Living The Word: A Transformed Life

Good morning.

Like Russ said, my name is Jonah.

I'm the student pastor here at Church of the Grove.

And get an opportunity just to teach a little bit this morning about something that has been just a huge part of my life, a huge part of just especially my journey and walk with Jesus.

But before we get to too much, I really Russ kind of spoiled it.

I had this kind of intro ready that was going to kind of lead you into this whole thing.

We're talking about scripture and memory, but before we get there, I want you to think about all the information that you have stored up in your mind.

Okay.

As hard, like the whole point of this is for you to see how incredible the amounts of information is that we know.

But but maybe let's start with this.

Think about all the songs that you know and can just sing from memory.

Maybe not even with music and lyrics.

If anybody wants to just start singing one, that's fine too.

But just think about all the songs that you know.

If I were to say, sweet Caroline, there it is.

Yeah, y'all know that one.

So all the different songs that you know, I looked this morning and it says that the average person, average person, knows about 40 to 50 songs from memory.

So in other words, if a song starts playing, for the most part, you can sing the entire song.

Um, 40 to 50, honestly, I was expecting it to be a little higher.

I wish it was a little higher, but again, that's the that's the average.

Um, so just think about even within those 40 to 50 songs that the average person knows.

Um, if you're like my wife, she knows at least 500 songs.

But think about all the words, the information that's found um in that, even outside of popular songs that we've we've heard or or began to memorize.

Think about all the movie quotes that you might know.

That's a big one for a lot of people.

Movie quotes um honestly take up sometimes so much of the space in our mind.

If I were to say, keep the change, you filthy animal.

Houston, we have a may the blank be with you.

Say blank to my little friend.

That could be taken out of context for sure.

Um, and then the last one with great power comes great responsibility.

Exactly.

This is again just an example of all these little things that that our minds know, all this information that is literally stored up into our minds, and we can recall it to memory like that.

Even think about all the little weird facts that you may know when it comes to your job or your career or whatever it is that you specialize in.

If you're a student, think about all the information um that you have maybe learned over the years, maybe not retained it and kept it, but even think about over the span of your life, all the things that you memorize for a vocabulary test or a math test, anything like that.

And here's a crazy one that kind of blows my mind.

Think about all the names of people that you know, or even all the people that you know, and you see their face and you can recall their name to your mind instantly.

That one will really start um to freak you out.

But what I'm getting at and kind of what I talked about at the beginning, is that our minds are are so vast.

Um it's, I mean, it's kind of to the point where I think scientists kind of think that there's literally just an unlimited amount of information that we can actually store up and and kind of hold in our minds.

Our minds are filled with so many different things, and God has designed us with brains that can hold unimaginable amounts of information.

Um, some things are good information, thumbs some things are bad, some things are useful, some things are pointless.

But the two questions that I really want to get to and I want you to ask yourself honestly is how much of my mind is filled with God's word?

How much of my mind is filled with God's word out of all the things that are running through our minds and our brains, the things that we know, how much of that is God's word?

And then the second question is what would my life look like if it was filled with more of it?

How much of my mind is filled with God's word?

And what would my mind look like if it was filled with more of it?

We've been in this series called The Bible and um kind of since the beginning of the year, and the the goal of the series is to deepen our desire and understanding of God's word.

And this week our main focus is on how the Bible has the power to transform our lives.

That the Bible isn't just this dusty old textbook full of information or something that just gives you good advice about life, but the Bible actually transforms your life.

It transforms the way that you think, it transforms the desires you have, it transforms the way that you act and talk with other people.

The Bible transforms you in such a way that you actually begin to find true joy and peace and hope in the midst of a broken world.

And again, the whole point of this morning is to show you that by the power of the Holy Spirit, the Bible has the ability to transform your life.

The Bible has the ability to change everything about you.

And our big idea this morning is that our lives are transformed when we stop reading the Bible and we start living the Bible.

Our lives are transformed when we stop reading the Bible and we start living the Bible.

True life transformation happens when God's word moves from pages that are found in this book to something that is stored up in our hearts, something that consumes our minds and our thoughts, something that actually begins to control the things that we do.

