. However, they've done a lot of studies that have said that you can actually memorize better while you're getting some light exercise and so if I were to run then I probably wouldn't be able to memorize the information because I've got a look on it on my phone. However, by walking I'm able to multitask and I'm getting some exercise and I'm memorizing and I've not found that to be a distraction walking as long as it's an area that's kind of secluded there's not a lot of people around. So I would suggest trying that out. Go for a walk and you can memorize on your phone and you can just memorize the verses over and over and over again. However, if you do it at home or when I do it at home I always make sure there are no distractions. You're just not going to be able to memorize much if there are distractions. That's tip number one. Tip number two is this. One thing that can help you is if you memorize key verses or you know make note of key verses or important verses in the chapter because what you're going to end up doing is you're going to be breaking the chapter into sections. If there's 25 verses to memorize you don't just go from 1 to 25 over and over and over again. What you can do is just break down the chapter into six verses, seven verses, kind of at logical stopping points. Now if some verses are very familiar to you for example if you're memorizing you know I don't know Romans 3. Well Romans 3 10 is a pretty common verse to people and so basically you can make sure you have the first nine verses memorized or something like that and then you can move on to the next section because you know you'll be able to start off where you left off at Romans chapter 3 verse 10. One of the things about memorization and this is the same with singing songs or hymns or something like that is sometimes you just need the first word or the first couple words and then you're going to be able to just repeat the rest of it. However it's oftentimes hard to remember you know what is that word. So it's good if you have key verses that you're aware of or familiar and you might even want to try memorizing a couple of the verses earlier or being very familiar with them and saying this is verse number 14 and you know I'll start here on section number two or section number three or whatever that way it's easier to pick up with your memorization and so basically no key verses and that is going to help you to memorize. So point number one is remove distractions and you've got to find a way to do that. That is the most important thing. Number two is this memorizing key verses or noting key verses in the chapter and the reason why is because tip number three is this break the chapter into sections. If you've got a chapter that's 40 verses long you know what that seems pretty intimidating however if you break it into sections it's not going to be so intimidating. If you can memorize eight verses and get them down really well then you can move on to the next section and what happens is your review the sections and if there's a problem in the section then you'll spend the time to re-review it and make sure you got that section down and then you'll spend the time on the next section and it's a lot easier that way rather than just trying to go from verse number one to 40 over and over and over again. It will probably end up frustrating you if you do that. I would suggest breaking the chapter into sections and make sure you get each of those sections. But the last thing I want to say in this video is this memorizing does work and quite honestly I don't consider myself to have a super memory. I know plenty of people that have better memories than me and you know I'm sure I'm probably somewhere in the middle but the reality is I believe that anyone has the capacity to learn and to memorize the Bible and I do think it's great to memorize verses in the Bible because especially certain verses I want to be able to preach and have committed to memory. However by memorizing chapters you can learn a lot of new information that you just would not have seen and things will open up to you and then once you learn that knowledge all you got to do is keep that knowledge that you've learned. Write it down somewhere so you don't forget it. Put it in the cloud on a hard drive or whatever. Have some sort of system where you have what you learned you know committed to memory and it's not a waste having memorized the Bible. But look it will change your life memorizing the Bible. It's gonna put you in a better mood. It's gonna make you zealous and bold and excited to serve God. It's gonna make you want to go soul winning. It's gonna give you a better attitude. Look meditating on God's Word day and night is a life-changing thing but it's very difficult. So I would encourage you to try some of the tips that I mentioned in this video and also try some other stuff from not only other people that have memorized the Bible a lot and have made videos but also people just outside the Bible. I mean sometimes people can give you good advice that are from the world if it's not something related to you know a biblical belief. Just in terms of the practice of memorizing there's some good tips out there. Another thing that I didn't mention is this one thing that will help you memorize the Bible is having a good diet. If you are eating a lot of junk food and drinking a lot of Coke and pop and energy drinks and just chips and ice cream and things such as that it will prevent you from being able to memorize the Bible. There are certain foods that are known as brain foods. They'll make you very successful with you know basically you know having a good memory and having your mind active. And quite honestly I noticed with myself that when I'm eating healthier my mind is very sharp. My Bible reading is better. My memorization is better. I'm not claiming to be perfect at this. I'm not claiming I never eat junk food. But I am saying it does make a difference if you have a healthy diet. So that is one thing you want to try to do and you know what? Your mind's going to be sharper than you ever realized and you will have the ability to memorize the Bible. Maybe faster or slower than other people. People learn at different paces. However you can still learn the Word of God. Thank you and God bless.