Yes, You Have the Whole Bible on Your Phone. Here's Why You Should Memorize Verses Anyway.

by Natalie Abbott

I did not sleep that night. Not. One. Wink.

It wasn’t New Years or a new baby that kept me up – it was a teaching engagement. I would be teaching women to memorize and apply God’s Word to their lives—the very thing I am most passionate about. As I laid down to sleep, I felt excited and humbled…and maybe just a little overwhelmed. The longer I laid there, the more I realized that my mind was wide awake—running in circles, rehearsing the script, playing out hypothetical scenarios, fretting about how I’d be perceived. By 2 a.m., I started to worry.

What if I don’t sleep at all? I’ll be a zombie tomorrow! What can I do? If I turn on the light and read my Bible, then I’ll never fall asleep.

I knew I needed to hear from God. I needed his words to calm my fears, to reign in my heart and soothe my spinning mind. So I did the very thing I would be teaching others to do the next day. I started reciting God’s words to myself—the words I’d be teaching on from Philippians 4. I had memorized them, and they were the very words I needed in that moment, words from God himself.

I started speaking to my soul, “Rejoice in the Lord, always. I will say it again: Rejoice!” (Phil. 4:4). But how could I rejoice in that moment—in that sleepless uncertainty where every feeling in me wanted to scream and pout? Yet, I turned over each word of that verse.

• In the Lord, I could rejoice always. I was most certainly not rejoicing in my circumstance, yet in Jesus I could rejoice—trusting in his power and good purposes for me even in this hard thing.

• More than that, he wasn’t some far off helper. The next verse reminded me that “The Lord is near” (Philippians 4:5). I was not all alone in that hotel bed, or in the big bad world. Jesus was right there with me.

• And it was as if he whispered the next verse straight to my heart: “Do not be anxious about anything, but in every situation, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God” (Phil. 4:6). He was asking me to trust him with all of the worry and the overwhelm, all of the fear of failure, all of the unknown. I didn’t have to anxiously spin my gears.

• So, I started to pray, visualizing every weighty thing I was carrying and then putting them all into Jesus’s hands. At that moment, a wave of peace came over me, “the peace of God, which transcends all understanding” (Phil. 4:7).

The worry was gone.

Yet Jesus remained.

He was so close it was tangible. And suddenly, the loss of sleep seemed a small price to pay for the treasure of time with my Lord. I spent the rest of the night talking to him. I walked through the story of my life, thanking him for chasing me down every time I’ve run away, for his patience with my failures and faithlessness. Even just that night, I had faithlessly worried, but instead of sending me away, he brought me near. He consoled and forgave and encouraged me through his Word.

I didn’t sleep that night. Not. One. Wink.

And it was the best night ever. Jesus had given me everything I needed for the next day—he had given me himself. He spoke to my heart all night long in his own words, words I had memorized. And the next day, I taught about the impact of memorizing Scripture from the place of having just experienced its true power to draw me closer to my Lord.

NATALIE ABBOTT

Natalie Abbott is the cofounder of Dwell Differently, a vibrant online community committed to memorizing one million Bible verses together. Cohost of the popular Dwell Differently podcast with her sister Vera Schmitz, they are also the authors of the new book, Dwell Differently: Overcome Negative Thinking with the Simple Practice of Memorizing God’s Truth Find them online @dwelldifferently so you can not only know God’s word, but know Him.