Last Sunday, our campus pastor told us about Billy Graham’s greatest regret. Billy Graham, a modern day hero of the faith has one main regret in life. Do you know what it is? He wishes he would have studied and memorized more scripture. You know, it must be important if the guy who is arguably the most famous Christian next to, well Jesus, says so. As my pastor said, “Billy freaking GRAHAM!”
Is someone trying to tell me something?
So the Bible memorizing has been going a little slowly. That’s an understatement. In fact, I’ve probably learned a grand total of 5 verses since my surgery, and even then, I don’t think I have them down very well.
I’m still in James, chapter 1, and today, I’m memorizing verse 20 because I’ve been dragging my feet far too long on this.
With all evidence to the contrary, I’d convinced myself that it wasn’t worth so much effort. Here’s my pathetic ist of excuses, each of which I’ve alternated using for the past several weeks:
- It’s hard
- It takes time
- I’m horrible at memorizing things
- It’s boring
- I’ve got better things to do
As if the Billy Graham comment wasn’t enough. My pastor went on to knock down all of my excuses with one recommendation. He told us, and I’ll paraphrase this a bit, “If you don’t want to read the Bible (or in my case memorize it), pray for the desire to do it.”
So, basically, if we don’t want to study the Bible, if the desire isn’t there, it’s not because the Bible isn’t worth
it. It’s because we’ve got priority and taste issues we’ve got to let God fix for us.
Now I have a new way to pray for my Bible study and memorization. In addition to my regular, “God, please help this stick,” I’m adding, “Please help me want to do this and enjoy it too.”
I usually ask God to help me out with the nuts and bolts of the process, but now, I need to have him work on my attitude and my desires. Hmm, that might just apply to every other struggle I have in life.
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