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I’m listening to the book The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle in which he explains the secret of “talent.” Turns out it’s just plain hard work! But that doesn’t surprise me. What the book does is tie the right kind of hard work to what goes on inside the brain. So far I’ve listened only to several chapters on what he calls “deep practice,” the technique of slow, deliberate, correct-as-you-go practice that eventually results in skill, even the art at work that I talked about yesterday. The vet would have learned to administer vaccinations slowly and deliberately. Her first try would have required concentration and paying attention to the steps she was learning. But practiced enough, it looks like art.

Here’s the application: you can memorize scripture! As I’ve written before, scripture memory is a practice I highly recommend. Dallas Willard said that if he could employ only one spiritual discipline, it would be scripture memory. My Navigator heroes Skip Gray and Jerry White both attribute scripture memory as playing a vital role in their being fruitful into their late 80s and 70s, respectively.

And it just takes deep practice which is nothing more than intentional, persistent practice. I am amazed by how the mind adapts when I take on a new verse. It can be several days or more before I can reliably quote the verse from one day to the next, and even then, I have to check it and correct. But then, seemingly “all of a sudden,” it clicks in. The brain has developed the new skill of quoting that verse! If you haven’t experienced that, you just haven’t stayed with the process long enough or practiced deliberately enough. (Of course you still have to review daily for 8 weeks to really lock it in, but that’s just a continuation of the same process.)

“There’s an app for that.” You can just write verses on cards and keep them with you. Or you can let your technology help. For verses you select, I recommend The Scripture Memory app (formerly called ScriptureTyper). If you don’t know which verses to learn, I recommend Fighter Verses, a free app which has a 5-year program of one verse per week classified into useful topics. The Navigators’ Topical Memory System is also available as an app, published by BattleGear.

With respect to scripture memory, nothing has changed since Dawson Trotman, founder of The Navigators, practiced and recommended the discipline decades ago. The Talent Code just gives us a bit of science into how the mechanism works–and it works for everyone! Give it a try!

This Book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful 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, ESV) Remember, it’s hard to meditate “at night” unless you have it memorized!