When we allow God's word to seep into every part of who we are, and we begin to live it out in such a way that actually brings transformation and the change that so much of us desire but never really get to because we don't really start living out God's word.

We open it and close it and go about our day, but when we allow it to transform us, our lives actually change.

So, what is the best way for us, in my opinion, to just stop reading the Bible and allow it to be something that we actually start living out?

What's the best way to stop reading and start living out the Bible?

And I believe the answer is we store up God's word in our hearts.

Specifically, like Russ mentioned, memorizing Scripture.

This is what Chuck Swindah says about the discipline and practice of memorizing scripture.

He says, I know of no other single practice in the Christian life more rewarding, practically speaking, than memorizing scripture.

Think about if you know who Chuck Swindah is, I mean, just a legendary dude of God's kingdom that lived his entire life devoted to him and preaching his word and helping disciple people.

And he says that he doesn't know of another single practice in the Christian life that's more rewarding than memorizing scripture.

He says, no other single exercise pays greater spiritual dividends.

Your prayer life will be strengthened, your witnessing will be sharper and much more effective, your attitudes and outlook will begin to change, your mind will become alert and observant, your confidence and insurance will be enhanced, and then your faith will be solidified.

In other words, when you when you discipline yourself to memorize God's word, transformation will start to take place in your life.

Your faith will be solidified, you will begin to look more and more like Jesus.

And before we go any further, I know that some of you are already thinking, I can't memorize scripture.

Jonah, I love what you're saying.

I'm all behind it, I believe it, but I can't do it.

I'm not a pastor, I'm not, I'm not smart, I'm not um creative, I don't have a good enough memory, or or um, I'm not able to remember things as well as you.

I can hardly remember what day it is.

How in the world can I memorize the Bible?

And listen, I I hear you.

I understand that that memorizing scripture and and even just remembering stuff in general is is easier for some people than it is for others.

And I know that God has gifted all of us differently, but but I I truly believe, maybe except for any sort of medical condition or something like that, but any excuse that you can possibly come up with for not devoting yourself to memorizing God's word is simply an excuse.

It doesn't move past that.

Any excuse that you can come up with is simply an excuse.

We proved earlier that that um when this entire room finished the the little lyric to sweet Caroline, um, that that there is we have the ability to remember stuff.

We are, God has gifted us with this.

Like I said, the average person knows um, you know, 40 to 50 songs.

I looked this morning that the average song is about 300 to 400 words, okay?

The book of Ephesians is about 3,000 words.

So, in other words, if you have 10 songs memorized, theoretically it is equivalent to having the entire book of Ephesians memorized.

The book of Romans is about 7,100 words.

This is the equivalent of about 20 songs.

The Gospel of Mark is about 11,300 words.

This is the equivalent of having around 30 songs.

Again, all of these are under kind of the average number of songs that people have memorized.

And I get that songs are easier to memorize than just looking at a pace, but I don't know, make it a song.

Rap, rap to the Bible.

I don't know.

Whatever you got to do, make it happen.

But all I'm trying to get at is if you come and tell me that, Jonah, I can't, I just can't memorize scripture, but you know the entire roster, the University of Georgia's football team.

I don't believe you.

I don't believe you.

You don't have an excuse that is valid enough for me.

Memorizing scripture, it's not about how smart you are.

It's about how much effort and devotion you're willing to put into filling your heart and mind with God's word.

And even on top of that, I believe that there is a there's a supernatural power that's made available to us when we commit ourselves and discipline ourselves to remember and memorize God's word.

In other words, I believe wholeheartedly that the Holy Spirit will absolutely help you store up God's word in your heart so that you may be able to live a life that glorifies Him.

We just have to put the effort in and actually do it.

So, with the excuses out of the way, the rest of the morning, we're kind of we're just gonna talk about what happens when we actually store up God's word in our heart.

When we commit to memorize scripture, what what happens in our life?

So I'm gonna start more on the personal side for me.

Psalm 119, 9 through 11, um, it might be the most impactful passage of scripture that I have personally ever encountered.

