Inwardly Digest: The Beginning of the Journey
Blessed Lord, You have caused all Holy Scriptures to be written for our learning. Grant that we may so hear them, read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest them that, by patience and comfort of your Holy Word, we may embrace and ever hold fast the blessed hope of everlasting life; through Jesus Christ, our Lord. Amen.
This blog will follow my journey to attempt to memorize the Psalter (the book of Psalms) over a ten year span. The goal is to not simply to have had all 150 Psalms memorized, but to have all 150 Psalms in my active memory by October 2031.
Why the Psalms? They are the little Bible that points to Christ that have been the basis for the prayers of the saints for millennia. Why memorize? The goal is not memorization for the sake of memorization, but memorization that comes from an internalization of the Word through prayer and meditation. Memorization takes chewing; it is the best way I know to inwardly digest the Word. I want the Psalms to be my prayers, to shape my thinking, and to give voice to my soul as one hungering and thirsting for righteousness in Christ.
How? The plan is that I will memorize about one new verse per day. In addition to weekly reviews of previously memorized verses, there will be dedicated times of intentional review about every fifty verses. The length of these review times will increase at each interval.
This blog will chronicle my journey. I expect to share insights into Scripture, progress reports on the project, ideas for reading and praying the Psalms, along with various successes and failures throughout.
I've hesitated to publish this blog as my goal is not to draw attention to myself. My personal goal behind the project is to dive deeper into the Word, to learn to pray, to see and to receive Christ. My goal behind sharing this project with you is to show what a long obedience in the same direction can look like and to encourage you to fall in love with Scripture and to love the Lord with your heart as well as your mind.
So follow along. Walk with me. Pray for me. And consider how you yourself might read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the Word as well.
You can follow along with my progress HERE.