Hide the Word in Your Heart

In the longest chapter of one of the longest books of the Bible, the psalmist wrote, “I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you” (Ps 119:11, NIV).

All 176 verses of this psalm are dedicated to the written revelation of God, because of its supreme value. In particular, this psalmist at the time valued it for how it might help keep him from sin. He hid—or depending on the translation you’re reading, stored up or treasured—God’s word so it would be with him when he needed it. Presumably, when the temptation to sin arose.

This hiding is different from merely reading or studying. Reading and studying are valuable tools used to interact with God’s word, but they’re not the same thing as hiding it in your heart. To hide God’s word in your heart is to make it a part of you—to take it in, and to not let it go. When you read the newspaper (if you still do), you don’t take it into your heart. You read it, digest it (if it’s interesting), and put it down. We can do the same thing with Scripture. Or, we can take in what we read and not give it back. In other words, we can hide it within ourselves.

Why Would You Do This?

The psalmist in Psalm 119 tells us exactly his motivation: so that I might not sin against you. It’s hard to come up with a better reason to memorize Scripture than that. And yet, staying clear from sin might not be the reason why you’d give time to hiding God’s word in your heart. Sin, in this season of your life, might not be what needs to be addressed as it was for the psalmist in that season.

Instead, you might want to hide Scripture in your heart because you’d like to be able to mediate on it throughout the day without having to open a Bible to do it. You have a section memorized so you can think about it whenever you’d like. Or, you might want to be more prepared as you talk about the gospel to others. You don’t want to have to flip open a Bible to explain something. You’d rather just be able to recite a passage of Scripture when it’s useful. Or, maybe you’re discipling someone and it would be nice to apply passages of the Bible to their life without having to check on that passage from a Bible. You have a section ready to give them not because you did a Google search, but because you have it hidden within yourself.

How Do You Do Something Like That?

When I first hopped on this train of Scripture memorization I thought it would be a good idea to memorize the Gospel of Matthew. I know what you’re thinking… but I was really motivated by a story I heard of someone who memorized Matthew and then used that memorization throughout his life in evangelism and disciple-making. I got excited about it and wanted to give it a shot.

The problem was I had no idea how to make it happen. I thought if I could just soak in the gospel enough times, it would eventually get stuck in my brain and then I’d have it. So I started listening to it—again, and again, and again, and again. I don’t know how many times I listened to the Gospel of Matthew back then, but it was enough to where I sometimes hear the person’s voice who read the gospel when I read it now.

Even with all that listening, I wasn’t memorizing anything. Sure, there were some parts that were more familiar each time I listened to it, but nothing substantial was sticking. Nothing was being hidden in my heart. I couldn’t recite the entire gospel—I couldn’t even recite the first chapter.

So, what’d I do? I quit.

It was all obvious to me. That guy I heard about could memorize Matthew, but I couldn’t. So I stopped. And that’s the biggest mistake I made, and the biggest mistake most folks make when it comes to Scripture memorization. Granted, the process for how I was trying to memorize was messed up, but quitting wasn’t going to fix it.

A few years (I think) went by and I gave it another shot. This time, not the entire Gospel of Matthew. And I wasn’t going to just listen to what I was trying to memorize. I was going to pick something much more manageable, and get a plan together. I started with Psalm 23 (a psalm you may already have memorized!) and my plan was to use index cards. I wrote out the verses on a 4” x 6” index card and began a new memorization journey. And still, I struggled.

Why couldn’t I memorize these six verses? There are only six! Should I quit again? Probably not, but something had to be done—something else needed to be changed.

I left the six and just started to focus on one at a time. The Lord is my shepherd, I lack nothing. There, I’ve got one! He makes me lie down in green pastures, he leads me beside quiet waters. Boom—another one! He refreshes my soul. He guides me along the right paths for his name’s sake. Three in a row! I was off and running now.

I might be telling you something you already know, but it wasn’t clear to me until then. Just like when we’re told to take small bites when we were little, so we didn’t choke, it’s best to take small bites of Scripture as we’re trying to hide it in our hearts, so we don’t choke and cough it up.

The rest of the verses came smoothly, and then I had Psalm 23 memorized. What next? Something longer. I heard one of my favorite preachers recite Romans 8 to his congregation and thought, that’s it. I loved Romans 8 and wanted to have it with me. Romans 8 though is much longer than Psalm 23. It was a jump from six to 39-verses. This time, though, I had a system. Index cards, and a verse-by-verse memorization plan. It would be manageable. And it was!

Verse after verse I was able take in and hide as long as I went slowly. Whenever I tried to memorize more than I was ready for, they wouldn’t stay—I’d cough them up. So, I would slow down and eventually, after a month and a half, I had all of Romans 8 memorized. I couldn’t believe it. I had an entire chapter of the Bible in my heart whenever I needed it. I would recite it throughout the day, and I quickly found situation after situation where some part of Romans 8 was applicable. It wasn’t just hidden; it was being used.

