“I have hidden your word in my heart that I might not sin against you.” – Psalm 119:11 NIV

As you look back over your life, do you see any intersections where two ideas merge onto the same road?

Path A

Having grown up in church, I have heard about scripture memory from a very young age. When I was in early high school a lady whom I affectionately call my “prayer grandmother” gave me a list of verses worth memorizing. So I set out to memorize some of those verses. (I still have the two sheets of paper she gave me, taped inside a Bible.)

I remember rifling through notecards while driving a tractor, trying to commit those verses to memory. It worked, for the most part, as I can still quote many of those verses today.

Fast forward to the toddler years of my first born, and I was wrestling with some exaggerated anger issues – bordering on bursts of rage. I felt strange, and was not proud of the frequency of my over the top responses, so I set out to memorize some verses dealing with anger. Fast forward to a recent conversation with my girls, and I realized they have no memory of that man because my nature has fundamentally changed.

Path B

In January of 2019 I read “The Miracle Morning for Writers” and my life has never been the same. One of the concepts of the Miracle Morning is affirmations – a list of statements to help set your mind in the direction you want to move. “I am a writer – I process my thoughts through writing” and “I am a runner, so I will make decisions that runners make” are two things I repeat to myself on a regular basis. And repeating those ideas almost gives me permission to make decisions that line up with those things.

I spend a little bit of time on a regular basis reading through affirmations – things I want to remind myself, things I want to believe about myself, and things I want to define me. I have affirmations for my personal life, my work, leadership, and my role with my family.

The Merge

Recently I had an “aha” moment as I saw, for the first time, the merging of the two ideas. The verses I have memorized over the years continue to serve as affirmations to who I want to become. I memorized things that had meaning to me – Nahum 1:7 (in English and Spanish, because I had A LOT of tractor time), Jeremiah 29:11-13, John 3:16-17, Proverbs 29:11, and so many more. Those verses were not just good things to keep in mind, but they became goals for my life.

So recently I’ve added to my list of affirmations some verses. I’m still working on scripture memory, but slowly starting to understand even more why memorizing scripture makes such a difference.

Jon Acuff wrote a book a couple years ago called Soundtracks. The concept is the same – the things we say to ourselves matter. So why not say things that build us up?

What’s your experience with scripture memory, affirmations, or soundtracks? What shift can you make today to help you stay focused on where you’re heading?