I Can Do All Things

Philippians 4

"Therefore, my beloved and longed-for brethren, my joy and crown, so stand fast in the Lord, beloved. I implore Euodia and I implore Syntyche to be of the same mind in the Lord. And I urge you also, true companion, help these women who labored with me in the gospel, with Clement also, and the rest of my fellow workers, whose names are in the Book of Life.

Rejoice in the Lord always. Again I will say, rejoice! Let your gentleness be known to all men. The Lord is at hand. Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication, with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God; and the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and minds through Christ Jesus.

Finally, brethren, whatever things are true, whatever things are noble, whatever things are just, whatever things are pure, whatever things are lovely, whatever things are of good report, if there is any virtue and if there is anything praiseworthy—meditate on these things. The things which you learned and received and heard and saw in me, these do, and the God of peace will be with you.

But I rejoiced in the Lord greatly that now at last your care for me has flourished again; though you surely did care, but you lacked opportunity. Not that I speak in regard to need, for I have learned in whatever state I am, to be content: I know how to be abased, and I know how to abound. Everywhere and in all things I have learned both to be full and to be hungry, both to abound and to suffer need. I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.

Nevertheless you have done well that you shared in my distress. Now you Philippians know also that in the beginning of the gospel, when I departed from Macedonia, no church shared with me concerning giving and receiving but you only. For even in Thessalonica you sent aid once and again for my necessities. 

Not that I seek the gift, but I seek the fruit that abounds to your account. Indeed I have all and abound. I am full, having received from Epaphroditus the things sent from you, a sweet-smelling aroma, an acceptable sacrifice, well pleasing to God. And my God shall supply all your need according to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus. 

Now to our God and Father be glory forever and ever. Amen. Greet every saint in Christ Jesus. The brethren who are with me greet you. All the saints greet you, but especially those who are of Caesar’s household. The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ be with you all. Amen."

I recently completed a goal... to memorize Philippians chapter 4! 

I had never really memorized a whole chapter of the Bible before (other than some short Psalms) so I intentionally chose one that contained a lot of verses that I had previously memorized, so it would be easier. I also decided to memorize out of the NKJV because that is the version from which I have done most of my memorization since I was a kid. 

I want to be able to memorize a whole book of the Bible some time, but I am trying to just start out "small" (as it is, this project took me over a year). But the theme verse of this endeavor for me ended up being the familiar Philippians 4:13-- "I can do ALL THINGS through Christ who strengthens me." 

You can, too! What is holding you back from doing more Scripture memorization? 

For me, it was simply the motivation. When I put it off, I always tried to justify it:
"I'm really tired tonight." or "I don't have time this morning." or "I'll work on it extra hard this weekend." (yeah right)

But on days when I took the few minutes to do it, I ALWAYS felt better afterward. There's just something about repeating God's Word to yourself out loud that kind of forces you to pay attention to His truth. 

Now, I wish I could say I have always APPLIED this chapter's truths in my life over the past year that I've been working on it... in reality, I have faltered many times in my faith recently; doubting, worrying, and doing exactly what this passage commands me NOT to do. It has been an especially trying year for me, in many ways. But it is a process. And I think that's why God allowed me to take so much longer on this than I had originally planned... He knew I would especially need the Philippians 4 reminders at this season of my life.

So, here are some tips for you in case YOU want to memorize a chapter of the Bible. (In reality, probably many of you are already much farther along than I am. But these are some things that helped me, so maybe they can be of use to you.)

1. Choose your passage wisely. I already gave some of the practical reasons why I chose this chapter (basically... I knew it would be EASIER for me than many others) but I also chose it because I love Philippians; and I had done a study on part of this chapter in my Hermeneutics class in college years ago. The good thing is, there are no WRONG passages in God's Word... choose one that has significance for you, since much of your memorization time will actually be meditation time!

2. Copy/paste it (I used www.biblegateway.com but you could use any Bible website or software that has your preferred version) into one document and get rid of all the verse numbers. Break it up into short-- but contextual-- paragraphs. That's one reason I liked Bible Gateway; it did that for me.

3. I took some time to highlight a few phrases that stuck out to me (in BOLD above). You can do this in your initial reading of the passage, or as you go along.

4. Print the document and keep it somewhere where you will be able to study it every day. At first I kept it in my devotional book and tried to practice it after I did my daily devotions. But I realized that I was often skipping it, so eventually I had the "duh" idea to tape it up in a place where I seem to spend most of my day... in my kitchen, right by the sink! (We don't have a dishwasher, so washing dishes is the bane of my existence. But it DID force me to work on my memorization 3 times a day.)

5. I don't have any "program" or "schedule" to follow with memorization, though I'm sure you could find some good ones on the internet if you looked around. I just took a pen and made a mark after the sentence or phrase that I was working on. I would recite the whole passage up to that point, and once I thought I had that mastered, I would go one phrase longer. Sometimes it would take me weeks to get one sentence down. In the past, I have had success with putting a verse to a familiar tune, or coming up with motions, but I find this works best for short verses. With this long passage, it was just straight memorization for me.

6. Have an accountability partner, if you can. I didn't do this as much as I should've, mainly because I am usually doing my memorization work while my husband was at work, but every so often I would ask him to look at the paper while I recited as far as I could, so he could check me. If you can have a partner work on the memorization WITH you, that's even better! Charlie and I have memorized several passages together since we started dating. 

But just one warning: don't let the fact that you don't have a committed accountability partner be an excuse for you to skip memorization. If you aren't both committed to keep doing it, it is much easier for the un-motivated person to de-motivate the motivated person than vice versa (if that makes any sense). So, if your partner is not keeping you accountable, don't put off your memorization until they are more motivated; just worry about yourself. If this is something YOU want to do, then YOU have to be the one to be disciplined to do it. Maybe your example will encourage your partner to join in again eventually.

7. Just don't give up. That seems so cliche, but really, all that memorization really takes is hard work. I can assure you, you will be blessed by this undertaking.

This was a long one...

Thanks for reading.