Power Verses

Today Lighthouse Christian Center is preparing to launch something new and exciting for us:  Power Verses!  During 2013, we'll be memorizing passages of Scripture each week.  My background with the Bible started in Christian education.  My parents sent me to a Baptist school that believed in the importance of hiding God's Word in your heart.  I learned the Christmas story from Luke and a few Psalms among other passages.

As a young man, the Holy Spirit stirred a desire in me to meditate on God's Word.  I would carry a note card with a few verses on it when I cleaned or did chores.  I memorized the Sermon on the Mount while vacuuming the foyer at church.  Older and a little wiser, I'd probably say don't do something like that if you're getting paid to do something else!

I went through another period of intense Scripture memory just a few months before I found out that Lighthouse Christian Center was without a pastor - God knew what he was doing in my life, even when I didn't!  Lately, I just want to fall back in love with God's Word and take as many people with me! If you're interested you can click this link to find out more.  Let me leave you with 7 reasons for memorizing Scripture...

Why Memorize Scripture?

1.  Memorizing Scripture Allows you to meditate on the Word of God, all the time.  

Psalm 1:2  ...but whose delight is in the law of the Lord, and who meditates on his law day and night.

Meditation on the Word of God leads to deeper insight and wisdom.  If you’re going to meditate on God’s Word day and night some of it needs to be in your mind.

2.  Memorizing Scripture increases faith.  

Romans 10:17 (NASB) So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ.

This can happen when you’re going over and listening to the memorized Word in your mind.

3.  Memorizing Scripture Shapes your world view.  

Romans 12:2 Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God’s will is—his good, pleasing and perfect will.

Would you like to be able to have the heart of God on any given matter?  Would you like to have the thoughts and attitudes of God on today's issues?  Memorizing and consequently meditating on God’s Word can manifest, and put to use the mind of Christ that’s in you!

4.  Memorizing Scripture makes God’s Word more readily accessible when overcoming temptation and fighting the enemy.  

Matthew 4:10a Jesus said to him, “Away from me, Satan! For it is written...”
Jesus gave Satan the Word - an unstoppable force!  You don’t argue with the devil.  You give him the Word and forcefully invite him to leave!

5. Memorizing Scripture makes God’s Word available when comforting and encouraging others.

Romans 15:4  For everything that was written in the past was written to teach us, so that through the endurance taught in the Scriptures and the encouragement they provide we might have hope.

6.  Memorizing Scripture gives access to the truth when presenting the Gospel to others.

John 17:17b  Your word is truth.

7.  Memorizing Scripture teaches me the language that Jesus speaks.  

John 15:7  If you remain in me and my words remain in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you.

If you want to learn a foreign language memorize the Word.  It’s foreign to anything this world has to offer!  He speaks to me from His Word.  I speak to him through prayer.  And if my prayer is Word-based, then how can I not pray in his perfect will?

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®, NIV® Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ (www.biblica.com)

Scripture marked NASB, take from the New American Standard Bible^®,
Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1973,
1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation
Used by permission." (www.Lockman.org)

GIVE THEM THE WORD!

Yesterday our church performed the annual Christmas musical. This year was exceptional. We always set the mood for such productions by bringing the lights in the house down - also in case some of our people need to grab a quick nap during the service. But we used more than can-lights for ambiance this year!

We utilized the concept of “video soundtrack.” With a camcorder, a MacBook and the musical soundtrack, we were able to make our own DVD versions of songs. Our children’s ministry met one Sunday afternoon a few weeks ago to dress in Bible costumes and reenact the Nativity. A couple late nights of editing later had produced a great video of our people’s own kids and grand kids, without the headache of dealing live with costumes!

For another song our people turned in pictures of Christmas past, from their own photo albums (or other family members’). The effect was a nostalgic “feel good” song. While our soloist was singing, “I Love Christmas,” we caught a glimpse of how much she loved it about 20 years ago! Such multimedia seemed to bring our small-town church to another level.

There are always areas that could be improved upon. As musical director, I could have used another month of practice! My biggest weaknesses, which involve planning and organizing, can always stand some tweaking! Overall, I consider this to be the best production since I’ve been at the church.

The weakest factor I found was the abrupt and arbitrary narration. The book’s breviloquent blather seemed a little too thrown together to actually have made it in the back of a published Christmas musical. I mean my alliterations may be superfluous, but they’re also free! We actually paid for those disjointed comments intended to be read between the songs. My wife said, in her North Florida accent, that some of the narration was, “just plain stupid!”

I thought about trying my own hand at more meaningful prose to connect the songs. Maybe you can guess how far I didn’t get! The technical aspects of the musical seemed to overshadow everything else.

When I finally sat down with the narration in mind, I found myself being pulled to the traditional scriptures associated with Christmas. In high school, I discovered what was the other end of the church spectrum from my Pentecostal childhood, when I happened to flip to the back of an Oxford published book of Christmas carols. The Lessons and Carols is a service designed to travel from the fall of man all the way to the stable of Jesus’ birth. It’s the biblical realization that the Word has been made flesh.

The whole crux of Christianity is that the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us. Immanuel - God With Us, is the whole point of the virgin birth, the angels, the shepherds and the manger. After Eons of humanity reaching upward to appease gods and somehow attain peace with them, the One True God reaches down to us! He pulls us upward if we only receive him, and believe in his name.

Sure, I threw in a few zingers about Chia Pets and fruitcakes not making the top of my Christmas gift list, but my main objective was to give them the Word! Being the guy who is still called “ma’am” over the phone, I’m always surprised at how my tenor voice seems to make baritone, when infused with the authority of Isaiah 9:6-7 in the King James! Getting back to those basic scriptures found in any liturgical Christmas book reminded me: Give them the Word, it changes lives!

For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice from henceforth even for ever. The zeal of the LORD of hosts will perform this.
Isaiah 9:6-7