Derek Prince - Why You Should Memorize Scriptures?
This is a clip from: God's Word Your Inexhaustible Resource
And then you have to be ready to act on what the word says. In John 7:17 Jesus said: If anyone wants to do God's will he will know concerning the doctrine whether it is from God or whether I speak of myself. Jesus said if all you're interested in is just knowledge, God doesn't meet you. But if you want to do God's will then God will show you the truth. And finally I'd like to turn to Psalm 119:11 again as a recommendation to all of you. David said: Your word have I laid up as treasure in my heart that I might not sin against you. I suggest to you that if you really want God's blessing and prosperity in the truest sense then you need to treasure God's word in your heart.
I believe one practical way to do that is to memorize Scripture. I believe the practice of memorizing Scripture is extremely important. The Bible speaks about those who meditate in the word of God. If you don't have the word in you you can't meditate on it. You have to have it memorized to meditate. I'd like to share something that Ruth and I read in a book called 'The Church in China' by Carl Lawrence. I don't know whether any of you read it. I would say it's an excellent book. If you haven't read it, especially if you're Chinese you owe it to yourself to read it.
One thing that rather impresses me about the Chinese in Singapore, if I may say it frankly: They're not unduly concerned about the Chinese in China. I'm surprised. But anyhow, in this book this man said during the Cultural Revolution You know what the Cultural Revolution was? When Christians were ruthlessly persecuted the only ones that survived were those who had memorized Scripture. All the rest either committed suicide or went mad or betrayed their fellow believers. So there is something in memorizing the word of God. It gives you an inner strength and a stability for which there's no substitute. And my recommendation to you is: Commit it to memory.
Most of you, I'm impressed to see, are pretty young. You're in your early years. You've got a capacity to memorize if you choose to use it. You can do it. And if you don't you're depriving yourself of something tremendously valuable. I don't know how many verses of Scripture Ruth and I know by heart. It must be at least 200 I would think. Probably more. We don't do that to impress people. We do that because we need it. We're in continual spiritual warfare. We're always assailing Satan's strongholds. If we didn't have the word hidden in our hearts we wouldn't survive. We memorize it, we believe it, we confess it. So, that's my closing recommendation. To those of you who really want to prosper in God. Ask the Holy Spirit to show you which Scriptures you need to memorize because they may be quite different from the ones that we memorize. So may the Lord bless you.