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How Scripture Memory Can Maintain Your Mental
Equilibrium |
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Pocket Paper ______________________ Message by Robert J. Morgan, Senior Pastor The Donelson Fellowship 3210 McGavock Pike 615/871-4769 www.donelson.org For
as he thinks in his heart, so is he. Proverbs 23:7 (KJV) He’s been called a “literary mystery man.” Little is known about him, and his writing career was as fleeting as an arrow shooting through the sky. He never achieved fame or fortune, and he died at age forty-eight. He wrote nineteen or twenty books without saying much about himself in any of them; and none of them sold particularly well in his lifetime. Yet one tiny volume—his second book and one with which he himself was unhappy—has since sold millions of copies and influenced millions of lives.
He was James Allen, born in
1864 in an idyllic part of central
James Allen and his wife moved
to the little coastal town of
To the best of my knowledge, he was not a Christian; or, if he was, it was a rather liberal Christianity. But one little book was based on a Bible verse from the book of Proverbs, and that little book has cast a long shadow. It almost single-handedly gave rise to the self-improvement and positive thinking movement of the past 100 years, and was a great inspiration for men like Dale Carnegie, Norman Vincent Peale, =Earl Nightingale, Robert Schuler, and others.
It’s entitled As a Man Thinketh, and it is based on Proverbs 23:7: “For as he thinks in his heart, so is he” (KJV).
The point of the little book, As a Man Thinketh, is quite simple: Our thoughts are the most important thing about us. All that we achieve or fail to achieve is the direct results of our thoughts. Our thoughts are like seeds that produce crops. Allen wrote: Good thoughts and actions
can never produce bad results; bad thoughts and actions can never produce
good results. This is but saying
that nothing can come from corn but corn, nothing from nettles but
nettles. Men understand this law
in the natural world, and work with it; but few understand it in the mental
and moral world (though its operation there is just as simple and
undeviating). (James Allen, As a Man Thinketh (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2002), p. 22.) Allen’s point is that we are what we think, and our lives run in the direction of our thoughts. If we think successful thoughts, we’ll be successful; if we think angry thoughts, we’ll be angry; if we think positive thoughts, we’ll be positive; if we think negative thoughts, we’ll be negative. The mind is a garden, and we have to cultivate it, and we are responsible for the kind of seed we sow into the furrows of our mind. To quote Allen again: A (person’s) mind may be likened to a
garden, which may be intelligently cultivated or allowed to run wild; but
whether cultivated or neglected, it must, and will, bring forth. If no useful seeds are put into it,
then an abundance of useless seeds will fall therein, and will continue to
produce their kind. (James Allen, As a Man Thinketh (New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 2002), p. 11.) Sports Visualization There’s no doubt that
athletes have discovered the power of mental visualization. One of the books that I’ve read
on this subject is The Mental Age: Maximize Your Sports Potential with
the Mind-Body Connection, written by Kenneth Baum with Richard Trubo. In
this book, Baum tells the story of an amateur triathlete
named Tom Skultitley who made up his mind that he
wanted to compete in the triathlon in Well, Tom wasn’t a
professional athlete, but he made up his mind that he wanted to compete in
the Ironman Triathlon in He set up a grueling training regimen, of course, and got his body into shape. But he also practiced sports visualization. Day after day he pictured himself swimming and cycling and running. He visualized every moment of the race. He could feel the water sliding across his body in the Pacific, he could feel the pain in his muscles, he could see the tires of his bicycle flying over the pavement, he could sense the perspiration covering his body, he visualized the magnificent Hawaiian scenery, he felt his wife’s embrace as he crossed the finish line. According to The Mental Edge, in the week before the race, Tom visualized for
four hours a day. In his mind, he
foresaw every detail of the competition. And when the day came and he competed
in the Ironman competition, he didn’t wear a
wristwatch, but he crossed the finish line in 9 hours, 59 minutes, and 37
seconds. He beat his ten-hour
goal by 23 seconds. And he
finished ninth in the race, which was the highest ranking for any amateur.
