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Andy Rau
April 8, 2013

Bible Q&A: Jesus, The Pope, and Foot Washing

An interesting and unusual news item came out of Holy Week this year: the new Pope Francis made headlines—and caused some controversy—by washing the feet of 12 young people at a juvenile detention center.

What was he getting at? We won’t go into the theology or internal politics of the Roman Catholic church, but the religious act of washing feet has Biblical significance. Here are some questions and answers to consider.

Q. Was Pope Francis’ feet-washing a reference to something in the Bible?

A. Yes, it was a clear reference to Jesus’ startling act at the Last Supper, shortly before his arrest and execution. One of Jesus’ last acts with his disciples before his arrest was to wash their feet. The Gospel of John recounts the event:

[Jesus] got up from supper, laid aside His robe, took a towel, and tied it around Himself. Next, He poured water into a basin and began to wash His disciples’ feet and to dry them with the towel tied around Him.

He came to Simon Peter, who asked Him, “Lord, are You going to wash my feet?”

Jesus answered him, “What I’m doing you don’t understand now, but afterward you will know.”

“You will never wash my feet—ever!” Peter said.

Jesus replied, “If I don’t wash you, you have no part with Me.”

Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.”

“One who has bathed,” Jesus told him, “doesn’t need to wash anything except his feet, but he is completely clean. You are clean, but not all of you.” For He knew who would betray Him. This is why He said, “You are not all clean.”

When Jesus had washed their feet and put on His robe, He reclined again and said to them, “Do you know what I have done for you? You call Me Teacher and Lord. This is well said, for I am. So if I, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example that you also should do just as I have done for you.

“I assure you: A slave is not greater than his master, and a messenger is not greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” — John 13:1-17 (HCSB)

Q. What was the significance of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet?

A. As with many of Jesus’ actions during his ministry, this was a seemingly simple act that sent a powerful message to those who witnessed it. Jesus’ washing of the disciples’ feet was (and is) noteworthy for several reasons.

As Jesus himself notes in the passage above, his washing of the disciples’ feet acts as a symbol for the spiritual cleansing that his sacrificial death and resurrection—just hours away at the time—offer believers.

This was also a vivid demonstration of the level of humility and service that should characterize the life of a Jesus-follower. Jesus expects his followers to serve others, even when doing so requires setting aside dignity or pride. Here, Jesus set aside his role as teacher and leader do a humbling task that would normally be carried out by a servant or slave. Just a few hours later, he would humble himself even further by submitting to a terrible and undeserved death.

Jesus’ act also calls to mind a related concept from his teaching: in God’s kingdom, human rules and expectations about status are often confounded and reversed: the humble are exalted, and the exalted are humbled!

Bible readers have gleaned many insights from this incident; Jesus’ simple act resonates in different ways with different readers. Try reading carefully through the story yourself and making use of the commentaries and reference materials on Bible Gateway to see what you can learn.

Q. Is foot washing still practiced today?

A. Generally speaking, foot washing of this sort isn’t practiced in the modern world. Some churches do observe a tradition of foot washing (often during Lent)—and if you’ve never done it, it’s a very humbling experience.

You may never have your feet washed in this manner—but as a thought exercise, what do you think the modern-day equivalent of foot-washing might be?

Andy Rau
April 4, 2013

Bible Q&A: Was Jesus’ Resurrection Stolen From Mythology?

Earlier this week, Christians all around the world celebrated Jesus’ resurrection from the dead. It’s natural, upon hearing the resurrection story, to ask: Did that really happen? Here, author and apologist Lee Strobel responds to a common question about the Gospel accounts of Jesus’ resurrection.

Q. Was the resurrection of Jesus a story taken from mythology?

A. I asked historian Michael Licona, who earned his doctorate at the University of Pretoria in South Africa, a similar question when I was researching my book The Case for the Real Jesus. Currently an associate professor in theology at Houston Baptist University, Licona has authored The Resurrection of Jesus: A New Historiographical Approach and co-authored (with Gary Habermas) The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus. His website is www.risenjesus.com.

