How to Memorize Scripture as a Family (w/ Glenna Marshall)

How did anger lead a pastor’s wife to memorize Scripture? Listen as Glenna Marshall explains what led to the writing of her new book and how she instills a love for Scripture memory into her two boys.

More on Glenna Marshall:

• Pre-Order Glenna’s book: https://amzn.to/428qKSr
• Visit Glenna’s website: https://www.glennamarshall.com

Glenna Marshall Interview Transcript:

Glenna :

This book, I feel like flowed out so quickly because I think with any book that an author writes, they sort of live it before they write it, but this was just a concept that was burning in me so much, and I think I was wearing out all the people in my life talking about it, really, that I figured I, I’m shut up about it honestly. So I’m going to have to write a book about it. And I felt like even just outlining it, deciding what chapters to include, deciding that I wanted it to be a holistic book about memorization. So not just a how to, but also a why to, and also to convince a reader that the Lord has created your brain in such a way that you can memorize and you can memorize a lot. And so I wanted a book to encompass all of those things.

And honestly, it was such a joy to write. I had one particular chapter that I really struggled with, and I wrote it four times to try to get it right, really. And it was the chapter on Renewing Your Mind. And I just really felt that there were things in that chapter that the enemy would not want me to say. And so I just gave it more time than pretty much the rest of the book. And I pray that the Lord will use it to really encourage, but, but for the most part, writing the book was just, it was exciting. It was a joy. It just kind of flowed out. It fell out of my brain, I felt like. Yeah, yeah.

Josh:

Now, I remember reading in the book that you did a little bit of memory. I, I’d say your story’s very similar to many people who’ve grown up in the church where it’s like, okay, you did your thing in elementary school, but we’re not really taught that that’s something you continue to do as an adult. So what was that thing that got you back into it in either your twenties or your thirties?

Glenna :

Yeah, it was actually ongoing sim in my life. I did do memorization as a kid, programs at church, that sort of thing. And then just really never came back to it. And I got to a point, it was just a particular time in parenting, honestly, where I felt like as a mom of young kids, I was just simmering under the surface all the time and would just, this undercurrent of anger, I felt like I had no victory over it. I felt like I could not overcome it at all. I would pray through it. I a very avid studier of the Bible. I love to study the word, and yet I still felt like there was some kind of missing piece in trying to have victory over sin, this particular area of anger. And I remember one day, just one of those verses I memorized as a kid, I just feel like the Lord brought it to mind.

I will hide your word in my heart so that I don’t sin against you. Psalm 1 19 11. And yeah, I was like, is it really? Is that the thing? Because this is the thing that I’m missing that almost seems too easy. But I will tell you that with time of just giving my brain and my heart to scripture memorization, I began to finally see just the edges of that area of sin just be sanded away. And I think because when it’s not just that we need to say no to sin, it’s that we need to say yes to Christ. And delighting in his word day and night is what enables us to say no to sin. And so after experiencing some victory there, I mean, I’m sold on this for life. I hope that I will never stop memorizing God’s word. Yeah.

Josh:

Isn’t it funny, I think that that same thing applies even as I’m parenting my boys where I can say no to them, no all the time. But the reality is, the better thing for me to do would be to give them an alternative. It’s not, no, don’t do this. It’s like, no, I, it’s better to do this. And I think that same thing applying here with scripture memory, or even just like you’re saying with sin, where it’s not just, I want to say no to this. What is it that we want to say yes to? I also think that parenting in its and of itself, it’s just one of those things that God uses to shape us in so many different ways.

Glenna :

Boy does it. It’s so sanctifying. I

Josh:

Know you’ve got, it’s two boys, right?

Glenna :

I do. I have a teenager who’s almost 15, and then I have a seven year old. So big age gap. I’m in the teen years and in the little years still. Okay.

Josh:

Yeah. So I’ve got a 12, nope, 11 year old and a six year old. And so, okay. Haven’t not yet into the teens, but I’m sure that’s coming. Have you been able to incorporate or instill any of this kind of passion for scripture memory into your boys?

Glenna :

I have. And it’s been really fun actually. So we, at dinnertime, not every night, but maybe four or five nights a week, we sit around the table and when we’re done eating, we read through some scripture, we talk through it, we pray for someone from church. We have little place where we draw names for people to pray for, of course. And then we work on memorization. I mean, the whole thing takes less than 10 minutes. But over the course of time, it’s just been such a fruitful thing for our kids just to disciple them in the word and to teach them how to pray, and then to bring them into memorization. So we’re working through Romans eight as a family. We started with verse 31, I believe, and then we’ll go through the end of the chapter. And my seven year old can just memorize us all under the table.