(Kenneth Baum with Richard Trubo, The Mental Edge: Maximize Your Sports Potential with
the Mind-Body Connection (New York:
The Berkley Publishing Group, 1999), 85-87.) As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he. Bible Visualization I’m no advocate of the
shallowness of mere positive thinking, and I know that many motivational
books have been written without a solid scriptural basis; but James Allen is
correct about the importance of planting the right seeds of thought into the
furrows of the mind. The Bible
says the same thing, as Allen himself admitted in the very title of his
book. As a person thinks in his
heart, so he is. That’s why Jesus said in Matthew · Isaiah 26:3 says, “You will keep him in perfect peace, whose mind is stayed on You, because he trusts in You” (emphasis mine here and in the following verses). · Romans 12:2 tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our minds. ·
Ephesians · Philippians 2:5 commands us, “Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus.” · Colossians 3:2 says, “Set your mind on things above, not on things on the earth.” · Romans 8:5-6 says: “For those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh, but those who live according to the Spirit, the things of the Spirit. For to be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is life and peace.” · The apostle Paul wrote, “God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). ·
And the apostle Peter struck the same
note: “Therefore gird up
the loins of your mind, be sober,
and rest your hope fully upon the grace that is to be brought to you at the
revelation of Jesus Christ” (1 Peter One of the ways we do this is by planting God’s Word in our hearts. Colossians 3:16 tells us to let the Word of God dwell in us richly; and in the Old Testament, the Lord promised, “This is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord: I will put My law in their minds, and write it on their hearts; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people” (Jeremiah 31:33). Listen to this translation of
Deuteronomy 6:4-6: “
Deuteronomy
Scripture memory, in other words, enables us to maintain
our mental equilibrium and our spiritual vitality. Spiritual
Visualization Scripture
visualization in the mind becomes spiritual visualization for the soul. One night, for example, I was
incredibly worried about someone.
At length, I knew I had to get some sleep, for staying up all night
wouldn’t help the situation; and, in the end, it would leave me
exhausted the next day when I needed fresh energy to deal with it. I couldn’t relax in bed, but I
thought I might be able to rest on the sofa if only I could corral my runaway
thoughts. But my mind wouldn’t
cooperate, imagining the worst and visualizing every terrible scenario. Finally I decided to manhandle my
thoughts and force them in a different direction. Tossing on the sofa, I began repeating
the Twenty-Third Psalm, which I had memorized many years before: The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not
want. He maketh
me to lie down in green pastures:
He leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth
my soul. He leadeth
me in paths of righteousness for His name’s sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley
of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: for Thou art with me….
When I got to the end, I started again from the beginning. My mind began to visualize those green pastures, to see and sense the Good Shepherd, to know His presence in the dark valley, to claim His promises of goodness and mercy.
As my mind relaxed, so did my body; and I was able to sleep. Later I thought to myself—what if I had never known Psalm 23? What if someone had not led me to memorize Psalm 23 when I was in the second grade? What would I have done? Where would I have turned?
Dr. Martin Seligman of the Scripture memory is our most powerful tool in changing our habits of thought, and the internalized truths of God’s Word keep us mentally healthy. It’s the greatest secret I know to personal resiliency. It molds our thoughts, and our thoughts shape our lives; for as we think in our hearts, so we are.
If our thoughts are the most important thing about us, and if the Holy Scriptures are the very thoughts of God Himself, then Bible verses represent the most healing, clarifying, bolstering, uplifting data we can insert into our brains. The power of Scripture is unlike anything else on earth. It’s a force to be reckoned with, containing intrinsic power, high enough to give us insight, deep enough to give us peace, wide enough to mold our personalities, and strong enough to bear us through horrendous days.
By internalizing Bible verses, we are mainstreaming God’s thoughts into our conscious, subconscious, and unconscious minds.
Life-Changing Visualization One night several years ago I
sat up into the wee hours, engrossed in a book I’d picked up at a yard
sale. In The Presence of Mine Enemies was the memoirs of Vietnam POW,
Howard Rutledge, who was shot down over
Howard described how, in an initial set of tortures, his legs were forced into rough shackles, with his arms hog-tied in an excruciating position. He was deprived of clothing, food, and sleep, and forced to lie on a cold slab in a mucky cell. The walls, floors, and ceilings were caked with filth, and a large rat shared his space.
Until his incarceration, Howard
had felt little concern for spiritual things; but now he desperately tried to
recall snatches of Bible verses, hymns, or sermons he had heard in his
childhood. Fortunately, as a
youngster he had attended a church in
“Everyone knew the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty-Third Psalm,” he said, “but the camp favorite verse that everyone recalled first and quoted most often is found in the Book of John, third chapter, sixteenth verse: For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
With a friend’s help, Howard even managed to reconstruct verses 17 and 18.