“Why,” I asked Licona, “should the story of Jesus’ resurrection have any more credibility than pagan stories of dying and rising gods — such as Osiris, Adonis, Attis, and Marduk — that are so obviously mythological?”

Licona is well-versed on this controversy. “First of all, it’s important to understand that these claims don’t in any way negate the good historical evidence we have for Jesus’ resurrection,” he pointed out. “You can’t dismiss the resurrection unless you can refute its solid core of supporting evidence.” I agreed that was an important caveat to keep in mind — and one which “copycat” theorists typically forget.

“Second, T.N.D. Mettinger — a senior Swedish scholar, professor at Lund University and member of the Royal Academy of Letters, History, and Antiquities of Stockholm — wrote one of the most recent academic treatments of dying and rising gods in antiquity. He admits in his book, The Riddle of Resurrection, that the consensus among modern scholars — nearly universal — is that there were no dying and rising gods that preceded Christianity. They all post-dated the first century.”

Obviously, that timing is crucial: Christianity couldn’t have borrowed the idea of the resurrection if myths about dying and rising gods weren’t even circulating when Christianity was birthed in the first century AD.

“Then Mettinger said he was going to take exception to that nearly universal scholarly conviction,” Licona continued. “He takes a decidedly minority position and claims that there are at least three and possibly as many as five dying and rising gods that predate Christianity. But the key question is this: Are there any actual parallels between these myths and Jesus’ resurrection?”

“What did Mettinger conclude?” I asked.

“In the end, after combing through all of these accounts and critically analyzing them, Mettinger adds that none of these serve as parallels to Jesus. None of them,” Licona emphasized.

“They are far different from the reports of Jesus rising from the dead. They occurred in the unspecified and distant past and were usually related to the seasonal life-and-death cycle of vegetation. In contrast, Jesus’ resurrection isn’t repeated, isn’t related to changes in the seasons, and was sincerely believed to be an actual event by those who lived in the same generation of the historical Jesus. In addition, Mettinger concludes that ‘there is no evidence for the death of the dying and rising gods as vicarious suffering for sins.’”

I later obtained Mettinger’s book to double-check Licona’s account of his research. Sure enough, Mettinger caps his study with this statement: “There is, as far as I am aware, no prima facie evidence that the death and resurrection of Jesus is a mythological construct, drawing on the myths and rites of the dying and rising gods of the surrounding world.”

In short, this leading scholar’s analysis is a sharp rebuke to popular-level authors and Internet bloggers who make grand claims about the pagan origins of Jesus’ return from the dead. Ultimately, Mettinger affirmed, “the death and resurrection of Jesus retains its unique character in the history of religions.” Unique—as in one of a kind.

This essay is taken from Lee Strobel’s Investigating Faith newsletter. You can sign up to receive it for free at our Newsletters page.

Andy Rau
March 30, 2013

Get in the Habit of Daily Bible Reading with the “40 Days with God” Reading Plan

Back at the beginning of Lent, we encouraged Bible Gateway visitors to consider spending a few minutes each day during Lent just reading the Bible. We believe strongly that if you can stick with an activity for a few weeks, it will settle into a habit—and that there’s no better habit you can form than reading Scripture regularly.

So here we are at the end of Lent. How did you do? Did you try to spend time each day in God’s Word? If so, were you successful?

Maybe you stuck with it throughout Lent; or maybe you didn’t—but either way, we hope you got a taste of the joy of Scripture reading. So now that Lent is done… what next?

We’ve launched a new 40-day reading plan specifically to pick up where our Lent reading plan left off: 40 Days with God: A Daily Reading for Personal Growth. It’s a series of short 40 daily Bible readings, chosen from throughout the Bible, with the goal of deepening your knowledge of and love for God. It uses The Voice Bible, which we’ve discussed at length here on the blog; we think you’ll find The Voice’s included commentary and other features to be a useful part of the reading experience. It starts on April 1, the day after Easter.

40 Days with God: A Daily Reading for Personal Growth is a particularly good reading plan to try out if you’re either new to the Bible or are just starting out along the path of daily Bible reading. The daily readings are short and manageable, and The Voice translation is a very readable Bible with very useful study features.

