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Podcast: How You Can Jump-Start Your Bible Memorization in 2024 (Andrew Davis)

January 01, 2024 by: Crossway

This article is part of the The Crossway Podcast series.

How to Become Better at Bible Memorization

In this episode, Andy Davis shares encouragement for every Christian to begin their journey of Bible memory—practical advice on where to start, how long to spend on Bible memory each day, and reminders of how valuable and incredibly transformative Scripture memory really is.

How to Memorize Scripture for Life

How to Memorize Scripture for Life

Andrew M. Davis

Through his years of experience in extended Scripture memorization, Andrew M. Davis helps readers commit to studying God’s word so they may grow in holiness, resist temptation, and share the gospel with lost people.

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Topics Addressed in This Interview:

01:30 - The Beginning of over Forty Years of Bible Memorization

Matt Tully
Andy, thank you so much for joining me on The Crossway Podcast.

Andrew Davis
Well, Matt, it’s a joy to be with you. Looking forward to the conversation.

Matt Tully
Your journey with Bible memory started over forty years ago. And I want to get into that journey a little bit in our conversation today but before we go there, I wonder if you can speak to the person right at the beginning here who for some reason hit play, but they’re already thinking, Oh no, are you going to spend the next thirty minutes making me feel guilty for why I don’t memorize the Bible?

Andrew Davis
Absolutely not. That’s not what it’s about. I just have such joy in the word of God itself, and the journey of extended memorization of Scripture has been a very fruitful one for me, and I just want to commend it. I’d like there to be a feeling similar to Psalm 1, where you get the sense of a tree planted by streams of water, which yields fruit in season and its leaf never withers; whatever you do prospers. What a word. Whatever you do will prosper. So I want people to be attracted to that and say, Okay, I want to see what that journey could be for me.

Matt Tully
Was there a time in your life, many decades ago perhaps now, when you would’ve said, I feel kind of guilty. I feel like this is just something I’m not doing like I should be.

Andrew Davis
Yeah, I mean I think we battle that in all areas of the Christian life. We know we’re not what we should be. Right now I’m going over Romans, and Paul laments in Romans 7, “the very thing I hate, I do, but the good thing I want to do, I don’t do.” And what area of the Christian life is that not true about—our prayer lives, our marriages, our parenting, church involvement? So I just want to get beyond that. I want to get beyond the whole guilt feeling and say look, let’s just go at it and say is this a beautiful thing God’s calling me to do? Let’s see what the Holy Spirit could do in my life with this.

Matt Tully
It’s so ironic. Guilt can be such a counterproductive emotion. It can stifle our energy to change things.

Andrew Davis
Yeah, for sure. And so I want to say, look, in all these things we are more than conquerors. What can the Holy Spirit do with somebody like me? Paul says, “Wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body of death?” But he doesn’t end there. “Thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus Christ!” And then he goes on into the spirit-filled life in Romans 8. So I want to say to the listeners, let’s see what God can do in and through us by the power of the Holy Spirit.

Matt Tully
I read an article from a few years ago about you and at the time, you had memorized forty-three books of the Bible. What number are you up to now?

Andrew Davis
Well, my next book will be forty-six. So since then, the Gospel of Mark and the book of Ezekiel, which was very tough.

Matt Tully
Very difficult. That’s a big book.

Andrew Davis
It is. Forty-eight chapters.

Matt Tully
Do you know how many verses?

Andrew Davis
Twelve hundred and seventy-three.

Matt Tully
Wow. So what’s the first question that you get asked when someone learns that you’ve memorized forty-five books?

Andrew Davis
How in the world could you do something like that? Where did it all start for you? And so I think the beginning journey—How did it start?—is a good place to begin.

Matt Tully
Yeah, take us there.

Andrew Davis
Okay. I came to faith in Christ my junior year at MIT. I was a MIT student. I was raised Roman Catholic, had a good experience in the Catholic church, but I didn’t know the gospel. So I’ve always been attracted to the person of Jesus Christ my whole life. So the Catholic church taught accurately about the Trinity, accurately about the incarnation, but not accurately about the gospel. And so in my junior year I gave my life to Christ.

Matt Tully
Was that through a campus ministry?

