The Power of Memorizing Scripture

“During the season I worked on memorizing this passage, I fought a lot of fear and anxiety. I suffer from a couple of autoimmune diseases, and my health had taken a hard turn a few months prior. I struggled to feel safe in my own body.”

In Colossians 1, Paul prayed that the Colossian Christians would be filled with the knowledge of God, which would bring about the fruit of wisdom, endurance, joy, and holiness in their lives (see Col. 1:9–11). It is knowledge of God that drives our Christian living. We can’t do the latter without the former. When we think deeply about God as we know Him in Scripture, the truths about His character permeate our circumstances, correcting our skewed view of suffering or sin and sustaining us when we’re weary.

Paul goes on in Colossians 1 to give the Colossian church some truths about Jesus to chew on. He describes Christ to them in a way that would encourage their perseverance in the faith and deepen their love and gratitude for Him. When I memorized this portion of Colossians a few years ago, I could not move past this paragraph for many weeks because of the hold that it had on my heart when I began to slow down and meditate on each individual phrase. Paul writes about Jesus this way:

“The Son is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn over all creation. For in him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things have been created through him and for him. He is before all things, and in him all things hold together. And he is the head of the body, the church; he is the beginning and the firstborn from among the dead, so that in everything he might have the supremacy. For God was pleased to have all his fullness dwell in him, and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether things on earth or things in heaven, by making peace through his blood, shed on the cross” (Col. 1:15–20).

The weeks I spent memorizing this passage have been some of the sweetest in my years of memorizing Scripture. Each morning as I worked on a phrase about Jesus, my mind was filled with the knowledge of my Savior. I mumbled the words during household tasks. On morning walks, I turned the words about Jesus over in my mind, dwelling on the knowledge that He is God, that He is uncreated and yet submitted Himself to death and resurrection to guarantee my own future resurrection.

During the season I worked on memorizing this passage, I fought a lot of fear and anxiety. I suffer from a couple of autoimmune diseases, and my health had taken a hard turn a few months prior. I struggled to feel safe in my own body. The Lord didn’t seem keen on bringing about physical healing, and I found myself wondering if he was as good and faithful as I had believed Him to be. Colossians 1 became a balm to help me remember what was true about the Lord.

The phrase “in him all things hold together” became a motto for me when I worked through my fears. Neither this world nor my health were spinning off their axis in uncontrolled chaos. Things had not escalated out of the Lord’s sovereign control. No, Jesus holds it all together—the planets in their orbit and me in my own small rotations and revolutions. He holds my life together. My existence is upheld by the strong, capable hands of my Savior. That was and still is so comforting! As a result, the knowledge of His perpetual universe-holding deepened my love for Him while I worked on this passage.

Do you see how the simple process of meditation on Colossians 1 led to deepened affection for the Lord? I had looked at my poor health and doubted that God was who He said He was. But each time I returned to Colossians to work on memorization, my uncertainties evaporated before the truths about Christ. I would have been encouraged and built up by simply studying that passage for a day or two, but to dive into it, to saturate my mind with the knowledge of Jesus, to spend weeks there mumbling the words aloud to myself—memorization solidified those comforting truths about Jesus in my heart.

—Excerpted from Memorizing Scripture: The Basics, Blessings, and Benefits of Meditating on God’s Word by Glenna Marshall (2023). Glenna’s book explains the power of memorizing Scripture and gives practical ways to begin. Available from Moody Publishers.