There are two ways to access 40 Days with God: A Daily Reading for Personal Growth:

  1. Sign up to have it emailed to you each morning; to do that, visit our Newsletters page, check the box next to 40 Days with God, and then scroll down to the bottom of the page to provide your email address.
  2. If you prefer to read it online, you can also find 40 Days with God: A Daily Reading for Personal Growth in our online library of reading plans—just bookmark the daily reading page and visit it each day.

If you’re trying to cultivate a habit of daily Bible reading, we’ve put this together for you! We hope you find this new reading plan to be a useful part of your day.

Andy Rau
March 26, 2013

The “Who, What, Where, and When” of Holy Week

We’re in the middle of Holy Week—the period of time beginning with Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem (Palm Sunday, celebrated this past Sunday) and ending with his trial, execution, and resurrection (culminating this coming Sunday). This single week is the busiest, most dramatic, and most documented period of Jesus’ life on Earth… but there’s so much going on (documented across four different Gospel sources) that it can be confusing to track all of the people, factions, and events in the story.

For those of you who find charts helpful for keeping such details straight, here’s a visual timeline that takes people and events from each of the four Gospel accounts and shows how they relate to each other:

Holy Week timeline visualization
(Click the image above for a full-size version. It’s also available in PDF.)

This visualization was released under a Creative Commons license, which means that you should feel free to print copies (we recommend printing the PDF) and share them with people at your church.

See this post for more information about how to read this timeline and what it does and doesn’t show.

Andy Rau
March 21, 2013

Find What You’re Looking For: A Tour of Bible Gateway’s Keyword Search Feature

As we noted in yesterday’s post about the most popular keyword searches on Bible Gateway, one of the core features of Bible Gateway is its keyword search feature: the ability to search the Bible for a particular word or phrase. But with all the different options on the Keyword Search page, it isn’t always clear how to best search for the phrase you want. Today, we’ll take a short tour of the Keyword Search page and its features.

To start, go to the Keyword Search page. We’ll begin at the top of the page and walk through each of the options.

The first option facing us is the Bible language drop-down:

keyword-language-selection

Simply choose which language you want to search; this choice determines which specific Bibles you can add to the search further down on the page. (The interface only allows you to search across one language at a time, although you can search through several Bibles of the same language.)

The next box is the most important one, as it’s where you enter the word(s) you want to search for:

That part is probably obvious to anyone who’s ever used a search engine; it functions like Google and other web search tools, and generally speaking, many of the strategies for good Google searching work equally well on Bible Gateway.

The drop-down box below the search field is an important one, however. It presents three options:

  • Match ALL words: when this is selected, Bible Gateway will only find Bible passages that contain every word in your search (although Bible Gateway doesn’t care about the order of the words you specify). This means that if you search for [jesus god], Bible Gateway will only find verses that contain both the words “Jesus” and “God”—it will ignore verses that mention only one of those terms.This can be a very useful way to restrict your search; for example, if you’re interested in seeing all verses that deal with Abram’s interaction with Lot, setting the search to Match ALL words and then searching for [abram lot] will only return verses in which both of those names appear together.
  • Match ANY words: this is the opposite of the above option. When this is selected, Bible Gateway will return all verses that contain even one of the words you specify. Generally speaking, this will return a lot more results than the Match ALL words option—in the [abram lot] example, searching for that term with this option selected returns 126 results instead of 9.
  • Match EXACT phrase: this is an even stricter version of Match ALL words above. This option returns results that contain all the words you specify, in the exact order in which you specify them. If you’re sure you know the exact phrase, this is a quick way to find it—for example, searching for [for god so loved the world] returns the verse you were probably expecting. The downside of this option is that if you get the phrase even slightly wrong, Bible Gateway won’t find what you’re looking for. For instance, if you mistakenly left out a word and searched for [for god loved the world], nothing comes up. (It would have worked if you had selected Match ANY or ALL, however.) This option works best when you want to search for an exact phrase that contains a lot of common words, and you’re certain you know the phrasing.