Andrew Davis
Campus Crusade for Christ, called Cru now, but also more just one person who was a fraternity brother at MIT. We were in the same fraternity, and he just patiently shared the gospel with me and invited me to go to Campus Crusade for Christ (the Cru meetings). But it took a year. And so I finally gave my life to the Lord at a retreat in October of 1982. And then I was discipled by a brother, Tim Shuman, who just poured into me. And one of the things that he put me onto was the Navigators topical memory system. So it was individual verses, and that’s where I started. I started with 2 Corinthians 5:17, went on to Galatians 2:20, and those verses are still with me.

Matt Tully
The Navigator’s been doing this for decades.

Andrew Davis
Oh yeah. Dawson Trotman was a big believer in individual topical verses. But what happened was I saw some of the veterans, the leaders at MIT’s Crusade ministry, who were really into this. They had these snap rings with little cards that Navigators put out, and it was like if you can imagine a janitor at MIT with like 163 keys on a snap ring. And I thought there’s kind of a limit to that. There’s going to be an end at some point to how many individual verses you can have on there, and how do you keep track of them?

Matt Tully
What were you studying at MIT? That might give us insight into why you’re asking these questions.

Andrew Davis
Mechanical engineering. So that’s my mind. I’m a logical engineer. But it wasn’t until I graduated, though, and I graduated in 1984. Two years in I was on a short term mission trip to Kenya. I had the whole Bible with me, a pocket Bible, which I could read back then. This is before my reading glasses phase. I had it with me, and I was waiting to catch a bus to Nairobi. I had asked the guy who dropped me off there when the bus would come. And he said in the afternoon. I was like, What does that mean?

Matt Tully
Is this an African schedule?

Andrew Davis
Pretty much. Very social, very relational. We’re really achievement oriented and time schedule oriented. But I was there for hours, and I had nothing to do.

Matt Tully
No cell phone.

Andrew Davis
No cell phone. I had the idea of memorizing a book of the Bible, but that’s where I started Ephesians. And that’s actually the entry point for me for everybody: What should I start with? I don’t know where to start. I always point them toward Ephesians. One hundred and fifty-five verses. And so I started there. It was a ten week mission trip, and I just started working on it.

Matt Tully
So you didn’t have it all down before the bus came?

Andrew Davis
No, no, no. I just started with the first few verses and just worked at it, and then I just kept at it. Ironically, as busy as we were, and it was a great mission trip, but as busy as we were, there was a lot more time. When you reenter your American life, then you’re like I’m busy, busy, busy. I don’t have time for this. And so I was actually beginning my full theological training at Gordon Conwell Seminary, and I had a full course load—five courses—and the key decision was, Should I keep going with this project? And I’m so glad I did.

Matt Tully
You felt like there was this moment of I need to decide if I’m going to keep doing this.

Andrew Davis
Yeah, here’s the weird story. Everybody’s story is different and everybody’s got their own little details. I really wanted to learn how to play the piano. And there was another seminary student that was willing to teach me for free. And there was a practice room that people who studied music at Gordon Conwell had, and I had access to it. I was living there 24/7 and I could go in any time to play piano. But I was also doing this Ephesians thing.

Matt Tully
And where were you at by the time you got back to school and got into stuff?

Andrew Davis
I was in chapter three. And I was like, I can’t do both. I don’t have enough time to do both because I was also working as an engineer at the time, and so it was just limited time. And I was like, Alright, which will it be? And I chose Ephesians. I said, I’m going to give up on my dream of playing piano. I love music, but I’ve never been formally trained and I cannot play anything. Now, right now, I cannot. And I know if I had put the time that I put into memorization into piano, I would be pretty accomplished. I think I’d be able to sit down and play anything I want. I don’t think I’d be a concert pianist, but it’s been tens of thousands of hours in Scripture memorization. But it is my music. It is what I play. I get up in front of the church and I play pieces for them. I play Scripture.

Matt Tully
What kind of impact does that have on people when you stand up and open up like that?