I mean, his brain is just so, such a sponge. But my teenager is doing well too. And we do it every night. We try different things. We play games, passing words around you, just whoever we go in a circle, you have to say the next word in the verse, and sometimes we’ll reverse the order so you get a different word the next time. Sometimes we pound out rhythms to the parts that we get stuck on, and most recently we were stuck on Romans 8 35, who shall separate us from the love of Christ? And it goes through the tribulation, distress, persecution, famine, nakedness, dangerous sword. And we just could not get the order. We just couldn’t do it. So we have a chalkboard wall in our living room. So I wrote it out, and next to each of those words, I drew a picture just almost like an emoji sort of for each of those words.

And boy that did it, we all got it in about two days. And so now we’re ready to move on to the next verse. So we go slowly through it. But we’ve memorized some psalms that way and some shorter passages. And I mean, love that. My grandmother passed away last month, and at her funeral, we were actually at the graveside, and my husband was conducting the funeral, and he read that passage from Romans eight. And on the front row next to the casket is my seven year old just belting out Romans eight. And I just thought, I love that. Yeah. I mean, what greater gift can I give my kids than to teach them to treasure God’s word?

Josh:

That is so cool. Yeah. I, yeah, I just love hearing that. And I remember when we first started conversing back and forth, you were telling me that you were going to be going to your grandmother’s memorial. And even with your husband who’s a pastor, I remember the fact that you one day were going to your grandmother’s memorial, and the next day, I think you were going to speak at a conference. How do you keep those in balance where you’re having to just shift gears and not keep all these ministry things from becoming a legalistic side of, okay, just now I got to turn it on. You know what I mean?

Glenna :

Yeah. Honestly, this is going to sound a little cliche or kind of churchy, but it really is meditating on scripture that helps me compartmentalize, so to speak. I learned a long time ago, and I actually picked this up from a book that my husband was reading. He was reading a book on preaching that John Piper has written, and he brought me this section, and I’m not a preacher, I speak at women’s conferences, but he said, I think this can help you transition into your, when you’re going to stand up and speak, and maybe your brain is just full of a lot of things. And I struggle a lot with anxiety. And so there was a process for, you know, study your material, you prepare, you pray over it, you seek the Lord’s wisdom in how you prepare, and then choose a passage that you can just meditate on in the days leading up to speaking or doing something ministry wise.

And then let that passage minister to you instead of worrying about, are the words going to come out or am I going to say what I need to say? You’ve done the work, trust God with result. And so I typically find that there are psalms that speak to me and help me sort of transition from my everyday life to a position of ministry. And so one of the Psalms I recently meditated, I think it was actually for that conference. My grandmother died, and then three days later I flew to Pennsylvania to speak at a conference, flew home two days later, went to her memorial. And these are all in different states. It was just a very hectic time, a lot of travel, and was, I think it’s from Psalm 19, I am not the best with references, but it’s, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight.

Oh Lord, my strength and my redeemer. That’s a verse that was very precious to my grandmother. She quoted it all the time. She is just a paragon of memorization, such an example to me. And it was that verse that really just, I was able to pray it, think through it, sort of step back from my life and the things that were going on and trust him with this work that was right in front of me. He knew I was committed to it, and it was just something that was long planned. He knew the timing. He is sovereign over those details. And so I just meditated on that scripture, thought about it, prayed it, journaled it, and really it is, I think that fixing my mind on what I know is true and certain that will sustain you through the things that don’t feel certain. And so, yeah, that’s my process. Yeah.

Josh:

It reminds me a little bit of something you said that stuck out to me in your book where you wrote that memorization is the bridge between reading and living. And it sounds like your grandmother was somebody who really lived that out. Well,

Glenna :

Yeah, she really did. And actually, I wrote about this in the book, and I, I’m so sad that she’s not going to get to read it, but she’s with the Lord, so she’s not missing out. But she suffered a retinal bleed maybe a decade ago. And so she lost the ability to see. So she has not been able to read for many years. And as someone who was just a longtime student of the word, it was a real loss to not be able to read her Bible. However, she had stored up so much scripture in her heart that really it was meditating on passages that she had memorized during all her young years that sustained her through these last 10 years. And boy, she could just rattle ’em off to you. And her speech was very saturated with scripture. And I love that because in my own experience, being someone who really loves to study, it’s very easy then to spend your time studying and then to close your Bible and just kind of walk away from it and not think about what you’ve studied again.

But when you are memorizing, you’re mumbling those words allowed to yourself over and over at different points in your day, maybe while you’re doing different tasks. And so it’s just always coming back to your mind. And I think that’s where that bridge, it bridges what you’ve been studying. It carries over into how you live, because I mean, it’s God’s word, so it changes the way you think. It kind of rewires the way that you think. I mean, it’s making you like Jesus. But yeah, I fully believe that if you feel disconnected from the Lord during the day, memorization is definitely the bridge there. Yeah.