Near this drop-down form is a checkbox to Match whole words only. When this is checked, Bible Gateway will only return whole words that match your search terms. When it’s unchecked, you’ll get results that contain the words you typed. To see an example of how this changes the results, search for [sin] with this option unchecked; you’ll get a lot of words that contain the letters s-i-n, which probably isn’t what you wanted. This option is useful, however, when you want to make sure you get closely-related words (like [thankfulness] when you search for [thankful]), or when you can’t remember the exact spelling of a word (so try [jeh] when you can’t remember how to spell “Jehoshaphat”).

Next up is the Bible version selector drop-down:

Simply choose the Bible version you wish to search (limited to Bibles of the language you chose above). You can search across multiple Bibles at the same time by clicking the Search in multiple versions link and then choosing the additional Bibles you want. (Searching several Bibles in parallel is such a popular feature that we’ve given it its own tutorial elsewhere.)

Next up is a series of miscellaneous options:

Let’s look at each in turn:

  • References only / references + verses:this determines whether Bible Gateway returns your search results as a simple list of verse references (i.e. “John 3:16”), or if it returns the text of those verses as well.
  • Display XX results per page: chooses how many search results you want displayed on one page. If there are more results than the number you select here, they will be spread across several pages.
  • Sort by Book order or Relevance: this determines the order in which your search results are displayed. Choosing book order causes the search results to be ordered in the sequence that they appear in the Bible—so results from Genesis will be displayed before results from Proverbs. The Relevance option attempts to sort your search results with the most promising ones at the top.

The next three radio buttons define what parts of the Bible get searched:

  • Search entire Bible: Bible Gateway will look for your search term throughout the entire Bible text.
  • Limit search to…:If you select an option here, Bible Gateway will only look within that subsection of the Bible for your search term.
  • Search from…: This option allows you to restrict the span of Bible books (inclusive) in which Bible Gateway searches. To restrict a search to only one book, select it as both the start and end book.

That’s a lot of info to absorb, but I hope it’s helped shine some light on some of the less-obvious features on the Keyword Search page.

March 20, 2013

What You Look for in the Bible: The Top 20 Keyword Search Terms on Bible Gateway

What do people look for in the Bible?

As you may know, Bible Gateway lets you search the Bible not only by Scripture reference (e.g. “John 3:16”), but by keyword (“Jesus,” “Pharisee,” “faith,” etc.). What would you guess are the most-searched-for terms?

We’ve crunched the numbers to find out what are the most popular search terms. Here are the top 20 keyword searches on Bible Gateway, based on our data from 2012 (click the image to enlarge). The vertical bars show relative popularity:

It may not surprise you to see love, faith, peace, and hope in this list. But it’s worth noting that anger, fear and death also made it into the top 50.

Overall, it’s an uplifting list to read—it’s evidence that people turned to God’s Word for encouragement when they were down, forgiveness when they wronged a friend or loved one, and patience when they were at the very end of their rope.

What do you think this list says about Bible readers? Are there any words you expected to see that didn’t make the list? And if you were to make a personal list of topics you’ve looked up in the Bible, would it resemble this list?

For the curious, here is the complete list of the top 50 search terms:

  1. Love
  2. Faith
  3. Peace
  4. Hope
  5. Marriage
  6. Joy
  7. Prayer
  8. Strength
  9. Grace
  10. Children
  11. Forgiveness
  12. Healing
  13. Holy Spirit
  14. Salvation
  15. Fear
  16. Trust
  17. Heart
  18. Forgive
  19. Comfort
  20. Pray
  21. Worship
  22. Friend
  23. Worry
  24. Light
  25. Patience
  26. Death
  27. Love one another
  28. Love is patient
  29. Truth
  30. Sin
  31. Fruit of the Spirit
  32. Thanksgiving
  33. Divorce
  34. Heaven
  35. Anger
  36. Spirit
  37. Praise
  38. Wife
  39. Family
  40. Trust in the Lord
  41. Tongue
  42. Work
  43. God is Love
  44. Jesus
  45. Ten Commandments
  46. Baptism
  47. Encouragement
  48. Satan
  49. Repent
  50. Tithe
Andy Rau
March 18, 2013

Lent Reflection: The Sting of Death

Nobody thinks of Lent as a cheery part of the church calendar. Yes, there is joy to be found in the expectation of Jesus’ eventual resurrection on Easter—but there is much darkness to travel through first. There are the grim events of Jesus’ betrayal, arrest, and execution. And there is the sobering reality of our own sinfulness—a reality we must accept before we can understand Christ’s grace.

