Picture this with me…a family sitting around the table together, the parents are doing their best to get their kids excited about learning Scripture by hiding God’s Word in their heart. Pretend you are a fly on the wall and you overhear this conversation…
“Okay, we are going to practice Genesis 1:1. Are you ready? We are going to say it together,” Mom says enthusiastically.
“I don’t want to,” whines one child.
“Ugh!!,” grumbles the preteen.
“It’s too hard!”, groans the preschooler.
While the other child sits quietly with his head down on the table, not participating.
“Come on guys you can do this! Follow after us,” encourages Dad.
*Unrecognizable grumbling come from all sides of the table as the recitation starts.*
Does this sound familiar? Do you have a time set aside during the day that you devote solely to work with your children (and yourself) on Scripture memory? It’s okay if you don’t. But if you do, do you feel more discouraged at the end of that allotted time, than when you started?
I can attest that many, many times I have ended our scripture memory time feeling more defeated than I did before we started. I have closed my Bible right in the middle of our memory time because the frustration was turning into anger. I have given up many times and told myself it’s not worth trying anymore. Sometimes I allow myself to believe the lie that if they are interested, they can read and memorize Scripture on their own.
But they need us to encourage and prod them to practice this spiritual discipline, just like we do!
I feel so passionately about discipling my children in this area that I have tried to come up with fun ways to help them, so they are excited about memorizing Scripture. I want your children to get excited about memorizing Scripture as well.
I have four ideas to help you in the process of making Scripture memory fun.
Make it a game against the clock.
This is my kids’ favorite. Here’s how to play. Take the verse you are learning and evenly divide it into small bite-sized phrases. Then give each of your children a phrase to say. They have to remember their phrase only, but I promise they will learn the whole verse because they hear it over and over and you can switch up phrases if you’d like. This is what the game looks like with Isaiah 55:6…
Child 1: Seek the Lord
Child 2: While He may be found
Child 3: Call upon Him while
Child 4: He is near
Altogether: Isaiah 55:6
After you assign each child their phrase, tell them to say it in order as fast as they can. It will be slow the first few times and you may have to help them, but soon they will be saying it at lighting speed. To start the race against the clock, start the stopwatch as soon as the first child starts the first phrase. After everyone says the reference together stop the timer and cheer with excitement over how great they did and ask if they think they can beat their time. They will no doubt say YES! Set a goal for the day and keep trying until you reach it, but make sure it’s an attainable goal or they will give up.
Put Scripture to music.
Maybe you are not a music person, like me, but there are so many resources available to help us. I want to tell you about two.
- Seeds Family Worship is a non-profit organization that creates music that is word-for-word Scripture. It is fun and entertaining music for all ages, not just kids. They also offer discipleship material for families. We use their songs a lot and find myself singing them throughout the day. You can find some of their songs on YouTube and you can purchase their CDS.
- There is another family who creates music with word-for-word Scripture, The Harrow Family. They have a 7 CD series that is called Sing The Word that you can purchase. They have different topics like, Sing through the New Testament, Sing the Word from A to Z, and more. Their songs are not as short and quick tempo, but very good.
We try to use songs and hand motions when the kids have extra verses they are learning at church. It really seems to help them remember.
Play hide and seek.
This one sounds a little strange, but hear me out. You will need to write each word of the verse on an individual index card. After writing out the whole verse, go hide the cards, all in different places. Tell your children to go find them and put them together to create the memory verse, BUT tell them they have to beat the clock. Give them a set time limit and encourage them to beat the clock, maybe set a goal to have a certain amount of time left over. If you have a large group of children, you can select teams and race against each other with two sets of cards.
There’s An App For That
Maybe your child learns well with an electronic game. There is an app called Noah’s Bible Memory. It only has 25 verses from the Old and New Testament, but 25 is better than zero! The app allows kids to learn at different speeds and levels. It is set up to help children not only learn the verse but also help with retention and long term memory. It also uses visual cues to help with the memory process. It is completely free and there are no in-app purchases or ads.
There is also one that is $2.99 called Bible Memory Kids. This app is similar to Noah’s Bible Memory in that it offers a limited number of verses, but even non-readers can memorize with the use of Mnemonic images. It also has a reward system built in.
One for older kids and adults is called Bible Memory. This is the app I personally use. There is a free version and a paid version. I benefit from this app immensely in my effort to memorize Scripture. It tracks my progress and automatically adds the verses I want to memorize and tells me when I need to practice.
There are so many different ideas out there to help in the area of Scripture memory, but I hope that these four ideas help your family in some way have a stronger desire to memorize God’s word. It really can be a lot of fun and it pays off when you begin to see the fruit of your labor.
The best thing about teaching your children Scripture is that you are learning and memorizing them also.
I am cheering you on! Please let me know if you have any questions and let me know what ideas your family uses to memorize Scripture.
