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Hello, welcome once again to another edition of the Here We Are podcast.
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Always look forward to doing these.
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I hope you look forward to joining us each Wednesday.
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I have with me a special friend, one of my very, very best friends in all of life.
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You've met Keith before.
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I think we did this about maybe three years ago.
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Yeah, a couple of years ago.
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We did a topic on discipleship.
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Keith is a discipler of men.
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He leads a Bible study here in the Lindell area called Gladiators for His Glory.
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And I've been coming to that for a number of years now.
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And I often tell the guys, do you understand that this is like a seminary course?
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Because Keith is an expositional teacher, in other words,
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Book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, that's the best way to teach the Word of God.
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He's a very, very capable teacher in all the men that have benefited greatly from that.
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I have as well.
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The reason we're doing this today, and our topic is going to have to do with memorization of Scripture.
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I think it was about three or four weeks ago when another friend of mine in Colorado kind of interviewed me.
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after i had spoken at his church and in the course of my speaking i had referenced quite a number of scriptures by memory as they fit into the message
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And later on, he just said, how do you know all those scriptures?
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How do you work all that in?
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So we did a podcast about three, four weeks ago on memorization of scripture.
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And in that podcast, I mentioned you.
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I said, well, we've got to give a shout out to Keith here, who has challenged me to memorize.
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That's one of the things we do in the Bible study on Friday morning when it starts at 8 o'clock.
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Keith will usually, I mean, all of a sudden it's 8 o'clock and the scriptures, scriptures, who's got scriptures?
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One you're working on, one you've memorized, one you're trying to get, you know.
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And one by one, men all over will stand or sit and share a verse that they've either memorized or one that maybe they're working on.
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We're a very diverse group.
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We've got everything from teenagers to, I think, 96 may be our oldest one now.
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Going to be 97 this year.
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Yeah.
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Real soon.
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We've got some Asian folks.
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We've got some Hispanic folks.
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We've got some black folks.
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We've got some white folks.
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We've got rich.
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We've got poor.
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Yeah.
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We've got smart.
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We've got dumb.
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Yeah.
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We've got it all.
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But that's one of the key elements of that Bible study is to challenge, to memorize scripture.
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And I mentioned in the podcast a few weeks ago, I mentioned Navigators.
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Right.
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And a lady, Sherry, I want you to know, Sherry, whoever you are, wherever you are, I get the emails and I read them and I pay attention to them.
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And others, too, asked, well, who are the Navigators?
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How can I find out more about them?
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And I knew that Keith had been through the Navigators program of Scripture memorization and was very familiar with that.
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So I've just asked Keith to share about Navigators and about memorization of Scripture, the importance of it.
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Why do we do it?
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And I think generally it's a lot easier than people think it's going to be.
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So, Keith, if you want to start there.
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Well, Navigators for me started when I was about 19 or 20 years of age.
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I just joined the Navy and no coincidence there, but they began to send us material and we sent off to the Navigators for Bible study material.
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And we had these little packs that we would keep in our pocket.
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that had little cards in it, perforated cards.
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Whatever scripture you were working on was in that pack.
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And so we would quiz each other on board the USS Nimitz.
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I was in the Navy on board the aircraft carrier, the nuclear first of its kind, Nimitz.
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But Dawson Trotman is the founder of Navigators.
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And he started it, believe it or not, in 19...
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He was born in 1933.
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And that's when it... No, I'm sorry.
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He was born in 1916.
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And he started it in 1933.
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He died at the age of 50 in 1956.
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I don't know if the math's coming out right there or not.
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But anyway, he led a young sailor to the Lord.
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And then he discipled that young sailor.
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And he helped him in scripture memorization and in prayer and just how to study the Bible.
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And at the end of that discipleship time, which was about a year, this young man named Les Spencer brought another sailor in and said, I want you to teach him what you taught me.
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And Dawson said, no, you teach him.
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So that's how the discipleship plan really grew.
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They were originally in California.
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But then they moved to Glen Eyrie, Colorado in 56.
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And so it's just grown into a ministry that is based on memorization of Scripture and Bible study and Bible studies that are based on Scripture.
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So when I disciple a man, one of the first things I do is take him to one of these little green books like this.