Um, not necessarily one, what it says is is is truthful, and it's been a truth that I've been able to go back to time and time again.

But really, the biggest impact it had on my life is this is the passage that ignited just this passion and and desire and zeal to memorize God's word.

Um, during my freshman year of college, a guy named Ricky Johnson, he began to kind of take me under his wing, um, show me what it looks like to kind of be a follower of Jesus.

And one of the very first things that he challenged me to do before, hey Jonah, go read this book in the Bible, or go do this, go do this, one of the very first things he challenged me to do was memorize Psalm 119.

Um sorry.

Um memorize this passage, and this is what it says.

It says, How can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word?

With my whole heart I seek you.

Let me not wonder from let me not wonder from your commandments.

I've stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

This passage, like I said, one, what it says is truthful.

Um it's very practical, it's very helpful.

But this is the passage that, I mean, it changed everything in my life.

It gave me this passion, this zeal to store up God's word in my heart, and I can't explain what happened in my life as a result of memorizing this passage.

This was the first time in my life where scripture, like I said, it moved from words on a page to something that was stored up in my heart that consumed my mind and my soul.

It was something that moved from words to a page to this treasure, this treasure that I delighted in.

And I truly wish how many times I knew how many times that phrase, how can a young man keep his way pure?

How many times that phrase has crossed through my mind over the past seven years or so since I memorized this passage of scripture, especially during those first few years of college.

Many of you know that college is literally stepping into a whole new world, stepping out under the roof from parents that loved me and watched over me and kept me from danger.

Um, but I was on my own in college.

And if I'm being honest, the first um few months of college, I just gave in to so many fleshly desires and just began to live for the world.

But but after I memorized this passage of scripture, things started to change.

When my friends wanted to go downtown and get drunk, it's how can a young man keep his way pure?

When a pretty girl would walk by me, how can a young man keep his way pure?

When dreams of graduating college and making millions would distract me from God's plan for my life, it's how can a young man keep his way pure?

When I would get short-tempered with my friends or roommates, how can a young man keep his way pure?

Even the little things of when somebody cut me off in traffic, how can a young man keep his way pure?

How can I live a life that glorifies the Lord?

This passage transformed my life because it it was the first passage I feel like that really just set went down and saturated my soul.

It was God's word moving from pages on a book to something that began to transform my heart.

And this is what happens when we memorize scripture, when we store God's word up in our heart, it saturates our souls, it begins to change things and transform things, it changes our desires, our thoughts, our actions.

We begin to become the person that God desires us so badly to be that he was willing to send his son to die for us so that we could step into that life.

So for the rest of the morning, I want to talk about a few ways that memorizing scripture has transformed my life.

So I really just kind of sat down and thought through how why, if I'm asking y'all to do this, what is the reason behind it?

And ultimately, this is kind of how scripture has transformed my life and how I believe it can transform yours as well.

The first thing is that when we memorize scripture, I wholeheartedly believe that we become more like Jesus.

We become more like Jesus.

God's greatest desire for your life is that you would look more like his son.

God's greatest desire for your life is that you would just look more and more like Jesus every single day that you wake up.

Because if you're becoming more and more like Jesus, then you will begin to glorify and enjoy God the same way that Jesus did when he was here on this earth.

2 Corinthians 3.18 says, We all, and we all with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another, for this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

So this verse tells us that the main way that we're transformed into Christ-likeness, or the main way that we become more like Jesus, is when we behold the glory of God.

When we behold God's glory, we we, as a response, become more like Jesus.

And I can't think of any better way to behold the glory of God than to know his word.

When you know God's word, you will begin to see more of who God is.

You'll become to be more familiar with him and understand him in a deeper way.

Jesus or John 1 says that Jesus was the word, that the word was in the beginning, that the word was with God, the word was God, and then it says that the word became flesh, talking about the person of Jesus.

So Jesus is the word.

If you want to know who Jesus is, know the word.

What's the best way to know the word?

Memorize it.

Store it up in your heart.

When you memorize Scripture and you know God's word, we begin to be to know more of Jesus.

We begin to behold his glory and we begin to be transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another.

