“Thy word have I hid in mine heart, That I might not sin against thee.” Psalm 119:11
Do you believe that the Bible is God’s Word? I do. I believe the Bible is exactly what God wants us to know about many subjects including about God Himself, about life and the purpose of life, about death and eternity, about the church and our purpose. The Bible is the one thing that God has given us to make us prepared to do all good works (II Timothy 3:16-17). The Bible is more than just a book, it is God’s message to His creation! So we should read it and more than just read the Bible, we should memorize verses and passages, or “hide God’s Word in our hearts”. Why should we memorize the Bible? The answer the psalmist gave us is very clear.
To gain victory over temptation.
“That I might not sin against God.” This was the reason the psalmist memorized Bible verses. We can memorize Bible verses to help give us the victory over sin. As temptation comes, we can answer it with Bible verses. The best example, and most obvious, is Jesus in Matthew 4. Jesus was tempted by Satan and answered each temptation with Scripture. As we are tempted to sin, we would do well to use God’s Word to combat such temptation. But we may not have a Bible handy, or we may not remember exactly where to look in the Bible for what we need! Today things are much easier. We can do a quick search on Google to find articles that will give specific verses of the Bible about specific topics, but there are times when even that is not convenient. The best solution is to put God’s Word where it will always be ready to help us, in our hearts!
If you have specific sins that tempt you (we all do), memorize verses about that specific topic. You will be amazed how God helps you to recall those verses!
The answer the psalmist gave us as to why he memorized Bible verses is very clear, but there are also other reasons to memorize God’s Word. We will address some of these reasons in upcoming posts.
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