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It's called Lessons on Assurance.
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1 John 5, 11 and 12.
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It's the assurance of salvation.
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And then the assurance of answered prayer is John 16, 5.
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The assurance of victory is 1 Corinthians 10, 13.
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And then the assurance of forgiveness is 1 John 1, 9.
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And then the assurance of guidance is Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
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These five basic scriptures is what I based my beginning walk with Christ on.
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And I still, this was years and years ago, and I still share these with men week after week that I'm discipling.
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And then I got into what they call the TMS, which is topical memory system.
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And it's 60 scriptures that they picked out that you have the little perforated cards for also.
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And you might be thinking out there, you know, there's no way I can memorize 60 scriptures.
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And I thought that.
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Yeah.
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I took the challenge, just like our men on Friday mornings are taking the challenge, one scripture a week.
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And before long, I had memorized 60 scriptures.
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And I challenged the men.
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I tell them, if we meet 50 out of the 52 weeks a year, and you memorize one scripture a week, that's probably 50 more scriptures than you would have memorized had you not taken the challenge of just one a week.
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And I've been blown away.
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at the men who do more than one a week.
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We've got some now that are coming, quoting entire chapters.
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Yeah, a whole chapter.
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Yeah, a whole chapter of the Word of God.
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And so that's what the Bible study on Friday mornings is based on.
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That's what, that's how it really started.
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It started with two men that I was discipling, and then I told them to go get two more.
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Yeah.
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And they did the same thing.
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Well, you teach all four of us again, and then it just grew and grew and grew.
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I used to think discipleship and scripture memory had to be one-on-one.
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Uh, but I had gotten a box and he, he broadened that by knock the ends out of the box and said it can be in a group setting off.
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So we had 52 men this morning, ran out of parking spaces there in Lindale.
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And, uh, well, and, and the challenge, and I've taken the challenge, uh,
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I don't always get one a week, but then I try to pile up and get a couple more.
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But honestly, I would say like a lot of men, well, I just, we use excuses.
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And it wasn't that I was trying to avoid memorizing scripture.
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But as you get older, I mean, I realize that in certain areas, I'm not as sharp as I maybe once was.
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And I go, boy, I don't think I can memorize that much.
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And then I stopped one day and went, okay, I've written almost 300 songs.
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I can quote almost all the lyrics to every song I've written, plus a lot of lyrics to other songs.
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So if I can do that, I can sure memorize some verses of Scripture.
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And then I've also used kind of the excuse at times, and I think it's true, I can remember words easier than I can remember numbers, because you always encourage, as does navigators, the address, where is it found, what's the book, the chapter, the verse.
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Because if someone asks you, if you say...
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Well, the Bible says, and they say, well, where in the Bible does it say that?
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You want to have that address handy.
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And I would kind of go, man, numbers just don't stick in my mind as well.
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And they don't.
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But I was thinking just this morning preparing for this.
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I can think of my phone number when I was a kid, 459-9524.
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My uncle's number was 459-9740.
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My best friend was 459-5558.
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That's over 60 years ago.
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I've got a bunch of numbers.
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I lived on 932 Portland Avenue, St. Paul, Portland.
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Yeah.
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So I have no excuse.
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Right.
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Now, it may take a little more effort to lodge numbers wherever they lodge in my memory banks over words and lyrics and in scriptures.
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But it can be done.
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And honestly, there is no excuse.
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There's no excuse.
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The navigators teach you that it's like the library shelf of your mind.
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So if you say the address, then say the scripture, then say the address again at the end of it.
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It's like putting it on a library shelf in your mind or driving a peg.
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you know, to where, and I tell the men, you know this, if I'm telling somebody there's a scripture in the Bible, if I can quote where that scripture is, 2 Timothy 2, 2, it carries so much more weight, so much more clout than does, well, it's in the Bible somewhere, you know.
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And so through the years,
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The Navigators for me and Scripture memory for me has just, it's been a way of life.
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It's just been something, you know, if we could quote those Scriptures, God, I hide your word in my heart that I might not sin against you to make us sin less.
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It's a light into my past, you know.
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And so it guides you.
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The word of God convicts us.
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The word of God, you know, encourages us.