Similar to becoming more like Jesus, um, when we memorize Scripture, at the very least, we just become better disciples of Jesus.

We follow Jesus more closely.

We begin to live the same way that He lived and do the same things that He did.

Um, 2 Timothy is a book that I've been kind of memorizing off and on over the past year or so.

One, because I think it speaks directly into my life, which is maybe advice to you.

Find scripture that speaks into your life and start there.

Um but man, 2 Timothy is this book that if you just read it, it literally tells you what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus.

And Paul, he tells Timothy in chapter two, he starts by saying, You then, my child, be strengthened by the grace that's in Christ Jesus.

And what you have heard from me, again, this is Paul talking to Timothy, what you have heard from me, and trust the faithful men who will be able to teach others also.

I believe that at a 30,000-foot view, that is that is the life of a disciple of Jesus.

That is why you are here on this earth, to be strengthened by the grace of God.

And then everything you hear and learn about him, just start sharing it with other people.

Be strengthened by the grace that's found in Christ Jesus.

And then what we hear, we share it with people who will be able to teach others also.

But then he keeps going and he kind of talks to Timothy more in depth about it looks what it looks like to be a disciple of Jesus.

He says, share in suffering is a good soldier of Christ Jesus.

No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him.

He says an athlete is not crowned unless he competes according to the rules.

It's the hardworking farmer who ought to have the first share of the crops.

And then he says this in verse 7, think over everything I said, for the Lord will give you understanding.

Now, what do you think is the best way for us to think over what the Bible says and just kind of mull over it and let it saturate our soul?

It's memorizing, memorizing Scripture.

And when we even memorize a passage like this, we can start thinking, what is Paul, why is Paul telling Timothy to be a soldier?

Why is he using the analogy of a soldier?

Because Paul knows that soldiers don't get distracted.

When their commander or whoever enlists and tells them to do something, that's what they do.

And they don't let anything else take their focus away.

That's us as disciples of Jesus.

He has given us a mission, and we should be lasered in, just focused on that mission.

He uses the analogy of an athlete.

Man, athletes, at least if they're honest athletes, they they don't really receive victory or win unless they compete within the rules and guidelines that they have been given.

The same is true for us as Christians.

We can't cheat our way to heaven.

We can't cheat our way into what God truly wants for us and what is classified as victory and understanding the purpose for our life.

We have these rules and guidelines that God has called us to live in that really helps us fulfill what He has called us to be.

He uses the analogy of the farmer, because man, being a disciple of Jesus and especially spreading the word of the gospel and making more disciples, it's hard work.

It's not easy.

It's not supposed to just happen overnight.

But if we have the attitude of a hard-working farmer, man, we will receive the first fruits.

We will receive fruit of our labor.

So when we have passages like this stored up in our hearts, we will slowly begin to live them out and be strengthened by the graces in Christ and become good soldiers for the kingdom of God.

So memorizing scripture will absolutely help us become more like Jesus.

The second thing is our communion and enjoyment with God deepens when we memorize Scripture.

Our communion or just our relationship and our enjoyment of God, it deepens when we memorize Scripture.

I want to paint a picture for you.

You're sitting in your office or the classroom or wherever you find yourself on a Monday morning, right?

And you had a great weekend, it was restful, you got to do a lot of fun stuff, but you're back at work, you're back at school, and you start thinking about everything that you got to do this week.

And the Monday blues, anybody ever have the Monday blues?

Man, the Monday blues set in, you're just a little bummed out, you know you got this long week ahead of you.

But man, you you call this passage of scripture to mind.

This is Psalm 103, 8 through 13.

It says the Lord is compassionate and gracious.

He's slow to anger.

He's slow to anger, he's abounding, abounding in faithful love.

He will not always accuse us or be angry forever.

Listen to this verse, he has not dealt with us as our sins deserve, or repaid us according to our iniquities.

For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his faithful love toward those who fear him, as far as the east is from the west.

So far as he removed our sins or our transgressions from us.

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.

That's a passage that will take your Monday blues away real quick.

When you're sitting there and you're bummed out and you realize, oh my gosh, God, God doesn't deal with us as our sins deserve.