Josh:

Going through and memorizing as you are, let’s say a church where your pastor’s going through a specific book, memorizing a verse in that chapter or memorizing the whole chapter or something like that, it really has an impact because now you are, you’re actually spending time outside of just Sunday morning thinking about what it is that God is trying to teach you through that passage.

Glenna :

Yeah. Well, I mean, you have a greater investment in it. So if you show up to church on Sunday and you’ve been memorizing a portion of what’s going to be preached, I mean, you’re there. Yeah. You are zoned in, dialed in, and then you’re just hearing it being proclaimed, hearing someone preaching it, and it’s just driving the truths down in deeper. I mean, I absolutely love it when one of my pastors, whether it’s the call to worship or the passage that they’re preaching, they speak or read something that I have memorized. I mean, I’m there. Yeah. I’m just right there. And I feel like I have such a richer understanding because I’ve dwelled on it so long in my mind. Yeah.

Josh:

Would you have any other ideas, because I like that just what you shared about around the table with your family. Everybody’s saying a word or you’re, you guys are memorizing something together. Are there other things that you do either personally or as a family that have really helped you continue to review or even memorize as you go throughout your day?

Glenna :

For my family, pretty much what we do is what we do around the table, like reciting, doing rhythms, taking turns, reciting out loud, which my teenager absolutely loads, but I make him do it anyway. Yeah, he actually does much better than he thinks he will. Sure. But for me personally, I try to work on memorization at different points during the day. And I like to sort of think of redeeming the time, so not creating new time because we all have 24 hours, but utilizing the time when your hands are busy, but your mind is not. And so there have been times where if I’m driving, I like to use a audio bible that will just read a passage to me over set it to repeat and listen to it over and over, or if you’re taking a walk or running on the treadmill or something.

And then, I mean, my best time, I write about this in the book, my best time to memorize is in the shower. I print out the text, I put it in a Ziploc bag, tape it to the wall. Right now in my shower on the wall is first Peter one and first Peter two. And so I literally just work on memorization every morning. And I mean, your brain goes there after a while. You just step in the shower, you immediately start reciting what you pick up, where you left off the day before. And it sounds silly, but I promise I have memorized entire books simply just in the shower, using the shower time. Yeah. My husband does the same thing. And that suggestion actually came to me 15 years ago from a woman that I attend church with. And I was like, that is brilliant.

I’m going to do that. Yeah, it is. It really is useful. And so there are other ways you could do that. I also keep a printed copy of the text and a picture frame that sits on my kitchen window sill, standing at the dishes, standing, doing dishes a couple times a day. It’s there in front of me. I am a person who struggles a lot with sleep, and the deeper I get into my forties, the harder it is to sleep. And so don’t tell you, I do a lot of just, oh, I’m really sorry. Well, it’s more women I think, than men. But this, I tend to go through long recitations going back and doing whole chapters when I’m trying to sleep at night. Yeah. It’s a good thing to fix your mind on when your mind wants to race. So those are my main tools. I like to utilize the first letter method, just writing the first letter of each word for a long word review.

Josh:

I dunno if you can see on the

Glenna :

Shirt. Yes, I can. Yes, I can. I find that mean. What’s helpful about first letter, especially if you’re going to do a long review, let’s say I’m going to review all of first Peter one and two that I’ve memorized so far. I’ll just get out a sheet of paper and just write out the first letter of each word, which lets your brain go at the pace that it wants to, rather than writing every single word out completely. And so those are my main tools. There’s lots of other things out there, apps and things like that that are useful. And I have a big long list of suggestions in my book, but those are the ones that have worked the most for me, that I utilize the most.

Josh:

Yeah, it sounds very much what I know has been referred to as habit stacking, where you’re taking something that you already do on a regular basis, showering, doing your dishes, and then stacking something on top of that. And I like what you’re saying, just finding those times when your hands are busy, but maybe your mind is not something else. I’ve heard you talk about, I don’t even think this is in the book, but I heard you say once that I really liked is the Bible’s the ultimate get rich slow scheme. And it kind of made me think it was like scripture memory is. If that’s true, then scripture memory is the pen ultimate get rich slow scheme because it just takes so much longer. You know what I mean?

Glenna :

Yes. And I have to tell you, I love how slow the process is because so much of our life in especially live where I am in 21st century America, is just minimal efforts. I want maximum gains. I just want to get everything really quickly, whether that’s a goal I’m trying to reach or things I’m buying or knowledge I’m trying to acquire. I mean, we just have so much quick access to everything. What I like about memorization, I mean, this is so true to the Christian life, it’s just growth takes time. And it’s not something you necessarily see the fruit of in a day or a week or a month. But in time, the cumulative effect of saturating your mind with scripture has such a strong transformative power. I mean, you are being conformed not to the image of this world, but into the image of Christ.