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But yet at the same time, it's there to correct us.
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It's there to convict us.
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It's there to teach us.
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And so getting his word internalized
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is one of the most important thing I believe believers can do in their walk with Christ.
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And then there's another element.
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I hate to mention him, but the Holy Spirit of God within us.
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No, we don't hate to mention him.
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I know.
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Most people say it.
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I don't.
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You did an entire series that was fantastic on the Holy Spirit.
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But when the Bible says in Matthew 10, 19, when they deliver you up, take no thought for what you shall say.
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For the Holy Spirit within you, he's going to speak through you.
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But if there's no scripture at all, if it's a blank slate,
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then you're going to have a hard time.
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It'll just be a testimony that the Holy Spirit speaks through you.
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And I'm not saying that he can't use that.
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But if somebody has an argument against what you believe or what you're standing for or what you think, you know, what the Bible has to say, then their argument, if you quote Scripture, their argument's not with your idea.
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Their argument's with God and His Holy Word.
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So that's the reason that Scripture is so important, memorization of Scripture.
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There's different, you probably talked about this, but there's different ways.
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There's different techniques.
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I teach men.
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A lot of men come to me to begin with, and they have excuses.
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Well, I'm too old.
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I just can't memorize Scripture anymore.
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I mentioned it just this morning.
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I said, yeah, but you can tell me at least the chorus of your favorite gospel song, country song, or you can quote...
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Eagles lyrics, you know, from songs years ago.
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Well, yeah.
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So you can put music to Scripture, to memorizing Scripture.
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My best way is to write it down on a three-by-five card.
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There's something about, for me, I'm a visual learner.
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So if my hand is writing out the scripture, I'm looking at it, I'm writing it out, and then I just keep this on the visor of my pickup truck.
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And if I'm stopped at a red light or at a stop sign or something, you know, and there's any time at all I can...
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I can take that three by five card and quote it to myself, look at it again and keep memorizing that.
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Well, and even in scientific studies, they've proven if you lend any credence to science, which I certainly do, there's a lot of great science.
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I believe that God gives all knowledge and wisdom.
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So even the brightest scientists, they didn't just think it up themselves.
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It's been proven that the more senses you can engage in anything, the more it will become part of you.
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In other words, if you're writing a scripture, you're using your sensory, your touch, you're seeing it.
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If you read it, you're hearing it.
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The only thing you probably can't do is taste and smell it, but you've used three of your major senses to...
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And that adds so much.
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It does.
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When I memorize, I do it out loud because then you hear yourself saying the Scripture.
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I write it out.
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You're seeing the Scripture.
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And it just lodges in there, I think, more easily and more firmly.
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The Bible tells us to be good stewards, to be a student of the Word, so that we might rightfully handle the Word of God.
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If I hold, this is a navigator's illustration, by the way, if I was holding the Bible right now, the Word of God, first thing we would do is we hear the Word, then we read the Word.
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Then we study the Word, and then we memorize the Word.
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But I couldn't hold this if I didn't have the thumb on the backside of it.
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And the final thumb, so to speak, of handling the Word of God is meditating on the Word.
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But we say that's the application of it too.
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So we hear it, we read it,
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Then we get to what we can study it, memorize it.
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But if we stop right there, it's still just words on the page.
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Or it's just, you know, words that we have in our head.
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We've got to apply it.
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We've got to meditate it and get to the point to where the word is in us in such a way to where when we're squeezed or whatever, the word of God comes out.
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And I think we're bad on that in our westernized culture in particular, just because we're in such a hurry about everything.
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And even in the church, we're in a hurry to get to whatever we perceive the desired end to be.
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We want the results.
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We don't want the process too much.
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But meditation, there is no substitute for it.
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I do that.
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You know, I'm an outdoors person.
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I love to be out in the woods on the water.
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And my best times with the Lord are when I'm alone in the woods.
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And I do that.
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I think about scriptures.
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I go over them, make sure I know them.
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Sometimes I'm a couple words off.
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It's like, man, what is that word there?
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And I might come back to the house.
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When I get back home, I'll look it up.
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But my mind is not just for the sake of memorization, but to meditate on it so that it becomes...
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part of your being.
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Right.
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It's in there.