He doesn't repay us like the way that we should be repaid.

He's compassionate, he's gracious, he's slow to anger, he's abounding in faithful love towards us.

Man, I understand Monday's.

Can be hard, but they're not harder, too hard for that to just speak life and encouragement into your um your situation.

So rather than drowning in Monday blues, you're now resting in the glory of God.

Memorizing scripture, it's a way to invite the presence of God into your life wherever you may be and into the midst of whatever situation you may find yourself in.

Rather than having to be at your house sitting somewhere with a cup of coffee and your Bible open, you get to enjoy God's word wherever you find yourself.

You get to invite God into your life wherever you are.

When God's word is stored up in your hearts, then we commune and enjoy God at all times.

I know for me personally, there's typically a direct correlation between what I feel like is the health of my soul or just the health of my relationship with God and how disciplined I am, I guess, in memorizing scripture.

In other words, when I feel like I'm I'm memorizing scripture daily and revisiting old passages, and that's just a discipline that I'm giving into and just doing regularly, then my relationship with the Lord and the health of my soul is so much healthier.

I begin to delight in the Lord so much greater.

But the weeks where I slack in scripture memory tend to be the weeks where delighting in the Lord becomes much more difficult or um or anxiety and worry and frustration begins to set in much more quickly.

So I wholeheartedly believe that when we are filling our minds with God's word and we're storing it in our hearts, our communion and enjoyment with God deepens.

So if you long for more of God and you long for a deeper relationship with Him, store His Word up in your heart.

Have passages that you can call to mind that just remind you of who your God is.

So we become more like Jesus.

Our relationship with the Lord deepens.

The third thing that I believe happens when we memorize scripture is we can triumph over Satan and sin.

We can triumph over Satan and sin.

I touched on this a little earlier with my own story, but memorizing scripture, it gives us a weapon to fight with.

It gives us something to fight back against Satan and the temptations that he may throw at us when we just feel overwhelmed and defeated by sin.

We feel trapped and ensnared.

We we feel sick and tired of being sick and tired of giving in to the same thing over and over and over again.

What do we do?

We memorize God's word.

We store it up in our hearts that we might not sin against him.

Memorizing God's word, it's it's your ammunition against the against the devil.

We see this in the person of Jesus in Matthew 4, where Jesus is in the wilderness and he's been fasting, and um, man, he's hungry, he's tired.

He's been laboring and fasting for for 40 days, and and Satan begins to tempt him.

Um he tempts him with the kind of the first thing he tempts him with is is food, and um, he tempts him with two other things, but every time Jesus is tempted, he responds back to Satan with with scripture that he is he is memorized from the Old Testament.

So when Satan offers Jesus food, Jesus says, it is written, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.

That it is written, that's that's scripture.

What he says after that, Jesus is just quoting scripture back to Satan.

So Jesus is using scripture as ammunition against the temptations that Satan throws his way.

Why would we not do the same thing?

If Jesus did it, we definitely if we definitely need to do it.

Some of the verses that have been my ammunition against sin is obviously Psalm 119, 9 through 11.

How can a young man keep his way pure by guarding it according to your word?

With my whole heart I seek you.

Let me not wander from your commandments.

I've stored up your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.

Another verse I like is Romans 8 13.

It says, If you live according to the flesh, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

I love this verse because it helps me remember that sin, it's not just this, it's not this battle of good and bad or good and evil.

It is a battle of life and death.

Meaning if you don't put to death the deeds of your body, you will die.

You will suffer eternally from the presence of God.

But if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

Fighting sin and the temptations of Satan, it's not about being a better person.

It's about staying alive.

It's a matter of life and death.

It's something that should be taken seriously.

Romans 13, 14 says, put on the Lord Jesus Christ, making no provisions for the flesh to gratify his desires.

It's this idea of the more and more we put on a Jesus, the less and less room there is for sin to creep into our life.

The more we put on Jesus, the more we can say to Satan, hey, there's no room for that.

There's no room for that here.

I'm covered and filled with the person of Jesus.

