# I Will Hide God’s Word in My \(Child’s\) Heart
Sister to Sister
Language: en
Author: by Melissa Brubaker
Lebanon, PA
Original issue: The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Summer 2023, Number 2
Source pages: 24–25
Read article:
Original PDF: Summer\-2023\-Remnant\-web\.pdf
[The Heartbeat of the Remnant, Summer 2023]()
As sisters in the Lord and born\-again believers, I am sure we would all agree that memorizing scripture is important to our spiritual health\. I have memorized many, many Scripture verses during my childhood years\. Most of the verses that I memorized were taught during a vacation Bible School which I attended each summer\.
During the first evening of Bible School, the teachers handed out memory work assignments, often many pages worth\. These were not all required but the rewards were appealing\. Most years I memorized everything that was assigned\. I give these teachers and this Bible School the credit for the wealth of verses I memorized during those years\.
Now I am married and have children of my own\. The Bible School from my childhood is long past\. I realized that if my children were going to memorize Scripture, I would need to make it happen\. As moms, many of us know the importance of memorizing God’s Word and hiding it, not only in our hearts, but also in our children’s hearts\.
> *Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to thy word\. With my whole heart have I sought thee: O let me not wander from thy commandments\. Thy word have I hid in mine heart, that I might not sin against thee –Psalm 119:9\-11\.*
We need God’s Word in our hearts to help us with our daily battles with sin\. Our children need this as well\. Most of our children are not going to memorize scripture without some help from us\.
My husband and I did not enter marriage with dreams of memorizing with our children\. For our family, it happened almost accidentally\. Our oldest children were three and four when my husband suggested that we work with them on memorizing the Christmas story found in Luke 2:1\-19\. I didn’t think they would be able to do it\. I thought young children memorized short verses like, “Be ye kind one to another\.” We started reciting it together every evening during our family devotions\. I was quite surprised when they memorized this passage quickly and easily\.
I was intrigued\. Should we try again? Easter was approaching so I started working with them on the crucifixion account found in John 19:1\-19\. Again, they memorized this without much effort\. This encouraged me to continue with other passages\.
When it came time to homeschool the children, I wanted memorization to be a part of our daily routine\. I bought a binder and inserted the printed passages we had memorized as well as the passages I wanted them to memorize\. This started a routine that we still do today\.
Every day we recite the current passage as well as one we have previously memorized\. We also recite it together as a family during our devotion time\. I have found that doing it this way results in the family having the passage memorized in about three to four weeks\.
At the beginning of a new passage, I read the scripture out loud\. As the days go by the children start chiming in more and more\. Eventually, I just get them started and only help as they need help\. When I think they know the passage I have them recite it to me one by one\. If they know it well, they start reciting it to their dad during our family devotions\. If they don’t know it, we keep on practicing till they do know it\. Sometimes I will give the struggling child just a few verses to recite\. However, most of them would rather recite the whole thing\.
We memorize as a family instead of individually\. I don’t move on to a new passage until everyone has it memorized or at least memorized to their ability\. \(Not all children can memorize 19 verses at age three\.\) Some of our children were barely talking at three years old so verbal Bible memory was hardly possible\. Some children will stumble through a passage and need lots of clue words, which is okay if they are doing their best\. Sometimes we go over the same passage again in a few years and they learn it better the second time\.
This may sound time\-consuming and stressful, but it is not so for us\. I spend about five minutes a day working on memory work\. We have no time constraints on our memorization so there is no pressure to know it by a certain time\. The children have been doing this since they were barely talking, so they are used to it and rarely complain\. Since we memorize as a family, it also helps the child who can’t memorize as well as another\. As a family, we encourage and cheer on the struggling child\. He feels a sense of accomplishment even if he struggles through the whole passage\.
I give a small reward for each passage memorized\. I have a prize box that they can choose from\. This does not need to cost much\! I often do not spend much more than a dollar\. Yard sales and thrift stores are places to purchase items cheaply\. Back\-to\-school sales are nice as well since most children like to have a new pack of crayons or a cute eraser\.
As time went by, I found myself becoming discouraged at how quickly the children would forget a memorized passage\. I discovered that several years later they often could hardly recite a previously learned passage\. I wondered why I was putting in the effort if they were simply going to forget it in a few years\. My husband encouraged me to continue\. He said that the concepts were still in their hearts even if they could no longer recite the passage\. So I continued, but I still hoped for a solution to this problem\.
One day I read an article written by another mom who also worked on memorization with her children\. In the article she said that it is important to get the memory work out of the short\-term memory and into the long\-term memory\. The solution is actually quite simple\. Every day in addition to reciting our new passage, we also recite a previously learned passage\. My binder comes in handy for this\! All the passages we have learned are in this binder\. I use a paper clip to help me remember the passage we just reviewed\. Each day the paper clip moves to the next passage\. When we reach the end, we start over\. This helps to keep the passages fresh in our minds as well as move them to our long\-term memory\.
I also like to have a theme for each school year\. One year my theme was, “Memorize 100 Verses\.” The children enjoyed watching the number rise as the year progressed\. This year we are working on, “The Sermon on the Mount\.” I divided it into 10 sections\. The goal is to complete it in a year, but if we don’t reach that goal it doesn’t matter\. It is better to go slow and memorize something well than to go fast and not retain what you have learned\.
These are the methods I have found helpful for our family\. Pray and ask God for ideas that will work well for your family without comparing yourself to other families\! Don’t underestimate what your children can do\. Don’t assume that because they are young, they can only memorize a verse or two\. Children often do only as well as we expect them to, even the younger ones\.
After we have God’s Word memorized, we need to use it daily\. A blanket that is kept stored away in a closet does no good on a cold, winter night\. The writer of Deuteronomy sums this up well—*And **thou shalt love the LORD thy God** with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might\. And **these words, which I command thee this day, shall be in thine heart:** And **thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children,** and shalt talk of them when thou sittest in thine house, and when thou walkest by the way, and when thou liest down, and when thou risest up –Deuteronomy 6:5\-7\.*
First, we love God\. Then we put His Word into our hearts\. Finally, we should teach these truths to our children as we go about our daily activities\. This passage encompasses it all—sitting, walking, lying down, and rising up\. After a passage is memorized, my husband will explain the verses to us during our devotion time\. This helps us to understand what we are memorizing\.
We do many things by habit because we realize their importance\. We brush our teeth, comb our hair, eat breakfast, and do many other things\. We do these things daily\. They are a regular part of our lives\. Because we value them, we make them happen\. This is how it should be with scripture memorization\. It is too valuable to skip\.
> *Blessed is the man that walketh not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor standeth in the way of sinners, nor sitteth in the seat of the scornful\. But his delight is in the law of the LORD; and in his law doth he meditate day and night\. And he shall be like a tree planted by the rivers of water, that bringeth forth his fruit in his season; his leaf also shall not wither; and whatsoever he doeth shall prosper –Psalm 1:1\-3\.*
When we delight in God’s Word, we will be glad to take time to memorize scripture, and the memorized Word will then bear fruit in its season\.
> *And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not –Galatians 6:9\.*