And I really like how slow the process is because when I am working on a verse, and maybe it’s just a half a verse or a phrase, and I am trying to really work it into my memory, and I’m saying it over and over, I’m thinking about why this verb, why that sentence structure? Why did he say it like this and not like that? And when I’m doing that, I am thinking deeply about the words themselves. And I feel like scripture preaches a sermon to you in phrases like that. And it’s just the thinking about it slowly day in and day out, that I really does change the way you think, the way you speak, the way you respond to things. I really do think that’s what we’re seeing in the Romans command of renewing your mind. This is what is happening. It’s not fast, but it is powerful. And so I just kind of love how slow the process, because the goal really isn’t to just be able to stand up and recite a chapter or a whole book. The goal is to do that daily work. Cause it is that daily work that’s changing you. Yeah,

Josh:

I completely agree. Is there anything that you find yourself sharing over and over again or advice that you give over and over again when you’re either at a conference or you’re just speaking one-on-one with ladies, having to do with scripture memory, whether that’s getting into it or staying motivated or anything like that that you find yourself repeating?

Glenna :

Yeah. I like to tell people to start with a book they’re already a little bit familiar with. So if there’s a book that you’ve studied in the last couple of years, or a book that maybe your church has gone through, if there’s a book that you’re already a little bit familiar that can help you not feel so overwhelmed to start with. And so when I first started trying to memorize whole books, I started with the book of James just because I had studied it in depth. It’s very practical. It’s not long. Yeah, it’s five chapters and they’re not super long. And I felt like I had a good handle on the content. I had studied it a few times. And so I started there and just worked at it, took a little over a year to get through it. And so I like to suggest a shorter book, one you’re familiar with already, to get your feet wet.

And then I’d also recommend asking someone to memorize with you if they’re not going to memorize the same thing, maybe they don’t want to memorize the whole book of James, or maybe they just want to memorize a Psalm or something like that, still check in with one another. I think that can be really helpful to memorize with another person. And speaking of Psalms, if a book just feels unattainable to you to start, the Psalms are great because the chapters, a lot of them just stand as little books like themselves. Yeah, they’re holistic. They’re closed. So I like to recommend starting with something short, like Psalm one or Psalm 23. These are great psalms that are short and familiar, but really pack a punch when you meditate on them. And so that’s a great place to start. If even maybe you’re thinking, I’d love to memorize Romans eight, but the whole chapter feels overwhelming, then pick a portion, pick six to eight verses so that you have some context, because the context does imbue deeper meaning to the text rather than just cherry picking, so to speak. So that would be the recommendation, the recommendations I give the most. Oh,

Josh:

I love that. I really appreciate you sharing that. So you have a book coming out, I believe in August of 2023.

Glenna :

August 1st,

Josh:

August 1st called Memorizing Scripture. I believe it can be pre-ordered on Amazon, which is awesome. And then, yeah, I’ve so used to the online world where kind of things happen really fast. And are you itching to get this all finally out there and published?

Glenna :

I am. I’m really excited about it just because there’s not a lot out there on this topic as far as trade books, the type of book that you would order on Amazon, there’s not much out there. Or there’s books that are maybe a quick how to guide or something like that. And what I really am excited about is convincing the skeptics that they can, I think most Christians believe that they should. Yeah. That that’s not a hard self. Yeah. We see the exhortation in scripture, although I do go over that, the reasons why. But what I’m eager for people to see is that when they start memorizing scripture, it deepens their affection for the Lord. I mean, that is one of the goals is to walk more closely with Jesus and to love him more. So that’s something I’ve seen in my own life. It increases your adoration.

It helps you to be equipped to fight sin. I mean, I’ve sp spoken to that already, but it helps you think differently. It makes you feel a little out of step with the world, which is a good thing as Christians, because this is not our home and just the benefits and the blessings of this very simple practice have blown me away. And that’s one of the things I’m so excited for readers to see is the transforming power of memorization in their spiritual lives and how much it will draw them closer to the Lord. So I am anxious for the book to come out for that reason so that people can see what a life changing practice it is.

Josh:

I hope you were encouraged by everything Glen had to share. If you want to learn more about her, you can go to glen marshall.com. She also has her book Memorizing Scripture that is available for pre-order on Amazon. I’ll have a link to that in the description below this video. Definitely go and check that out. It’s going to be available on August 1st, 2023. If you’re the kind of person who does want to memorize more scripture, I’d encourage you, we have a training course available through Bible Memory Goal. You can find [email protected] slash training. It’s a five part course that walks you through a lot of the basics, gives you an understanding of not just your why, but also how and different techniques that you can use to not just memorize, but also review everything that you’re wanting to K keep in your brain as you memorize scripture. So again, you can find [email protected] slash training. Thanks for taking the time with us. Make sure to subscribe and you can watch more great content about memorizing scripture. Right.

More Bible Memory Resources

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