We are an educated people with high standards of literacy. We are a free people who enjoy religious liberty. We are a wealthy people with unlimited access to a nearly infinite quantity of Bibles. We are a privileged people who may not realize how blessed we are.
Many of our forebears and even many of our contemporaries have not been capable of reading the Bible, have not had the liberty to read it, and have not had access to it. To be able to know and apply the Bible, they have had to memorize it.
And while it is right that we enjoy all our privileges and all our liberties, they may foster a kind of spiritual laziness in which we consider the Bible on our shelves as good as the Bible in our mind. John Piper puts out the call even to us to be diligent in memorizing it, for “if we do not carry it in our heads, we cannot savor it in our hearts or wield it in the Spirit. To memorize the Bible is to put the best thing in the best place for the best reason! It is effort that will bear fruit in every life.