Howard wrote, “How I
struggled to recall those Scriptures and hymns! I had spent my first eighteen years in
a Southern Baptist Sunday School, and I was amazed at how much I could
recall; regrettably, I had not seen the importance of memorizing verses from
the Bible…. Now, when I
needed them, it was too late. I
never dreamed that I would spend almost seven years (five of them in solitary
confinement) in a prison in
In his memoirs, Howard described days and nights of tortures that made my skin crawl as I read about them; but he also testified of being able, as time progressed, to recall more and more Bible verses from the recesses of his mind. His recollection wasn’t word perfect, but he was amazed at how many phrases and sentences from the Bible lay buried deep in his memory, waiting to be discovered.
Those Bible verses literally kept Howard Rutledge from losing his mind. They faced down death, rallied his spirits, steeled his nerves, and tapped into the deepest strength known in the universe. They beat back the torture, stifled the despair, subdued the terrors he felt, and maintained his sanity even when he was immobilized for days in a stifling hut, chained to a metal frame, lying in his own waste, and covered with ants, flies and biting insects.
Those verses, long ago learned by heart, proved more restorative than any tonic. They dispensed strength and were sufficient for the pain; and they bolstered his mind and his mood with the strongest thoughts of an omniscient God in the midst of humanity’s most sadistic ravings. They were the reason he came home alive.
“That first New Year’s Eve in Heartbreak Hotel,” he wrote, “I had resolved never to be without a Bible again. Those verses of God’s Word that I had memorized or that I had scrounged from other prisoners’ memories had been a living source of strength in my life.”
Conclusion: Memorization and Visualization Most of us will never be POWs in a concentration camp, but all of us occasionally check into Heartbreak Hotel. Life is hard, full of anguishing moments and dangerous temptations. We need strong minds—brains that think clearly, emotions that remain calm and steady.
Bible verses, committed to memory and applied by the Holy Spirit, are the most powerful medications in the whole world. They’re a balm for sore hearts, an elixir for low spirits, an immunization for bad habits, a booster-shot of high spirits, a pick-me-up for dreary days, and a stimulant for positive nerves.
How many Bible verses could you reconstruct from your memory banks, if push came to shove? How about your children? Are they hiding away God’s word in their hearts, storing up the precious seeds of the Scriptures against the coming famine? Do your teenagers know the Bible verses they need to withstand the temptations they’ll face?
The Bible was written to be memorized. Take Psalm 25, for example. If you’ll turn there in your Bible and notice it, it has twenty-two verses. The Hebrew alphabet has 22 letters; so when we find a passage like this with 22 verses, it is probably an acrostic psalm. In the original Hebrew, verse 1 begins with the Hebrew equivalent of our letter A. Verse two, with the Hebrew equivalent of our letter B. And so forth.
Why is that important? It was a mnemonic, a device to aid in memorization. This Psalm was intended for memorization. Its message was so important that the writer wanted to make it easy to memorize.
The longest chapter in the Bible—Psalm 119—is actually composed of twenty-two segments arranged as an extended acrostic. The passage about the wise woman in Proverbs 31 likewise has 22 segments.
In other words, these were composed to be memorized.
I recall years ago, in the little mountain church I pastored after college, listening as an old woman took the entire Sunday School hour to quote from memory, word-for-word, all 176 verses of Psalm 119, which she had memorized in childhood. Those verses had nourished and fed her soul for all the decades between eight and eighty.
God expects us to hide His Word in our hearts. It’s a biblical principle that we reap what we sow, and the seeds of Scripture create a healthy mental garden with foliage that reaches to heaven and fruits that nourish many on earth. They determine our success, mold our personalities, and establish our souls. They resource us for both time and eternity. Don’t wait until tomorrow. Begin today, for what we pour into our minds makes us who and what we are. The seeds we sow bear a harvest; “for as a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.” Copyright StatementWe grant permission for any edition of The Pocket Paper to be photocopied for use in a local congregation or classroom, provided no more than 1,000 copies are made, the material is distributed free, and the copies include the notice: "Copyright (year) The Donelson Fellowship."For any other use, advance permission must be obtained from The Donelson Fellowship church office.Other messages are available from our website. Just click on the Pocket Papers link on our home page for a list of available messages. |
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