The paradox of Lent, that strange mix of darkness and hope, has felt particularly real in my relatively small church community this year. Since the beginning of Lent, there have been several deaths within my church family.

Grief and sorrow hang over the church, giving the painful Gospel accounts of Jesus’ suffering and death extra clarity. The pain we feel is very real, but we cling to the hope of Easter—that death is not the end of the story. Death is an obstacle that Jesus Christ has overcome for us, and his rescuing hand will pull us out of that darkness.

In last week’s installment of the “An Encouraging Word” devotional, Max Lucado described death as a river that Jesus has crossed for us:

Jesus saw people enslaved by their fear of a cheap power. He explained that the river of death was nothing to fear. The people wouldn’t believe him. He touched a boy and called him back to life. The followers were still unconvinced. He whispered life into the dead body of a girl. The people were still cynical. He let a dead man spend four days in a grave and then called him out. Is that enough? Apparently not. For it was necessary for him to enter the river, to submerge himself in the water of death before people would believe that death had been conquered.

But after he did, after he came out on the other side of death’s river, it was time to sing … it was time to celebrate. — “An Encouraging Word with Max Lucado,” March 11

With all that in mind, and with Easter not far away, it seems appropriate to reflect this week on the Bible’s teaching about death… and resurrection. Is life after death really possible? Was Jesus really raised from the grave, and if so… what does that mean for us?

1 Corinthians 15:3-8,12-28

For what I received I passed on to you as of first importance: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he appeared to Cephas, and then to the Twelve. After that, he appeared to more than five hundred of the brothers and sisters at the same time, most of whom are still living, though some have fallen asleep. Then he appeared to James, then to all the apostles, and last of all he appeared to me also, as to one abnormally born. […]

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead? If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised. And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised. For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either. And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins. Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost. If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.

But Christ has indeed been raised from the dead, the firstfruits of those who have fallen asleep. For since death came through a man, the resurrection of the dead comes also through a man. For as in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive. But each in turn: Christ, the firstfruits; then, when he comes, those who belong to him. Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death. For he “has put everything under his feet.” Now when it says that “everything” has been put under him, it is clear that this does not include God himself, who put everything under Christ. When he has done this, then the Son himself will be made subject to him who put everything under him, so that God may be all in all. — 1 Corinthians 15:3-8,12-28 (NIV)

Questions to Consider

  • Have you experienced the loss of a loved one recently? How does your attitude toward death change when you accept that Jesus Christ rose from the dead?
  • What does it mean that “the last enemy to be destroyed is death”?
  • If Christ had not been raised from the dead, what would our relationship with God be like?

To Memorize

The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law. But thanks be to God! He gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ. — 1 Corinthians 15:56-57 (NIV)

Andy Rau
March 14, 2013

How to Read Your Verse of the Day and Bible Reading Plan with RSS

You may have sensed a disturbance in the Force yesterday—as if millions of internet users suddenly cried out in terror. That disturbance was Google announcing the impending shutdown of Google Reader. While Google is no doubt correct that Reader’s usage has declined, enough people still rely on it for their blog and feed reading that chatter about this news is rivalling discussion of the new Pope in many online circles.

Plenty of people are sharing alternatives you can turn to when Google Reader shuts down this summer. My Bible Gateway colleague Chris points out Prismatic, Feed Wrangler, NewsBlur, and Feedler as just some of the many options worth exploring—and with months to go before Google Reader finally shuts down, you’ve got time to try out a few different alternatives.

With all the discussion of Google Reader, I thought it would be a good time to review some of the Bible Gateway content you can access through Reader or any RSS reader. (If you’re not familiar with RSS or feed readers, they can save you a lot of time, particularly if you have a big list of websites you like to check regularly. Here’s a brief explanation, and here’s a more detailed one.)