Andrew Davis
The Scripture flows from me. Whatever I’m memorizing comes out. There’s this visionary temple in Ezekiel, and there’s a river of water that flows from one of the gates of the temple. It’s a picture, for me, of the word of God flowing. Jesus said in John 7, “If anyone comes to me, streams of living water will flow from within him.” Now, to the woman at the well a couple of chapters earlier, he is the spring of water welling up to eternal life. But in John 7, water flows from you to others. And that’s a picture of my expository preaching ministry. I’ve just gotten up week after week after week, twenty-five years now, and just said, Let’s look at this section, this paragraph. Let’s look at this. And water flows. But it’s already happened because I write sermons and I’m prepared. I’m not like it’s, Oh, let’s see what happens. No, I’m too planning for that. But there’s a dynamic of the preparation I’ve done in expository preaching, and then while I’m there, the anointing of the Lord comes. It happens every week that from one of those forty-five books that I’ve memorized, some aspect will come up in ways I hadn’t planned, but the Spirit is active as I’m preaching it. It’s all about truth flowing, but based on the text of Scripture.

11:11 - Misconceptions about Memorizing Large Portions of Scripture

Matt Tully
It’s incredible. Taking a bit of a step back, what are some of the biggest misconceptions that people tend to have when they first learn this about you and first start to think about this idea of memorizing big chunks of Scripture for themselves? What do they bring to that that’s wrong?

Andrew Davis
Well, I am gifted intellectually. I’m an MIT grad and so I have a good mind. God gave me that. He’s going to want it back on judgment day and ask what I did with it. That’s true of all stewardship. He gives you stuff and then he’s like, What did you do with it? The five talents, two talents, one talent, what did you do with it? And so for me, the misconception would be that it was easy for me. Yeah, but you’re intelligent. It’s like, no, I’ve absolutely had to work at it. And not all the genres have been easy. I mean, Ezekiel has been brutal. Ezekiel has been very, very hard.

Matt Tully
Has it gotten harder over the years?

Andrew Davis
Yeah. I play sports. I play basketball, but much worse than I did when I was in my twenties. I’m getting older and I think the mental acuity goes down. So to be honest with you, Matt, I was like do I have early onset? I could not really get Ezekiel the way I wanted to. And so I wanted to know if some of my old books, because I advocate in my booklet, I advocate kissing books goodbye. After a hundred days of review, let it go. Let it go. I don’t claim to hold on to those forty-five books.

Matt Tully
That’s a big one. I think people can think of Bible memory as you memorize a verse or a chapter or a book, and then you’ve got it for the rest of your life. But you don’t really take that approach.

Andrew Davis
You have to review it. We forget. We are forgetters.

Matt Tully
So you’re not like a savant where you’ve got this supernatural ability to memorize that is really very different than the rest of us?

Andrew Davis
No, no. It’s been hard work, and if I don’t review it I lose it, and some genres quicker than others. The visionary genre, the prophetic books, the minor prophets and Ezekiel, they have been the hardest genre for me because it’s not linear. It’s not A to B to C to D and it makes sense. It’s more like when the school of prophets said to Elijah, The Spirit’s going to let you down somewhere, and I don’t know where you’re going to be. And they write like that. It’s like, I don’t know where we’re going next. It’s not linear. And even on a topic, like some chapters like Ezekiel 17 and Ezekiel 20, it doesn’t go from A to B to C, and it’s hard to memorize. The Epistles are the easiest. It was like a mind check. Is Romans still there? And I went back about six weeks ago and within a week I was able to recite Romans 1–8 pretty well. So I was grateful. It’s subterranean. It’s down there, but the ability to recite isn’t there. You lose that quickly.

Matt Tully
The perfect fidelity of every word might not be there.

Andrew Davis
You’ve got to work at it. But then once it comes back it’s like, Alright. There it is.

Matt Tully
Can you go back to when you finished your first book, the book of Ephesians, what did that feel like?

Andrew Davis
It was cool. It was exciting. But it led to, and this is what I’m advocating in my booklet, a lifetime habit. It’s not about the achievement. It’s not about I can do Ephesians. That’s not it. It’s ultimately about intimacy with the triune God. It’s about life with God through Christ. That’s what it is. And fruit that comes from that. And this is a means to that end. That’s what it’s about. It’s not about the ability to impress your friends at a party. Very few friends will listen to you recite Philippians. And it’s like, Hey, good for you.