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It's a living word.
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It's not just letters and sentences and punctuation.
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That's God's word that you're putting in your mind and in your spirit.
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Yeah.
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And that's why I've always encouraged people...
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I mean, certainly memorization, memorize all you can, but just read the word.
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And we get the same kind of response.
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Well, I don't get it.
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It's King James, whatever.
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There are so many good editions of the Bible, the NIV, the NASB, the ESV, the legacy.
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There's lots of great versions of the Bible, so there's no excuse not to read it.
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But I tell people, just read the Bible, even if you don't know.
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I don't understand this.
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I recently studied through Revelation again.
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Yeah.
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Every time I read through it, I get something, but I'm still, they're still poor, so they go, I don't know.
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Yeah.
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I don't know.
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Makes you want to go, it, it, it, it, it.
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All right.
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But every word in Scripture is in my mind.
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Yeah.
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Because I've read the Bible through many, many times.
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Yeah.
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So it's all there.
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And there really is that aspect.
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I think even sometimes, I know because I've experienced, sometimes at verses I haven't necessarily disciplined myself to memorize, but perhaps in a conversation with someone,
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maybe leading someone to the Lord or having a discussion about the things of the Lord or Scripture, I will quote a verse that I have not memorized.
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Yeah.
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Well, that's the work of the Holy Spirit.
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There's nothing spooky about that.
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He does that.
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You know, Jesus said one of the things the Holy Spirit would do, he told the disciples, were bring to your remembrance the things that I've said.
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That's right.
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I think that's still a function of the teacher aspect of the Holy Spirit.
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Yeah.
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But he can't bring to your mind anything that hasn't been put there.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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Make sure you read scripture, memorize all you can.
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And so we have to tell the men, review, review, review, review.
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If you don't review, you're going to lose it.
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And just as you were talking, it sparked a little memory in my mind.
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If it was good enough for Jesus while he walked on this earth, it's got to be good enough for us.
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So when he was tempted, we know, what did he do?
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Thus says the Lord.
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It is written.
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He quoted scripture back to combat Satan and his temptations three different times.
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And Satan, it's comical to me.
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Here's Satan.
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twisting and quoting scripture to the one who wrote it.
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You know, and trying to trick him, trying to...
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Literally the living word.
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That's right.
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The word became flesh.
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I get tickled sometimes.
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I actually read that just this morning.
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It's funny because I always study through some sections.
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I'm in Jeremiah and the Old Testament.
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I'm in Luke right now.
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So I read Luke 4 this morning, which is the temptation of Christ.
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And you do, you just kind of laugh.
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You go...
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Satan, you think you're so smart.
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What were you thinking?
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Right, right.
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Yeah.
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You can invest with Jesus.
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The living word.
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The living word right in front of you.
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The literal embodiment of the truth of Scripture, and you thought you were going to trick it.
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But here's Jesus quoting Scripture that he wrote that he is to Satan,
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to combat him.
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And so for us, it's a great example when we're tempted.
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Well, 1 Corinthians 10, 13 says, there's no temptation that has taken you or seized you with such as common to man.
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But God, not but Dallas, not but Keith, but God is faithful who will not allow us to be tempted above that which we are able, but will with the temptation.
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also make a door, a way to escape that we may be able to bear up underneath that temptation.
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And that's what Jesus did in the wilderness.
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That's what we need to do when we're tempted in our walk with God.
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Yeah, great application of the word, a living application through Christ.
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This is how the word works.
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This is why Jesus would say, this is why I use the word to fight the battles.
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So good stuff.
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And we're going to post, and maybe we have already during the process of this,
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podcast.
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We're going to give you the address because when Sherry emailed in, she said, I want to know more about navigators.
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Where are they?
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Who are they?
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We want to give you the information to connect with them.
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Wonderful ministry.
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There are other ministries too that are in that realm of scripture memorization, discipleship, but I think...
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for me, Navigator's at the top of the food chain.
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They've just done such a great job for so long.
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So we'll post that information.
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Check them out.
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And check us out again once again next week for the Here We Are podcast.
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Look forward to it.
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Bye-bye.
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See you.
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Bye-bye.
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Hello, welcome once again to another edition of the Here We Are podcast.