As you browse Bible Gateway, watch for this icon (or close variants of it), which indicates that content is available via RSS:

Clicking on that icon will take you to the RSS feed for the content in question. You can then copy that feed’s location into your preferred RSS reader.

The main RSS feeds published by Bible Gateway are:

1. The Verse of the Day. (Click here for the Verse of the Day RSS feed.) Our daily Bible verse. You can find it right next to the Verse of the Day on our homepage:

By default, the link above shows the daily verse in the NIV translation; to get the feed in a different Bible version, simply visit BibleGateway.com, choose a different Bible version from the drop-down menu, and click Search. The RSS feed is now updated to use your preferred Bible; just copy it into the RSS reader of your choice.

2. Bible reading plans. Our assorted Bible reading plans are all available via RSS; when you subscribe to a reading plan RSS feed, you’ll have each day’s reading delivered straight to your reader.

You can find the reading plan RSS feed by visiting the Reading Plans page, selecting your desired reading plan and Bible version from the dropdowns, and clicking Go. The RSS feed for your reading plan is located on the right side of the page:

3. The Bible Gateway blog. (Feed location: http://www.biblegateway.com/blog/?feed=rss2) If you don’t already subscribe to the Bible Gateway blog’s RSS feed, this is an easy way to have each post delivered directly to you as soon as it’s posted.

Andy Rau
March 13, 2013

Ten Tips for Memorizing Bible Verses

Fix these words of mine in your hearts and minds; tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. — Deuteronomy 11:18 (NIV)

What does it mean to fix God’s words in your heart and mind? Among other things, it means to be continually conscious of the Bible’s teachings as you go through your daily routine. And one practical way to make sure that God’s words are always close at hand is to memorize verses and passages from the Bible.

At first glance, memorizing Bible verses might seem a strange activity. For many Christians, Bible verse memorization is something kids do in Sunday school, not something that serious adults do. And if you didn’t grow up reciting memorized Bible verses to your Sunday school teacher, the idea of intentionally memorizing parts of a book—even the Book—might seem odd.

But there’s power in the act of memorizing—of becoming so familiar with a word, phrase, or verse that it springs to mind instantly when something happens to trigger the memory. When you’ve truly internalized something, it can stay with you all your life—consider how easy it is to recall the lyrics to pop songs from your youth. And if you can still remember the lyrics to a Bon Jovi album from the ’80s, you’re quite capable of committing a few Bible verses to memory!

To find out the best ways to memorize Scripture, we turned to a truly huge and committed resource—Bible Gateway users! We asked Bible Gateway fans to share their Bible verse memorization tips. We’ve combed through the hundreds of responses and picked out our favorite Bible memory tips. So without further ado, here are…

Ten Tips for Memorizing Bible Verses

1. Choose a verse to memorize that speaks to something in your life right now.

A Bible verse that’s relevant to what you’re going through is easier to memorize than one that speaks to a topic that’s abstract to you.

2. Start small.

Choose a short verse to start with… and make it even shorter by breaking it down into pieces. Memorize the first five words in the verse first, and when you’ve got them down, add the next five. As you become more confident, you can add more words, sentences, and even entire verses—but don’t add anything new until you’ve got the previous words down pat.

3. Write it down.

A vast majority of Bible Gateway fans suggested this simple strategy: write the verse you’re memorizing down on paper. But don’t just write it once; write it many times—five or ten times is a good start (and some people write out their memory verses up to 50 times!). Physically writing the words out is an extremely useful tactile memory aid.

4. Say it out loud.

Just as writing a verse out can help in memorizing it, so speaking the words aloud is an excellent way to burn them into your memory. One person suggested turning the radio off during your commute to work or school each day and reciting your memory verse out loud instead!

5. Incorporate the verse into your prayers.

When you pray, include elements of the verse in your words to God. Pray that God will help you understand and apply the verse to your life. Pray for God’s help in fixing the verse in your heart and mind.