I wonder if I could memorize more than one chapter? I can’t remember when I thought of that—probably heard someone else recite an entire book or something like that—but I knew I wanted to tackle something bigger. I was going to go back to Matthew. This time though, not the entire book. And this time, with my little system.

I decided to memorize the Sermon on the Mount—Matthew 5-7. This was a chunk. Three chapters. 111 verses. Still, though, I had my index cards and I would just plug away a verse at a time. Actually, I bumped it to two verses a day and that seemed to work well. Then over several months, something amazing happened. I had the Sermon on the Mount memorized, and I actually recited during a church service as part of a sermon I preached. It was incredible.

It was incredible not because I just did something someone else should be amazed at—I watched someone recite all of 1 Corinthians (that was incredible!)—it was incredible because of what it felt like to have Scripture hidden in my heart; to be able to pull it out and apply it whenever I wanted to, or needed to.

So, What?

Why’d I just tell that (at times, rambling) story? Because, I want you to know that if I can memorize something like Romans 8 or the Sermon on the Mount, you can too. I don’t have an exceptionally good memory. I can recite The Office quotes with the best of them, but that’s because I’ve seen all nine-seasons of The Office an unhealthy number of times. What I have done, though, is read and listened to a lot of people who have done their own memorization work, collecting the helpful tips they’ve offered. I’ve also honed my own little memorization system.

If you wanted to get started (or started again) hiding Scripture in your heart, I would love to help you develop your own system. Reach out to me on Facebook or by email (kevindavis1986@gmail.com) and let’s come up with a time where a small group of us can meet every week or so to get going on this.

I’m not going to lie to you, it’s difficult to memorize three-chapters of the Bible. But, honestly, the most difficult thing about it, is just that it takes time. You can memorize three chapters. You can even memorize an entire book—1 John is not that long. It will just take time to make it happen. If you want to put in that time, and you’d like to have some support from others with a similar goal as you do it, I’d love to come alongside to help.

Don’t Miss the Forest 'or' the Trees

Most of us have heard the old expression, “Don’t miss the forest for the trees.” The point of that idiom is to warn ourselves to not miss the big picture (forest) as a result of focusing on the individual details (trees). We can easily become so engrossed in trying to master every detail of some project or task that we end up losing sight of what was important about the certain project or task in the first place. The old expression still holds true and is useful for us today and yet, we must spend a lot of time looking at the trees. And, not only the trees but the leaves on the trees, and not just the leaves, but the veins on the leaves found on the trees, which are in the forest.

What Does a Forest Have to Do with the Bible?

The Bible is a forest full of trees and these trees appear as the books of the Bible. Sixty-six books in total make up the entire biblical canon and they are there for us to know God in the way that He has revealed Himself to the world. Within those books (trees) of the Bible are thousands of Bible verses (leaves) that also need our attention. The individual verses in the Bible are the means by which we come to know God. We do not take in the entire theme of the Bible in one shot. We have to read every word of every verse of every paragraph of every chapter of every book to begin to get a grasp of this enormously glorious God. Therefore, we cannot neglect those leaves on the trees and we must pay attention to the veins on the leaves because, without them, we will lose the forest.

How Does Memorization Help?

Scripture memorization is a means – among many others – that can be used to know God more completely. Memorization of individual verses, entire chapters, or entire books of the Bible works in us and through us for ministering to others and to ourselves, which, in turn, works to bring this God that was once misunderstood into the light so we can see and know Him better. When memorizing verses or larger sections of the Bible we are forced to work word-by-word as we commit each word and then each verse to memory. As we work through this process the Holy Spirit begins to show us things that we did not see before. When we are diligently working word-by-word through a verse we begin to soak in what the biblical authors were receiving. We feel their heart and the heart of our Lord as He is ministering to us through words written long before.

How to Balance the Trees and the Forest

Even with all of that, a balance must be struck. We still cannot forsake the forest for the trees but we also cannot forsake the trees while attempting to see the entire forest. The balance needed to see the trees as well as the forest is struck through partaking in both the discipline of Scripture memorization as well as reading large portions of the Bible in one sitting, and then repeating that process over and over again. One could memorize in the morning while saving the evening for a reading time that is not focused on the trees but instead, works to take in the whole theme of a certain book. Once that routine is established, the person who works to both memorize for the trees and read for the forest will begin to grasp the entirety of the Bible while being able to point out the magnificent trees (verses) that can still be found. Either way it’s done – memorizing in the morning or evening while reading at the opposite end of the day – we must do both because without the discipline of seeing the forest as well as the trees we will begin to see only one and thus, less than what is offered.