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Always look forward to doing these.
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I hope you look forward to joining us each Wednesday.
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I have with me a special friend, one of my very, very best friends in all of life.
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You've met Keith before.
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I think we did this about maybe three years ago.
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Yeah, a couple of years ago.
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We did a topic on discipleship.
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Keith is a discipler of men.
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He leads a Bible study here in the Lindell area called Gladiators for His Glory.
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And I've been coming to that for a number of years now.
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And I often tell the guys, do you understand that this is like a seminary course?
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Because Keith is an expositional teacher, in other words,
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Book by book, chapter by chapter, verse by verse, that's the best way to teach the Word of God.
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He's a very, very capable teacher in all the men that have benefited greatly from that.
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I have as well.
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The reason we're doing this today, and our topic is going to have to do with memorization of Scripture.
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I think it was about three or four weeks ago when another friend of mine in Colorado kind of interviewed me.
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after i had spoken at his church and in the course of my speaking i had referenced quite a number of scriptures by memory as they fit into the message
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And later on, he just said, how do you know all those scriptures?
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How do you work all that in?
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So we did a podcast about three, four weeks ago on memorization of scripture.
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And in that podcast, I mentioned you.
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I said, well, we've got to give a shout out to Keith here, who has challenged me to memorize.
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That's one of the things we do in the Bible study on Friday morning when it starts at 8 o'clock.
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Keith will usually, I mean, all of a sudden it's 8 o'clock and the scriptures, scriptures, who's got scriptures?
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One you're working on, one you've memorized, one you're trying to get, you know.
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And one by one, men all over will stand or sit and share a verse that they've either memorized or one that maybe they're working on.
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We're a very diverse group.
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We've got everything from teenagers to, I think, 96 may be our oldest one now.
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Going to be 97 this year.
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Yeah.
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Real soon.
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We've got some Asian folks.
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We've got some Hispanic folks.
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We've got some black folks.
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We've got some white folks.
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We've got rich.
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We've got poor.
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Yeah.
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We've got smart.
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We've got dumb.
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Yeah.
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We've got it all.
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But that's one of the key elements of that Bible study is to challenge, to memorize scripture.
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And I mentioned in the podcast a few weeks ago, I mentioned Navigators.
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Right.
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And a lady, Sherry, I want you to know, Sherry, whoever you are, wherever you are, I get the emails and I read them and I pay attention to them.
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And others, too, asked, well, who are the Navigators?
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How can I find out more about them?
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And I knew that Keith had been through the Navigators program of Scripture memorization and was very familiar with that.
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So I've just asked Keith to share about Navigators and about memorization of Scripture, the importance of it.
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Why do we do it?
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And I think generally it's a lot easier than people think it's going to be.
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So, Keith, if you want to start there.
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Well, Navigators for me started when I was about 19 or 20 years of age.
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I just joined the Navy and no coincidence there, but they began to send us material and we sent off to the Navigators for Bible study material.
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And we had these little packs that we would keep in our pocket.
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that had little cards in it, perforated cards.
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Whatever scripture you were working on was in that pack.
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And so we would quiz each other on board the USS Nimitz.
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I was in the Navy on board the aircraft carrier, the nuclear first of its kind, Nimitz.
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But Dawson Trotman is the founder of Navigators.
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And he started it, believe it or not, in 19...
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He was born in 1933.
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And that's when it... No, I'm sorry.
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He was born in 1916.
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And he started it in 1933.
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He died at the age of 50 in 1956.
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I don't know if the math's coming out right there or not.
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But anyway, he led a young sailor to the Lord.
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And then he discipled that young sailor.
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And he helped him in scripture memorization and in prayer and just how to study the Bible.
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And at the end of that discipleship time, which was about a year, this young man named Les Spencer brought another sailor in and said, I want you to teach him what you taught me.
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And Dawson said, no, you teach him.
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So that's how the discipleship plan really grew.
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They were originally in California.
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But then they moved to Glen Eyrie, Colorado in 56.
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And so it's just grown into a ministry that is based on memorization of Scripture and Bible study and Bible studies that are based on Scripture.
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So when I disciple a man, one of the first things I do is take him to one of these little green books like this.