6. Put it everywhere.

Many people suggested writing your memory verse out on multiple index cards or sticky notes (combine this with tip #3 above!) and putting them all over the place, so that you’ll see the verse many times throughout your day. Tape the verse to your bathroom mirror or computer monitor. Tuck it into your purse, lunch sack, car glove compartment, school textbook, pockets… anywhere you’ll see it. One person suggested making the verse your computer desktop background, and another goes so far as to laminate the verse and hang it in the shower!

7. Use music to help.

Do you find it much easier to remember lyrics than spoken words? Try setting the Bible verse to a simple tune (perhaps repurposing a song you already know well) that you can sing to yourself. (If this sounds like a strange suggestion, consider that many famous hymns and worship songs use Bible verses as their lyrics, and were written specifically as aids for Bible verse memorization.)

8. Make it a game.

Turn the act of memorizing into a personal challenge! You might write the verse out on flashcards, leaving key words blank, and quiz yourself. Get some friends or family members to help quiz you, or even to memorize the verse along with you and encourage/challenge you.

9. Translate the verse into a different language.

This tip isn’t for everyone, obviously, but several Bible Gateway fans suggested that if you’re comfortable in more than one language, try translating your verse into a different language. Translation requires an intense focus on the meaning and language of a verse—an obvious help for memorization.

10. Repeat, repeat, repeat!

Whatever strategy you follow in memorizing a Bible verse, do it repeatedly. Write it down, speak it out loud, sing it out, pray it—but whatever you do, do it over and over until it’s a natural, reflexive action. The goal isn’t to reduce it to a mindless, repeated activity, but to slowly press the verse into your memory through repetition. Repeat your memorization activity over the course of several hours, days, or even weeks to pace yourself—there’s no prize for memorizing a Bible verse fastest; the point is to internalize it over time. And that means you shouldn’t be discouraged if it takes a while for the verse to “stick”—keep at it, and it will take root!

If you’ve never tried memorizing a Bible verse before, it’s much easier than you think! Pick one or two of the strategies above and give them a try, adapting your strategy as you figure out what does and doesn’t work for you. One thing is certain: you’ll never regret spending more time focusing intently on God’s Word. And there’s nothing quite so wonderful as an encouraging Bible verse springing forth from memory at just the time you need to hear it.

(These are just a few of the many memorization tips that Bible Gateway fans shared. Be sure to take a look through the hundreds of responses to our question about Bible memorization strategies.)

Remove banner ads and expand your Bible reading experience using our valuable library of more than 40 top resources by becoming a member of Bible Gateway Plus. Try it free for 30 days!

Andy Rau
March 12, 2013

New Devotional: What the Bible Teaches About Money and Stewardship

Are finances, debt, and money management the source of stress in your life? If you answered no to that question, you’re in a blessed minority; whether we’re rich, poor, or somewhere in between, most of us know the anxiety of making our financial ends meet.

But beyond these everyday pressures there is a larger question: what are we called to do with our money? Does God expect more of our money management than simply paying our bills on time and saving up for school, retirement, and creature comforts?

Our newest devotional dives straight into the Bible text to find out how, exactly, followers of Jesus Christ are to understand the money and resources that have been given to them. Biblical Principles Governing Stewardship takes a different approach than many financial-help books and devotionals; its focus is purely on the Bible text, and what we can learn from it.

Each week, Biblical Principles Governing Stewardship presents a short passage from the Bible related to finances and stewardship, and encourages you to read through it carefully, with a series of reflection questions to help you focus in on what you’ve read. The end goal is not that you’ll become a perfect money manager, but that you’ll approach each and every decision related to money with an important new understanding: that our wealth, whether it’s money or any other resource, is ours not to own, but to steward—and to use for the glory of God.

Biblical Principles Governing Stewardship goes out each Wednesday to subscribers. You can sign up for free at our Newsletters page—just check the box next to Biblical Principles Governing Stewardship and scroll down to provide your email address. We hope you find this newsletter to be a useful—and practical—addition to your weekly devotional reading!

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    The Bible Gateway Blog features the latest news, announcements, and reflections from Bible Gateway. We hope what you find here will add to your understanding of and appreciation for the Bible.