Spiritual Toughness

Excerpts from CT John Wilson post:  Changing Forever How You Think

When was the last time you memorized passages from Scripture? It might have been when you were in eighth grade, preparing for confirmation. Or maybe earlier still, in Sunday school, when you learned the 23rd Psalm. Can't remember when it was? Never mind. It will probably come to you.

Within living memory, as the saying goes, evangelicals unselfconsciously learned Scripture by heart. The value of this practice was taken for granted. Certainly there was a wide range, from back-row pew-sitters who could call on a few salient passages, to silver-tongued preachers who could cite Leviticus and Luke with equal authority. But if, for instance, as a child in the 1950s, you regularly attended Wednesday evening prayer meetings, where the voices of laypeople predominated, you heard Scripture quoted (and misquoted) from memory. And if you listened in, during the Sunday meal after church, when grown-ups who took their faith seriously were discussing—maybe arguing about—theological nuances, perhaps inspired by the morning sermon, you heard Scripture quoted from memory.

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A few months ago, a strange little book arrived on my desk: Scripture by Heart: Devotional Practices for Memorizing God's Word. I wasn't familiar with the author, Joshua Choonmin Kang, who was described as a pastor and speaker in Los Angeles, the author of more than 30 books in Korean and one previous book in English. This new book, the author said, was first written and published in Korean, after which "I had it rendered into readable English." Hmm.

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There was something else, too, what for want of a better phrase I will call a "spiritual toughness." Kang's book challenged me. When I picked it up, I was already well persuaded of the value of memorizing Scripture. Hadn't I learned great swatches of it when I was growing up? But Kang's insistence on a daily discipline—no more than 30 minutes and no less than 15 minutes a day, he says, with his characteristic firmness—jolted me. He was talking about a constantly renewed intimacy, a loving rehearsal and renewed exploration of the verses learned "by heart." And as I began to re-read the book and apply it, I made a distressing discovery. All those passages I had learned long ago? With some exceptions, they were not sufficiently fresh in my mind to recite inwardly.

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Of course it could be distorted in that way, just as prayer can easily be distorted. But the fashion among evangelicals to deprecate Scripture memorization—or, more commonly, to ignore it—is itself based on caricature. Kang observes that Jesus was "the beneficiary of habit. He read Scripture in the synagogue (Luke 4:16); prayed early in the morning (Mark 1:35); prayed on high places (Luke 22:39)"; and, as a teacher, expounded the Word he knew by heart. "When we commit ourselves to memorizing Scripture," Kang writes, "we follow in Jesus' footsteps. We cultivate his lifestyle. We gather our wits and concentrate."

Again and again, Kang emphasizes that memorizing Scripture is not an end in itself. "When we meditate deeply on the words of Scripture," he writes, "we begin to bear fruit," directed by the Spirit. "The more we commit the Word to memory, the richer our being becomes. The melodious concert of his Word will continually echo within us. Then we'll encounter the conductor, our Lord Jesus, the Holy Spirit, who helps us remember the Scriptures, and the Father, who'll receive glory through all of this."

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