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It's called Lessons on Assurance.
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1 John 5, 11 and 12.
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It's the assurance of salvation.
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And then the assurance of answered prayer is John 16, 5.
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The assurance of victory is 1 Corinthians 10, 13.
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And then the assurance of forgiveness is 1 John 1, 9.
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And then the assurance of guidance is Proverbs 3, 5, and 6.
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These five basic scriptures is what I based my beginning walk with Christ on.
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And I still, this was years and years ago, and I still share these with men week after week that I'm discipling.
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And then I got into what they call the TMS, which is topical memory system.
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And it's 60 scriptures that they picked out that you have the little perforated cards for also.
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And you might be thinking out there, you know, there's no way I can memorize 60 scriptures.
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And I thought that.
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Yeah.
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I took the challenge, just like our men on Friday mornings are taking the challenge, one scripture a week.
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And before long, I had memorized 60 scriptures.
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And I challenged the men.
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I tell them, if we meet 50 out of the 52 weeks a year, and you memorize one scripture a week, that's probably 50 more scriptures than you would have memorized had you not taken the challenge of just one a week.
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And I've been blown away.
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at the men who do more than one a week.
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We've got some now that are coming, quoting entire chapters.
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Yeah, a whole chapter.
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Yeah, a whole chapter of the Word of God.
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And so that's what the Bible study on Friday mornings is based on.
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That's what, that's how it really started.
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It started with two men that I was discipling, and then I told them to go get two more.
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Yeah.
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And they did the same thing.
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Well, you teach all four of us again, and then it just grew and grew and grew.
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I used to think discipleship and scripture memory had to be one-on-one.
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Uh, but I had gotten a box and he, he broadened that by knock the ends out of the box and said it can be in a group setting off.
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So we had 52 men this morning, ran out of parking spaces there in Lindale.
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And, uh, well, and, and the challenge, and I've taken the challenge, uh,
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I don't always get one a week, but then I try to pile up and get a couple more.
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But honestly, I would say like a lot of men, well, I just, we use excuses.
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And it wasn't that I was trying to avoid memorizing scripture.
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But as you get older, I mean, I realize that in certain areas, I'm not as sharp as I maybe once was.
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And I go, boy, I don't think I can memorize that much.
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And then I stopped one day and went, okay, I've written almost 300 songs.
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I can quote almost all the lyrics to every song I've written, plus a lot of lyrics to other songs.
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So if I can do that, I can sure memorize some verses of Scripture.
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And then I've also used kind of the excuse at times, and I think it's true, I can remember words easier than I can remember numbers, because you always encourage, as does navigators, the address, where is it found, what's the book, the chapter, the verse.
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Because if someone asks you, if you say...
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Well, the Bible says, and they say, well, where in the Bible does it say that?
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You want to have that address handy.
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And I would kind of go, man, numbers just don't stick in my mind as well.
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And they don't.
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But I was thinking just this morning preparing for this.
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I can think of my phone number when I was a kid, 459-9524.
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My uncle's number was 459-9740.
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My best friend was 459-5558.
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That's over 60 years ago.
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I've got a bunch of numbers.
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I lived on 932 Portland Avenue, St. Paul, Portland.
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Yeah.
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So I have no excuse.
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Right.
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Now, it may take a little more effort to lodge numbers wherever they lodge in my memory banks over words and lyrics and in scriptures.
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But it can be done.
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And honestly, there is no excuse.
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There's no excuse.
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The navigators teach you that it's like the library shelf of your mind.
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So if you say the address, then say the scripture, then say the address again at the end of it.
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It's like putting it on a library shelf in your mind or driving a peg.
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you know, to where, and I tell the men, you know this, if I'm telling somebody there's a scripture in the Bible, if I can quote where that scripture is, 2 Timothy 2, 2, it carries so much more weight, so much more clout than does, well, it's in the Bible somewhere, you know.
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And so through the years,
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The Navigators for me and Scripture memory for me has just, it's been a way of life.
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It's just been something, you know, if we could quote those Scriptures, God, I hide your word in my heart that I might not sin against you to make us sin less.
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It's a light into my past, you know.
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And so it guides you.
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The word of God convicts us.
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The word of God, you know, encourages us.
