Memory

Today, we just entered what is considered to be the holiest week in the Church Calendar. Throughout this week, my prayer for us is that we will continue to prepare our hearts for the upcoming celebration of Easter, the resurrection of our Savior. We all know the Sunday School answer to the why question of Jesus' death. Yet, do we live as though we truly remember that He came to die for our individual sins as well as our collective sin? It is only human of us that we all too easily forget; however, God is in the business of reminding, of jogging our memory as His word tells us to remember, remember, remember. As the Lenten season continues and the celebration of Easter approaches, I am once again reminded of the ultimate price that my Savior paid on my behalf. He was crushed for my iniquities and was made to suffer because of the load of my guilt and shame.

As musicians, we are constantly required to use our memory. We had to memorize the names of the scale degrees, the order in which they appear, key signatures, nuances, rests, notes, etc. Singers and pianists, in particular, have to commit huge chunks of the literature to memory. It is always fine and dandy to remember all those facts in a theory classroom, a voice studio, or even at a rehearsal. However, the time when memory really matters is during a performance, when the stakes are really high. How often do we go to a piano recital and cringe because the performer has to deal with memory slips? How often, do I personally forget important words while performing an aria or an art song? Almost always, it is because those specific passages were not sufficiently drilled into my heart and absorbed by my body and mind.

Contrary to common belief, memory in itself is quite faithful. The part that is unreliable in us is the process of memorization. As I have been studying patience this past month, the Lord has further instilled in me a desire to seek to memorize as small a chunk as possible and as frequently as possible. As I patiently go over musical passages over and over, I slowly add a couple measures a day. I use the same principle for technical concepts as I do for memorizing music. Then, when it is time for me to perform, I don't have to fret because it is all in me. That process has brought me to this conclusion: memory always serves us what we served it. If we give our memory the gifts of cramming, last-minute pointers, and nervousness, then it will serve us memory slips, disasters, and poor performances. If we give it, instead, steadiness and patient nurturing, then when the pressure is on it will grant us a peace and an assurance that will defy all storms.

When Christ faced the big storms of His life, He recoursed to the Holy Scriptures which, as a man, He had committed to memory. At the onset of His ministry, Jesus used God's word to fight Satan's temptation. When He upturned the trading tables in the temple, He used the Scriptures. Throughout His life, He used God's word to pray, to heal, to comfort, to encourage, to admonish, to revive, and to save. When He faced the most excruciating pain of His life, the spiritual separation between Him and His father, He quoted Psalm 22, one of king David's Psalm, the Psalm of the Cross.

Psalm 22:1a, "My God, my God! Why have you forsaken me?

There He was on the cross dying the most cruel death known to man and He was quoting scripture. Why could He? How could He? It was because the consistency of his memory work had provided him with a real closeness with God to such a degree that when He felt separated from His father He desperately clung to the Holy word of God. Although only seven phrases have been recorded as the last words of Jesus on the cross, I wonder how many chapters from God's word constituted the whole of His meditation. It was God's word which gave Jesus the endurance, patience, and strength He needed to die, be buried, and have victory over death.

Psalm 16:8, "I have set the Lord always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken."

We all need to memorize scripture. As human beings we change constantly because we tend to be guided by our emotions, and we all know how fickle those are. Since emotions affect the heart which fires signals to the tongue to speak, our words change and our resolve wavers. Unfortunately, our lives are such that we are constantly assailed by spiritual attacks and without God's word in our heart and on our tongue, we are completely defenseless. To borrow the words of Dr. Donald Whitney, "a pertinent scriptural truth, brought to your awareness by the Holy Spirit at just the right moment, can be the weapon that makes the difference in a spiritual battle." So, in order to be victorious, we need to follow the example of Jesus and hide God's word in our hearts so that it can be used by the Holy Spirit to rekindle the flame of our passion. We are all so emotionally run down that, on our own, according to Dr. John Piper, "we do not experience God in the fullness of our emotional potential." In order to remedy that situation, I believe we must spend time exploring the Bible, memorizing the emotions depicted therein, and endeavoring to express those emotions until they become genuinely ingrained in us.

Psalm 119:11, "I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you."

Psalm 119:14, "I rejoice in following your statutes as one rejoices in great riches."


You may have said in the past that you don't have a good memory and that you can't really memorize scripture. I am telling you that you can. We have all memorized our names, our phone numbers, our social security numbers, our addresses, the ignition key to our car, the trajectory of the fork from the plate to our mouths. In short, we easily memorize the things we use daily. My 2-year old daughter has already memorized several chapters from the book of Psalms only because she is in the kitchen when I teach each verse to my 7-year old. She has learned all of that second-hand because scripture memory is part of her environment. It makes me wonder, what is in our environment that we are memorizing second-hand? Is it gossip, slander, impurity, sexual immorality, triviality, laziness, impatience, apathy toward God?

Would you consider memorizing a little bit of scripture daily? God wants you to and has equipped you with the necessary skills to do it. You simply need to develop the patience and the tenacity to memorize one verse a day or half a verse every day. You also need some sort of accountability. So, choose someone or two, a passage with specific translation and number of verses, and a regular time to meet and quote scripture to one another. Not only will you grow in God's word and be equipped to do His work wherever you are, you will also develop wonderful friendships with other believers.

Go and memorize God's word and speak it back to Him, you'll be amazed to see how blessed and changed you can become.

Happy Easter!