Matthew 26, 41, Jesus is sitting in the garden with his disciples the night before he's crucified, and he says, Watch and pray, watch and pray, that you may not enter into temptation.

The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.

Listen, y'all, we're weak.

Your flesh is weak.

I don't care how many what you can bench press or whatever, your flesh is weak.

Our flesh is weak.

But the spirit of God that dwells within us is willing, it's able.

But we have to make sure that we have God's word stored up in our hearts so that we can step into that power that's made available.

We need the help of the Holy Spirit when we fight against sin.

The best way to do that, I believe, is to have Scripture ready to go.

Romans 6, 12 through 14.

If this passage just doesn't fire you up to go kick the butt out of sin, then I don't know.

I don't know what Will says, let not sin therefore reign in your mortal bodies to make you obey its passion.

Stop letting sin have a place in your life.

Get rid of it, kill it, mortify it.

Do whatever you have to do to get it out of your life.

Do not let sin reign in your body to make you obey its passions.

Get sick and tired of getting sick and tired and kill sin.

Don't present your members to sin as instruments of unrighteousness, but present yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life and your members to God as instruments for righteousness.

And that last verse, sin will have no dominion over you because we're not under law, but we're under the grace of God.

These are verses that, man, when they're stored up in your heart and Satan comes at you, it's different.

It's a different battle.

You feel like you actually get to share and walk in the victory and the freedom that's found in Jesus.

Sin gives us an opportunity, or memorizing scripture gives us an opportunity to triumph over Satan and sin.

I would maybe even challenge you.

We're going to put some verses up on the screen.

I'm not going to go through all these because I don't have time, but these are some verses that I've kind of memorized that goes along with just different sins that I've faced in my life, and I would imagine all of us in the room have faced as well.

I believe this is on our app, but if you want to just take a picture of the screen, I would really encourage you to do so.

But these are sins or again, sorry, scripture that I've memorized and just kind of sort up to help me fight against these different sins and temptations that I struggle with.

But memorizing scripture, it's our ammunition against Satan and his temptations.

And when we have scripture ready to fight back with, transformation starts to happen in our lives.

We start to see victory and breakthrough in the different ways that we feel like Satan is just defeating us and breaking us down.

So memorizing scripture, it's our ammunition against Satan and sin.

The fourth and final thing that I believe happens in our life, or maybe just the way that memorizing scripture transforms us, is it allows us to begin to share God's word with other people.

It makes it easier for us to share God's word with other people.

If you haven't noticed already, throughout the span of your life, you typically do not have a Bible when you need one.

You typically don't have a Bible in your hands when you need to share God's Word with someone else.

When you're at your work or you're walking through the hallway at school, typically you don't have maybe a physical copy of the Bible.

I know you have your phones and stuff like that, but sometimes it feels like when we need the Bible the most, we actually don't have access to one.

When we feel like there's um something from God's word that people might need to hear, um, it's helpful to have God's word stored up in our heart so that we can actually share that with that person.

So on one side, if you maybe just need to comfort or or counsel a family member in a time of need or just a time of brokenness or um or just a difficult time in their life, it's it's helpful to have God's word stored up in our heart that we would be able to speak truth directly into their life.

A verse that um I feel like I I share with people a lot, but just one that's really um nice to have on hand is 2 Corinthians 4, 17 through 18.

Man, if you know someone that's just walking through a difficult time, how encouraging is it just to be able to share this verse with them that this light momentary affliction.

Man, that that little phrase right there, this light momentary affliction, whatever that they may be walking through, all it is doing is preparing them for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, as we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen.

For the things that are seen are temporary, but the things that are unseen are transient.

Memorizing God's word, it gives you this opportunity to speak God's word into the life of someone else when they need it.

The most secondly, memorizing God's word, it allows us to communicate the gospel more clearly to unbelievers.

When we know God's word and we know passages of scripture that we can share with other people, it's so helpful.

So many of us don't know where to start when it comes to sharing our faith or the gospel with someone else.

Man, find some scripture that shares the gospel, memorize it, and then that's all you gotta say.

If you know some scripture that shares the gospel of Jesus, you're good to go.

