It is fairly easy for our children to memorize God's Word (and most anything else, too!), but us 'older folk' really have to work at it! I thought I'd share my scripture memory system for those adults who are interested in doing more to learn and remember God's Word.
Whenever I am reading my Bible and come across a verse that I'd like to commit to memory, I write it down on a 3 x 5 notecard. I have quite a stack of such notecards, which I keep rubber-banded together in my purse; and whenever I do my scripture memory, I select one that I'd like to memorize that day. It just depends on my spiritual needs at the time and often whether I am up to tackling a long verse or passage... or just being lazy and settling for a short one (which is okay, too!).
When I select a verse to memorize for the day, I flip the notecard over and put the date at the top. Down the left side of the card I write 25, 20, 15, 10, 5, W, and M. The first day that I am working on that verse, I read it a few times until I can say it from memory; and then I quote it 25 times. I mark my progress with tally marks. Then the second day I say that verse 20 times, 15 times on the third day, etc. After five days I pretty much have the verse committed to memory and just brush it up with a weekly review on Sunday afternoons while waiting for my husband to get done driving his church bus route. I do the weekly review for 7 weeks, and then I stick the card into the monthly review section of my stack. I review all of my old verses monthly.
When do I actually *do* my scripture memory work everyday? My preferred time is early in the morning, before everyone else gets up. However, more often than not, I do it while I'm walking on the treadmill. It makes my exercise time less boring, and... it makes my scripture memory time less boring! I kill two birds with one stone, and it really makes my "15 minutes of loving movement" go by a lot faster. I am 7 months pregnant and no longer do my full-blown interval workouts via Jonathan Roche's "No Excuses Workouts." I just hop on the treadmill starting at 2.0 miles per hour, bump the speed up every minute 0.2 mph, max out at 8 minutes/3.4 mph, and then start bumping my way back down to 2.0 until I hit 15 minutes. It never takes me longer than that to do my scripture memory.
Since I keep the cards in my purse, I also pull them out at my boys' soccer practices, my 7 year old's piano lesson, while my hubby is driving, and any other "dead space" time. EVERYONE can carve out 10 minutes a day to memorize God's Word, even exhausted pregnant mamas of five little ones.
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