Matt Tully
You don’t get to prove it to them.

Andrew Davis
No, no. That’s not what it’s about. And the Lord will humble you. God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble. One of the most common questions I get is about whether I feel like it’s a pride thing to do that. And it’s like, look, here’s the thing, you are proud. It’s not like suddenly you’ll become proud. You already are. The word of God is the remedy. But I understand what you’re saying and I’m not minimizing it. So I would say go after verses that talk about pride. And do what you can to be on your best behavior. Let’s say somebody at church invites you over and you don’t know them, you’re on your best behavior. Manners are good. You’re very thankful. The more you’re comfortable with somebody, you kind of let your guard down a little bit. But be on your best behavior with this. Don’t flaunt it. Don’t talk about it. Just do it. Just do the work. But yeah, it’s not like suddenly you found a new pride you never had before. It’s like, no, you’re already prideful, so just humble yourself. But I would say that with the work of memorization, you work at it and you will lose it if you don’t repeat it. So you have to go after it. And then once it’s there, it’s pretty exciting to be able to just go through an epistle and recite it from A to Z. But the real goal is intimacy with God. It is that fruitfulness that comes from it. But then there are details. It’s insight. It’s what I would call the aha moments. Like, Man, I never saw that before. I never knew that was in there. And so in Ephesians 1:18 Paul prays that the eyes of their hearts would be enlightened. What is that? It’s truth. It’s truth you have never seen before, but it’s there. How many times does Jesus do that with his opponents? Have you never read? And it’s like, you never saw that in the burning bush thing about “I am the God of Isaac, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob. He’s not the God of the dead, but of the living.” Or what about David in Psalm 110? Have you never noticed that he calls him Lord? “The Lord said to my lord, ‘Sit at my right hand until I make your enemies a footstool for your feet.’” If then David calls him Lord, how can he be his son? It’s like, whoa, that’s in there, isn’t it? It’s always been there. So there are insights. That’s the cool stuff. That’s the payoff with memorization. It’s like, wow, there’s some stuff in there I never knew it was there.

17:04 - The Process

Matt Tully
Yeah. Amazing. I want to get into more of that in a little bit, but maybe walk us through your process. What’s the method for Bible memory that you would take?

Andrew Davis
Well, I can sum it up in one word: repetition over time. That’s the secret.

Matt Tully
Someone listening might say, I was hoping for something different. I don’t know. I don’t know what it was, but I wanted more of a silver bullet. That sounds hard.

Andrew Davis
Well, I’ve gotten feedback and somebody wrote in a review on the early version of this booklet, “It didn’t work.” And it’s like, well, it doesn’t work; you work. It’s not like there’s some memorization pill.

Matt Tully
It’s not a gadget.

Andrew Davis
Yeah, like if you order this booklet from Crossway, there’s a little Ziploc bag with a pill in it, and if you take that, you’ll get your first five books for free. It doesn’t work like that. You’ve got to roll up your sleeves and work. It’s discipline. It’s what it is. It’s like Paul talks about in first Timothy 2: “physical discipline has some value, but godliness.” So there’s discipline yourself for godliness. This is a discipline. It’s a habit, and that’s what it is. It’s habits. I believe in habits. Frankly, in my opinion, that’s what Romans 6:19 is about. It’s habits. “I put this in human terms because you’re weak in your natural selves, just as you used to offer the parts of your body as instruments of wickedness with ever increasing wickedness, so now offer them in slavery to righteousness, leading to holiness.” All right, well, he is comparing something you used to do and he’s saying, I’m going to actually use something from your pagan life, but we’re going to use it now for something good. What is that thing? Habits. You used to have habits of wickedness growing and ever increasing. You used to be really good at getting drunk, or really good at sexual immorality, or really good at complaining. You were world class sinners. Well, what we’re going to do now is we’re going to take that whole mechanism now and we’re going to use it for something good. What is it? Habits. We are trainable. And if you get into habits of holiness, you’re going to grow toward righteousness, toward godliness. Well, this is a habit. And maybe one of the most productive habits you will ever find in the Christian life. The habit of memorization is hard work. So how does it work? What I do is I advocate you choose a passage and begin with a verse. You read it ten times and you say it ten times. And then you read the next verse. And you read it ten times and you say it ten times.

