Earlier this week, we looked at God’s challenge to Joshua which opens with:

Moses my servant is dead. Get going. Cross this Jordan River, you and all the people. (Joshua 1.2, MSG)

Continuing through verse 9, God challenges Joshua twice to be strong and courageous. And in between, he gives the secret to being strong and courageous, which I don’t want to gloss over:

And don’t for a minute let this Book of The Revelation be out of mind. Ponder and meditate on it day and night, making sure you practice everything written in it. Then you’ll get where you’re going; then you’ll succeed. (Joshua 1.8, MSG)

Joshua 1.8 is in practically every scripture memory plan I know of such, as The Navigators’ Topical Memory System, Every Man a Warrior, or the 2:7 Series (which includes the Topical Memory System). Most of us learned it like this:

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate in it day and night, that you may observe to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. (Joshua 1.8, NKJV)

It should be obvious that we can’t meditate on the scripture “day and night” unless we’ve memorized it! Here’s a good word about scripture memory and how to make it happen that I wrote back in 2019.

It wouldn’t hurt any of us to add scripture memory to our list of challenges for 2024. I need to be more regular and systematic myself. Last year’s (or last decade’s!) scripture memory is good – after all, verses properly memorized stay with us – but I need to stay with it. From my 2019 blog:

Whenever I’m around the old Navigators, they all say the same thing when asked something like, “Why are you still following Jesus and making disciples in your old age?” They always say, “Quiet time and scripture memory.” In my book Live the Adventure, I tell about Navigators (the late) Skip and Buzzie Gray, then in their late 80s, and Jerry White, then in his late 70s, saying that very thing. Well-known author Dallas Willard wrote that if he were limited to one discipline, it would be scripture memory.

It’s not limited to high-powered people. I was talking with a friend a few weeks ago, by all measures “an ordinary guy” who hasn’t had an easy life. Through God’s help he not only gets through it, he thrives. In the middle of our conversation, he said, quoting Psalm 17.15:

“As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied when I awake in Your likeness.” That’s what keeps me going.

King David knew the secret too:

Your word I have hidden in my heart, That I might not sin against You! (Psalm 119.11, NKJV)

As did Jesus:

But He answered and said, “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.’ ” (Matthew 4.4, NKJV)