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But yet at the same time, it's there to correct us.
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It's there to convict us.
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It's there to teach us.
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And so getting his word internalized
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is one of the most important thing I believe believers can do in their walk with Christ.
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And then there's another element.
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I hate to mention him, but the Holy Spirit of God within us.
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No, we don't hate to mention him.
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I know.
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Most people say it.
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I don't.
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You did an entire series that was fantastic on the Holy Spirit.
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But when the Bible says in Matthew 10, 19, when they deliver you up, take no thought for what you shall say.
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For the Holy Spirit within you, he's going to speak through you.
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But if there's no scripture at all, if it's a blank slate,
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then you're going to have a hard time.
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It'll just be a testimony that the Holy Spirit speaks through you.
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And I'm not saying that he can't use that.
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But if somebody has an argument against what you believe or what you're standing for or what you think, you know, what the Bible has to say, then their argument, if you quote Scripture, their argument's not with your idea.
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Their argument's with God and His Holy Word.
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So that's the reason that Scripture is so important, memorization of Scripture.
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There's different, you probably talked about this, but there's different ways.
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There's different techniques.
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I teach men.
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A lot of men come to me to begin with, and they have excuses.
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Well, I'm too old.
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I just can't memorize Scripture anymore.
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I mentioned it just this morning.
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I said, yeah, but you can tell me at least the chorus of your favorite gospel song, country song, or you can quote...
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Eagles lyrics, you know, from songs years ago.
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Well, yeah.
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So you can put music to Scripture, to memorizing Scripture.
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My best way is to write it down on a three-by-five card.
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There's something about, for me, I'm a visual learner.
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So if my hand is writing out the scripture, I'm looking at it, I'm writing it out, and then I just keep this on the visor of my pickup truck.
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And if I'm stopped at a red light or at a stop sign or something, you know, and there's any time at all I can...
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I can take that three by five card and quote it to myself, look at it again and keep memorizing that.
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Well, and even in scientific studies, they've proven if you lend any credence to science, which I certainly do, there's a lot of great science.
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I believe that God gives all knowledge and wisdom.
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So even the brightest scientists, they didn't just think it up themselves.
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It's been proven that the more senses you can engage in anything, the more it will become part of you.
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In other words, if you're writing a scripture, you're using your sensory, your touch, you're seeing it.
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If you read it, you're hearing it.
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The only thing you probably can't do is taste and smell it, but you've used three of your major senses to...
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And that adds so much.
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It does.
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When I memorize, I do it out loud because then you hear yourself saying the Scripture.
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I write it out.
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You're seeing the Scripture.
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And it just lodges in there, I think, more easily and more firmly.
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The Bible tells us to be good stewards, to be a student of the Word, so that we might rightfully handle the Word of God.
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If I hold, this is a navigator's illustration, by the way, if I was holding the Bible right now, the Word of God, first thing we would do is we hear the Word, then we read the Word.
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Then we study the Word, and then we memorize the Word.
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But I couldn't hold this if I didn't have the thumb on the backside of it.
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And the final thumb, so to speak, of handling the Word of God is meditating on the Word.
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But we say that's the application of it too.
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So we hear it, we read it,
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Then we get to what we can study it, memorize it.
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But if we stop right there, it's still just words on the page.
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Or it's just, you know, words that we have in our head.
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We've got to apply it.
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We've got to meditate it and get to the point to where the word is in us in such a way to where when we're squeezed or whatever, the word of God comes out.
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And I think we're bad on that in our westernized culture in particular, just because we're in such a hurry about everything.
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And even in the church, we're in a hurry to get to whatever we perceive the desired end to be.
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We want the results.
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We don't want the process too much.
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But meditation, there is no substitute for it.
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I do that.
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You know, I'm an outdoors person.
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I love to be out in the woods on the water.
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And my best times with the Lord are when I'm alone in the woods.
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And I do that.
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I think about scriptures.
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I go over them, make sure I know them.
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Sometimes I'm a couple words off.
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It's like, man, what is that word there?
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And I might come back to the house.
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When I get back home, I'll look it up.
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But my mind is not just for the sake of memorization, but to meditate on it so that it becomes...
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part of your being.
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Right.
