Memory

"I've banked Your promises

in the vault of my heart

so I won't sin myself bankrupt."

Psalm 119:11, MSG

Perhaps, my absolute favorite week of the entire year is Holy Week -- the most sacred week in the Church Calendar. Throughout the Lenten season, I seek to engage in activities that remind me of the ultimate price that my Savior paid on my behalf. From Palm Sunday onward, my daily prayers serve as a means to recalibrate my mind and prepare my heart to celebrate Maundy Thursday (the commemoration of the Last Supper), Good Friday (the passion of Christ), Holy Saturday (the Sabbath rest of Christ in the tomb), and Easter Sunday (the resurrection of Christ). 

I was but a young boy attending Sunday school when I was given the answer to the why question of Jesus' death – He was crushed for my iniquities and was made to suffer because of the load of my guilt and shame. 

Yet, for the major part of my life, I have not lived as though I truly remember that He came to die for my individual sins as well as the collective sin of all of mankind. It is only human of me to forget so easily. However, God is in the business of reminding, of jogging my memory as His Word tells me to remember . . . remember . . . remember. 

Musicians are a special breed because, in music, the use of memory is constantly required. For example, music students have to memorize the names of scale degrees and the order in which they appear. They must easily recollect key signatures, nuances, rests, notes, etc. Singers and pianists, in particular, have to commit huge chunks of their repertoire to memory.

It is not too difficult to remember such 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 audience members cringe during a piano recital because the performer has to deal with memory slips? In my own musical journey, I have had instances when I would forget important words while performing an aria or an art song. Though at times memory slips come out of nowhere, most often my forgetting occurs because those specific passages were not sufficiently drilled into my heart or 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. For over two years now, I have focused much of my time on the virtue of patience in my personal study. As a result, 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 do not have to fret because it is all in my system, my body, my mind, my heart. 

Such a process has brought me to this conclusion – memory serves us what we have already 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 steadiness and patient nurturing instead, then when the pressure is on, it will grant us a peace and an assurance that will defy all storms.

It should be no surprise to us that the Master modeled that kind of memory during His passage on earth. When Christ faced the big storms of His life, He turned 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. So, naturally, 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 Psalms, the Psalm of the Cross. 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? 

I believe it was because the consistency of His memory work had provided for His human heart 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. I believe it was the only way He could have endured the atrocities of mankind and worn the ill-fitting outfit of sin, scorn, and shame.

Although only seven phrases have been recorded as His Swan Song (the last words of Christ), I wonder how many chapters from God's Word constituted the whole of His meditation on that forsaken tree. I am convinced that it was God's Word which gave our Master the endurance, patience, and strength He needed to die such a cruel death, be buried, and have victory over death.

We have all been called to imitate Christ.
Therefore, we have all been called to memorize Scripture. 

"Write these commandments that I've given you today on your hearts.

Get them inside of you and then get them inside your children.

Talk about them wherever you are

-- sitting at home or walking in the street --

talk about them from the time you get up in the morning

to when you fall into bed at night."

Deuteronomy 6:6-7, MSG

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 [one’s] 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 explore the Bible, memorize the emotions depicted therein, and learn to express those emotions until they become genuinely ingrained in us.

As God’s people, we have claimed for far too long that we do not have a good memory and therefore, Scripture memory is not for us. God has gently nudged my heart and opened my eyes to see that we all can. We have all memorized our names, our phone numbers, our social security numbers, and our mailing addresses. We can easily remember the ignition key to our car and the trajectory of the fork from the plate to our mouths. In short, we easily memorize the things we use on a daily or consistent basis. 

We even memorize things we see others do regularly. For example, my 4-year old daughter has already memorized several psalms only because she is in the kitchen when I teach each verse to my 9-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? 

Oh, that we would consider memorizing a little bit of Scripture daily! God wants us to do so and has equipped us with the necessary skills to achieve it. We simply need to develop the patience and the tenacity to memorize one small fragment every day. 

As with any discipline, we will do much better if accountability is involved in the process of memorizing -- a memorization buddy, a passage with specific translation and number of verses, and a regular time to meet and quote scripture to one another. Not only will we grow in God's word and be equipped to do His work wherever we are, we will also develop a wonderful friendship with another believer.

May we all go and memorize God's Word, thinking on it and speaking it back to the Father! How amazed we will be to see our lives becoming transformed and renewed in Christ!