Scripture Memorization - Some Thoughts on Today's Verses

Psalm 103:17-18
“17 But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting
On those who fear Him,
And His righteousness to children’s children,
18 To such as keep His covenant,
And to those who remember His commandments to do them.”

These are the verses I am learning today and have been focusing on and thinking about all day. We are actually on verse 17, but I just couldn’t memorize that one without verse 18 at the same time – they go together too much to wait until tomorrow to add the rest of the thought!

This entire Psalm has become increasingly precious to me as I have been working to commit it to memory. I have always thought I had a hard time memorizing, but this has been such an incredibly rewarding experience and the Lord is showing me so much that I want to try to make scripture memory a much, much more important part of my time with the Lord even after we finish Psalm 103.

I had a longer post written, but I decided it suffered with too much information. Here’s what I will share. These verses today are very special to me at this season of my life because this is a deep prayer of my heart. I do want to be a woman who fears the Lord. I very much want to see my children and their children and so on and so on learn to love God with all their heart, soul, mind and strength. I very much want them to come to saving faith and to learn early what it is to trust Him with all they are and to see them serve Him passionately and share their faith boldly. I want to be the kind of mom who will love God that way in front of them.

Some of the things that our pastor’s wife shared on Saturday were things I really knew already, but she shared them in just the way I needed to hear them, and God used one example from her life and the things God taught her through His word to pierce my heart with a truth that is so basic and common sense and actually something I knew in my head but needed to be reminded of in a fresh and practical way. The example she shared pierced my heart because it dealt with exactly the area of discipline that I struggle with and helped me address the root of my own failings in keeping my temper in check. In fact, though she does not know it, what she shared was an answer to a prayer I had been praying for wisdom in a certain area of my own life. God used her experience to highlight exactly what I was needing to hear in a way I was able to hear and apply it, and it is already making an impact on some of the attitudes I bring into the day to day stuff of mothering as it has stuck with me and made such an impression. You know, a lot of people in this town accuse our church of legalism, but I am not hearing legalism. I am hearing solid, uncompromising teaching of God’s word, and, I’m telling you, with understanding is coming such a sense of freedom, as well. God is so good.

By grace, through faith, I am in covenant with Jesus. I, who once was alienated and an enemy of God, He has reconciled in the body of His flesh through death, to present me holy, and blameless, and above reproach in His sight – if indeed I continue in the faith, grounded and steadfast, and am not moved away from the hope of the gospel which I heard. (Colossians 1:21-23) Jesus, who kept the covenant on my behalf, while I was dead in my trespasses, He has made alive together with Him, having forgiven all my trespasses, having wiped out the handwriting of requirements that was against us, which was contrary to us, and He has taken it out of the way, having nailed it to the cross. (Colossians 2:13-14) My sins have been taken away as far as the east is from the west. Because of this, the Holy Spirit teaches me as I study His word and pray for wisdom, and I am able to grow in sanctification and find joy in keeping His commandments and wanting to do things His way. I am able, by His grace, to learn to train up my children in the way they should go and to talk to them when we rise up and when we sit down and when we walk along the way, teaching them line upon line, precept upon precept, here a little, there a little. And I can enjoy them while we do this.

So, yes, I was able to smile and tell my son the other day that I did, indeed, learn a lot.