Just share that with someone and walk them through it.

A passage I've memorized that is helpful for just sharing the gospel is Titus 3, 3 through 7, because these verses are literally just the gospel.

It says, we ourselves are once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another.

That's where we all start.

That's where we all start.

And it says, but when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us.

God saved us.

Not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he has poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by his grace, we might become heirs according to the hope of eternal life.

Man, that's the gospel.

If you struggle with sharing the gospel with someone, there's a passage for you.

It lays it out pretty plain and simple, and you just get to walk through that with them.

When someone comes to me and says, Jonah, I feel like I'm too sinful.

I feel like I've got too much in my life that God possibly could not forgive me.

Man, I point them to the person of Paul, just who call literally calls himself the worst of the worst, the worst of all sinners in all of history.

And he tells this to Timothy in 1 Timothy 1, 15 through 16.

He says, the saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance that Jesus Christ came into this world to save sinners.

That's who was on his mind when he stepped into this world with sinners.

And then Paul says, of whom I was the foremost.

The foremost.

And then Paul says this to Timothy.

He says, But I receive mercy for this reason.

In other words, Paul's saying, this is the reason I believe Jesus saved me, so that he might display his perfect patience as an example to all those who were to believe in him for eternal life.

Man, that's powerful.

That's powerful.

And if someone tells me they're too sinful and they hear that verse, they don't have anything left.

There's no more excuses left.

Because Paul was the worst of the worst.

Storing up God's word in our heart, it makes it so much easier to live it out and share it with other people.

It gives us, again, not just ammunition against sin, but also a tool to share and lead people to come to know the person of Jesus.

So again, these are just a few ways to memorizing scripture has transformed my life, been the most impactful for me.

But my prayer is that you would start memorizing scripture and then you would just discover some reasons for your life, some ways that memorizing scripture has transformed your life.

And maybe some of y'all do this.

I would imagine a lot of y'all do, but I also feel like this is something that really gets thrown to the wayside in kind of a spiritual discipline that I believe is really important that that probably doesn't get talked about too much.

But my prayer is that y'all would just start practicing this.

Whatever it looks like in your life, whatever works best for you.

But my prayer is you would begin to practice these things and experience some of these reasons for yourself.

So, with all of this being said, I want to go back to the two questions I started with.

Man, how much of your mind is filled with God's word?

And then what would your life look like if it was filled with more of it?

What would change in your life if it if your mind and your heart and your soul was filled with more of God's word?

What changes?

And again, I know this might not be the easiest thing for some of you to do, but I promise that God will meet you in your devotion to Him.

He will see your effort and your heart and your desire and your zeal, and he will meet you there.

All you have to do is just get started somewhere.

So to end our time together, um, our band isn't gonna come back up or and lead us in another song or anything.

We're gonna do something a little different this morning.

Um, we're gonna end just by by practicing some of these things.

So I'm gonna share a couple ways that I just memorize scripture that helps me memorize it and and even just retain it and kind of keep it over all these years as well.

So in your seats, y'all should have a little piece of paper.

A little piece of paper has Psalm 119, 9 through 11 on it.

I want you to kind of look at this because this is so this is kind of what my note cards look like if I'm memorizing a passage of scripture.

They're very similar to this.

On one side, it has the verse, obviously.

Um, and then on the other side, it has the first letter to every word in the verse.

So that looks like um some gibberish, but that's just the first letter of every word.

So it's not not super intimidating.

But typically, in my process of memorizing a verse, um, for me, the most important thing is if you're gonna memorize a verse, you gotta know what it means.

You gotta know what it says.

Um, so so typically I just I just kind of spend some time studying whatever verse or passage um that that I'm memorizing.

This past week was Psalm 103, 8 through 13, which I shared earlier.

So I just spent some time just just studying and just sitting and wrestling with that verse and what it teaches us about who God is, because when we kind of know what something says, we can memorize it a lot more, yeah, um, a lot easier.

And I think it's important, again, that we're not just we're not just memorizing a verse to say we memorize a verse.

I'm not gonna have any candy bars for you.

