How to Memorize Scripture: Rote
Memorizing by rote uses lots of repetition and is
kind of like eating a bicycle. Believe it or not
the Guinness Book of World Records lists
a man who did just that over a period of three months.
This brings two thoughts immediately to mind: “How
Bizarre!” and “How did he do it?” He accomplished
this feat by taking small bites and chewing very
thoroughly. This is the rote approach to Scripture
memory. Let’s consider an example:
Proverbs 10 begins "The proverbs of Solomon".
Let's see now, that's four words - an excellent
small bite! To well-memorize even those small words
will take numerous repititions. An important key
when doing these repititions is to keep the mind
engaged. One way to do that is to stress a different
word with each repitition:
The proverbs of Solomon
The proverbs of Solomon
The proverbs of Solomon
The proverbs of Solomon
Maybe I'll even make up jingle and sing it. But
I won't torture you with my singing!
Once I've got a few words down I'll move on to
the next few words:
A wise son brings joy to his father,
And I'll chew on that for awhile.
but a foolish son grief to his mother.
Hey, hey! Now I've memorized a verse. Are you excited
yet? I'm actually not quite done yet. The last step
is that I have to glue it all together.
The proverbs of Solomon:
A wise son brings joy to his father, but a foolish
son grief to his mother.
The "gluing" process will actually take
some time and is very important because I'm always
gluing larger and larger pieces together. That's
how one verse becomes three verse, becomes five
verses, becomes a chapter.
Is there a better
way to memorize?