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It's in there.
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It's a living word.
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It's not just letters and sentences and punctuation.
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That's God's word that you're putting in your mind and in your spirit.
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Yeah.
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And that's why I've always encouraged people...
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I mean, certainly memorization, memorize all you can, but just read the word.
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And we get the same kind of response.
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Well, I don't get it.
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It's King James, whatever.
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There are so many good editions of the Bible, the NIV, the NASB, the ESV, the legacy.
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There's lots of great versions of the Bible, so there's no excuse not to read it.
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But I tell people, just read the Bible, even if you don't know.
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I don't understand this.
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I recently studied through Revelation again.
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Yeah.
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Every time I read through it, I get something, but I'm still, they're still poor, so they go, I don't know.
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Yeah.
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I don't know.
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Makes you want to go, it, it, it, it, it.
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All right.
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But every word in Scripture is in my mind.
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Yeah.
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Because I've read the Bible through many, many times.
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Yeah.
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So it's all there.
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And there really is that aspect.
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I think even sometimes, I know because I've experienced, sometimes at verses I haven't necessarily disciplined myself to memorize, but perhaps in a conversation with someone,
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maybe leading someone to the Lord or having a discussion about the things of the Lord or Scripture, I will quote a verse that I have not memorized.
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Yeah.
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Well, that's the work of the Holy Spirit.
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There's nothing spooky about that.
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He does that.
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You know, Jesus said one of the things the Holy Spirit would do, he told the disciples, were bring to your remembrance the things that I've said.
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That's right.
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I think that's still a function of the teacher aspect of the Holy Spirit.
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Yeah.
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But he can't bring to your mind anything that hasn't been put there.
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That's right.
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That's right.
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Make sure you read scripture, memorize all you can.
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And so we have to tell the men, review, review, review, review.
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If you don't review, you're going to lose it.
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And just as you were talking, it sparked a little memory in my mind.
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If it was good enough for Jesus while he walked on this earth, it's got to be good enough for us.
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So when he was tempted, we know, what did he do?
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Thus says the Lord.
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It is written.
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He quoted scripture back to combat Satan and his temptations three different times.
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And Satan, it's comical to me.
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Here's Satan.
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twisting and quoting scripture to the one who wrote it.
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You know, and trying to trick him, trying to...
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Literally the living word.
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That's right.
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The word became flesh.
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I get tickled sometimes.
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I actually read that just this morning.
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It's funny because I always study through some sections.
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I'm in Jeremiah and the Old Testament.
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I'm in Luke right now.
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So I read Luke 4 this morning, which is the temptation of Christ.
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And you do, you just kind of laugh.
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You go...
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Satan, you think you're so smart.
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What were you thinking?
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Right, right.
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Yeah.
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You can invest with Jesus.
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The living word.
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The living word right in front of you.
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The literal embodiment of the truth of Scripture, and you thought you were going to trick it.
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But here's Jesus quoting Scripture that he wrote that he is to Satan,
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to combat him.
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And so for us, it's a great example when we're tempted.
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Well, 1 Corinthians 10, 13 says, there's no temptation that has taken you or seized you with such as common to man.
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But God, not but Dallas, not but Keith, but God is faithful who will not allow us to be tempted above that which we are able, but will with the temptation.
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also make a door, a way to escape that we may be able to bear up underneath that temptation.
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And that's what Jesus did in the wilderness.
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That's what we need to do when we're tempted in our walk with God.
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Yeah, great application of the word, a living application through Christ.
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This is how the word works.
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This is why Jesus would say, this is why I use the word to fight the battles.
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So good stuff.
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And we're going to post, and maybe we have already during the process of this,
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podcast.
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We're going to give you the address because when Sherry emailed in, she said, I want to know more about navigators.
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Where are they?
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Who are they?
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We want to give you the information to connect with them.
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Wonderful ministry.
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There are other ministries too that are in that realm of scripture memorization, discipleship, but I think...
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for me, Navigator's at the top of the food chain.
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They've just done such a great job for so long.
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So we'll post that information.
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Check them out.
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And check us out again once again next week for the Here We Are podcast.
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Look forward to it.
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Bye-bye.
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See you.
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Bye-bye.
