Bible Memorization Help

Sometime mid to end January, I found a daily calendar of bible verses on sale and bought it.  Someone told me it would be a good idea to begin memorizing the verses it has each day so I began.  I started by printing the verse on an index card in and then reciting it over and over to myself, usually while getting my son from school, which takes about 30 mins give or take, or while cleaning house. I also would try to go over the previous verses.  That got to be taking so long that I stopped going over them because it was hard to get that much time, so I split them into 7 (by weeks) and now I'm going over a previous week each day besides learning a new one.

The thing is, I'm able to remember the verse, but I want to be able to say the Book, chapter info and know the verse and vise versa and I can't seem to be able to do this.  Anyone have any ideas on what works for them?

I'm a strong believer in not memorizing anything that I can look up.  If you use it often enough you will remember it anyway.

I had a prof that could memorize entire books. He literally had Moby Dick committed to memory. He said it was merely a matter of repetition.

Your brain tries to help you focus on "important stuff", usually something that evokes feelings of fear, love, surprise, tension. An example, your brain sees a loose tiger in the mall, it reminds you that tigers sometimes eat people, that you are people and that you need to leave now. You will also never forget that you once saw a tiger loose in a mall.

Text doesn't actually excite your brain much, making it classify it as unimportant. We often rely on repetition to get our brain to come around.

Brain: "Well those silly words don't seem important to me, but she keeps reading them over and over and over again, so they must be important to her. Let's move this stuff to long term memory so we can move on..." 

So either you need to understand how you personally think and learn (metacognition) and play to that or fall back on the painful, but mostly reliable mantra of "repetition, repetition, repetition".

Good luck. 

My daughter uses word association to memorize things at school.  Some she has told me and I remember them too.  Example, what is the capitol of Finland?  Fish have fins. What happens to a fish without fins? He'll sinky.  Helsinki is the capitol of Finland.

word association works for me when i need to memorize something! i'd suggest trying to find something in the verse that you can relate to the book name, even if it's something silly like sinking fish!

as for the numbers...not so sure, think that might just take a LOT of repetition

Make up a song and sing the verse (and chapter, etc.)

It really works. (They actually sell scripture memorization song CDs.)

=^..^= MOLLY

I know this is going to come off as snarky, and I really don't mean it to be snarky, I'm honestly asking out of curiosity ... why do you want to memorize a bunch of bible verses? 

I'd imagine that it's similar to why my prof wanted to memorize books and why some guys memorize baseball stats?

That's the thing about hobbies, they only have to be enjoyable to the hobbyist. 

My thought is, if it's enjoyable it wouldn't be so difficult.

enjoyable things can't be difficult?

I enjoy math, programming and raising my kids. The measure of my enjoyment of each item on that list is inversely proportional to how easy each is for me.

I find it easy enough to remember the verse, it's where to find it that I'm having trouble remebering where it is in the bible.

The bible verses remind me of things, for instance, as I drive around town, I have to keep reminding myself that "vengence is mine says the Lord".  Can't tell ya where to find that in the bible though! :)  It helps me as all the people keep cutting me off and slamming on the brakes, etc.

I was in Bible quizzing for 6 years (7-12th grade) and I KNOW it sounds super lame, but it was so much fun.  Super hard to explain though, so I won't even try.  Anyway, I memorized entire chapters.  It's totally do-able.  Just read over and over, verse by verse.  Once you get one down, go to the next.  Then start from the first one, and quote through however many you've memorized...etc.  And just memorize the references, right along with them!  It does add a little more work, but then the reference is right here, and if you've really got the verse down, then it'll call it to memory.  Good luck!

"My daughter uses word association to memorize things at school.  Some she has told me and I remember them too.  Example, what is the capitol of Finland?  Fish have fins. What happens to a fish without fins? He'll sinky.  Helsinki is the capitol of Finland."

That's cute.  But it's gotten me through organic chemistry (Ester watches the OC is how I first memorized the structure of an ester) and knowing my structures well has gotten me through medicinal chemistry and pharmacology adn all that hooplah too.

To me, memorizing the places of the verses isn't as important as knowing the meaning. As a former religion major, I like to know the context of the book it comes from, relationship of its author to its subject matter, etc.  That helps me remember it.  one ofmy favorites, very recently, is Psalm 23 (obviously... haha) and then Romans 12:9 - 21.  Romans 12:21 says, do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good.
:-) good luck.