I grew up outside of Miami near a Coast Guard base. One of the guys in the neighborhood found out how to build a radio out of spare parts, alligator clips, copper wire and magnets. We scrounged through our father’s workshops for a whole Saturday coming up with all the pieces; we then convened at our local secret tree house and put the “radio” together. The last step was to connect one of the clips to a chain link fence – we all headed next door, gathered around the wire contraption, and clipped it onto the fence. At first we heard a few cracks and pops but after a few adjustments, we began to hear radio traffic from the Coast Guard Base! We’d done it! We finally got to hear what was going on in the minds of those helicopter pilots as they buzzed low over our house! 

Memorizing Scripture is a lot like that radio. Initially there’s some work to it, committing pieces and chunks of God’s truth to our frail brains, but as time goes on something interesting happens. Just like my childhood radio, you begin to not only see things happen but you begin to realize why they are happening. God begins to activate certain Scriptures in your mind while He is at work in lives around you. You literally begin to hear “God’s radio traffic” while He is at work in people’s lives. Consider the combination of the truths of John 6:63 and John 16:13. “The Spirit gives life; the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have spoken to you—they are full of the Spirit and life. But when he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all the truth. He will not speak on his own; he will speak only what he hears, and he will tell you what is yet to come.”

If all of life is spiritually discerned, then memorizing Scripture helps to build the “radio” for understanding the “spiritual radio traffic” – which is to say, the truths behind God’s movement among men. To be sure, most of that work is done in people’s hearts. That said, consider the following verse and break down what you see.

Hebrews 4:12 

“For the word of God is alive and active. Sharper than any double-edged sword, it penetrates even to dividing soul and spirit, joints and marrow; it judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart.”

What results should happen to a person who takes in and commits to memory sections and passages of a “alive and active… sword… that judges the thoughts and attitudes of the heart”? 

With the metaphor of a knife dividing up a body, what do you think the writer of Hebrews is saying about the ability of the Word of God?