If you come back next week with this verse memorized, there's no prizes.

I'll go ahead and say that.

The prize is that you got God's word stored up in your heart.

But again, we memorize this because we want to know what it's what it means, what it says, what God is trying to teach us through this verse.

So the first step is just learning it, studying the scripture.

Second, I just spend some time reading the verse and passage over and over again.

So I just read.

If I was memorizing this, I would just read this passage just over and over again for a few minutes.

And then I try to read the passage by looking at the first letter of every word.

You'll you'll be really surprised maybe how quickly you'll actually be able to do this.

It's kind of crazy.

Um, but I'll just look through all these letters, and again, it's it's the first letter of every word.

So I'll look through this and I just read through the passage and I'll do it again and again and again, and then obviously it gets to the point where um I just spend time trying to recite the passage or verse um by memory.

But the biggest thing, um, and I promise you, if you do this for five minutes, it you'll be surprised how quickly um it happens.

But the biggest thing for me is is to do it consistently and daily.

So typically I spend a whole week map memorizing a passage or um a verse, and and it never never really sticks the first two or three days.

I'll be able to look at it and kind of remember what it says, but it's not until a little later in the week where it actually starts popping up in my mind throughout my day or when I'm apart from my Bible or um my scripture memory box.

But but it's just that repetition of every day, every day for a week, you're looking at this verse for a few minutes, um, and I promise just a little bit goes a long way.

So that's kind of typically how I go go about memorizing a verse.

There's no, I don't have any special tricks or anything to show you.

But the biggest thing in encouragement, if you really want to be serious about storing up God's word in your heart, is coming up with some sort of system where you get to revisit all the different verses um that you've memorized through your life.

So this is what I like to call um my script membox.

Again, I made it in college, but I'm not even gonna try to explain this because it's too complicated.

But essentially, this this is a way for me to stay organized where I'm learning a verse every day for a week.

After doing that for a week, it moves to where I look at it once once a day every week, and then after seven weeks, it moves to where I look at it once a day for once a day out of a month.

I I guess that's the best way to explain that.

But um I'm not gonna get too in-depth in this, but if I promise you, if you want to learn more about what this looks like and how it actually works, there will be some time at the end of the service, and I would love, I really would love um to talk to you kind of about this and maybe get you set up with one of these.

But again, any sort of system that allows you to revisit um these verses, that's what that's that's kind of what it takes to store up God's word in our heart where we actually remember it for more than um a day.

So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna stop talking because I don't feel like any of that just made sense.

And I'm just gonna give y'all a little bit to actually practice memorizing this verse.

So before you go get your kids, man, enjoy that for a little bit longer, right?

Before you go get your kids, um, our band's just gonna kind of play some some music, and I just want us to sit here, and I want y'all, as weird as it sounds, I just want you to read this verse over and over and over again.

And then I maybe want to want you to get to the point where you can flip it over and you can look at all this gibberish and you can start to recite kind of this verse from memory.

So I'm gonna pray for us.

I'm gonna give y'all maybe three to five minutes just to sit here.

You can work with a partner, go back and forth if you want to, whatever, whatever works for you.

Um, but just let this be the start of you storing up God's word in your heart that you might not sin against him.

Father, we are so grateful for your word.

Um, we're grateful for the gift that it is, the treasure that it is, that it's not just some dusty old textbook that's outdated, God.

It is your breath.

It is your words, God, that is living and active.

God that's able to transform our lives, transform the way that we think, the way we act.

God, it's able to make us more like Jesus.

So I pray that memorizing your word would be something that we are actively passionate about, actively doing, and we're devoting ourselves to, not so that we can know more scripture than the next person, but so that we can become more like Jesus, that our relationship with you would deepen, that we would have ammunition to fight against Satan and the temptation he throws our way.

God, let us memorize scripture so that we can share it with other people more effectively and clearly in a way that glorifies you.

So just be with us during this time.

God, fill us all with your spirit and give us the power and wisdom just to be able to remember and memorize and store up this verse in our hearts.

We love you.

We pray these things in Jesus' name.

Amen.

Amen.

So I'll come back.