Matt Tully
When you read it, are you reading it in your head?

Andrew Davis
With your eyes. Obviously, there are some people that are blind that can’t, but most of us are able to read it. And so you burn it in with your eyes. Well, if you’re blind, you could memorize, definitely, because it’s auditory at that point; you’re hearing it. But I think it helps to be able to burn it in and you can see where it is on the page. It’s like a photographic thing. I don’t have a photographic memory, but you burn it in. Read it ten times, say it ten times. And then you string days together. And so you go to yesterday’s verse, remind yourself, go ahead and read it. It’s just you and the text. I know you can’t remember it. It was yesterday. But once you do two or three reps, oh yeah. Okay. I got it. And it comes back. And then you say every verse in the book once, and just keep doing that. And it’s like, all right, that’s where the work is. So once you’re into chapter three in Ephesians, the first two chapters, it takes a while. The whole book, when I’m on it with Ephesians, I can do in about twelve or thirteen minutes.

Matt Tully
You’re reciting it out loud.

Andrew Davis
I’m reciting it out loud. And there’s that auditory thing, like in the car while you’re driving.

Matt Tully
And what happens when you make a mistake? You get to chapter three verse ten, and you’re like, I can’t remember that one.

Andrew Davis
You look. You just open the Bible and look. And I advocate what I call weeding the garden—you just read the chapter again. You’re well into it and you can recite it, but you didn’t realize some weeds came in. And you’re so confident in your memory that you actually think the print on the page is wrong. Actually, that was when I first realized that there are different versions of translations because the publishers changed some things.

Matt Tully
Yeah. Little tweaks here and there.

Andrew Davis
Yeah, it’s like wait a minute now! And you actually were right. You did memorize it right, but it’s a new version of the ESV or something like that. I don’t know if Crossway does that, but they’re constantly updating. But that’s a different topic. The point is you look at it and say, all right, all right; and you correct. It’s a correction. And so you are trying for word perfect. That’s your goal. But that’s just a means to the end. It’s not a prideful thing. It’s just a discipline to try to get it exactly right. It’s precision.

Matt Tully
And then once you’ve got the whole book down, then you enter 100 days. Tell us what that’s like.

Andrew Davis
That’s really the payoff. And that’s when you really know the book. So probably by then, if you’ve done a good job, fifteen to twenty-five days in, you got it. It’s like water through a pipe. It just flows.

Matt Tully
But then you keep going. You don’t stop there.

Andrew Davis
Another seventy-five days.

Matt Tully
That’s a long time.

Andrew Davis
Three months. Three and a half months.

Matt Tully
You kind of position that hundred days as the payoff and it’s actually what it’s all been building towards. Some people might hear that and kind of think, Well, why do I keep doing that then for that long? Why not move on to the next thing?

Andrew Davis
Well, I do believe in moving on to the next thing, but it’s got to end somewhere. I could have said fifty, I could have said twenty-five days. I think what it was was Habakkuk. I was a missionary in Japan, and I couldn’t say it. I got angry at myself and said, I don’t really have this book memorized, so I’m going to say it for a hundred straight days. And that’s where it started. So I was like, all right, let’s do that from now on. And so I did a hundred days. But here’s the cool thing. It’s always about insight. The payoff is insight. And it’s amazing. On day fifty-three, it’s like something hits you. You’ve never seen it before. Boom. And it’s like, all right, I get it now. But I do believe, as I already mentioned, in kissing the book goodbye. I don’t do 101, I don’t do 105. It’s got to end sometime. And the point is the next book. Go to the next book. Jesus said in Matthew 10 about evangelism, “I tell you the truth, you will not finish going through the cities of Israel before the Son of Man comes.” In other words, there’s always going to be more work to do. At the second coming, there’ll be people that were planning some kind of outreach or something and Jesus is like, No, it’s time to end it. There’s always going to be more. So sixty-six books of the Bible, you will not finish memorizing the Bible. Well, there’s got to be some monk somewhere that probably has it memorized, but you’re not that person.

Matt Tully
And you’re not as well, you would say?

Andrew Davis
No, I don’t think so. I’m almost sixty-one. Ezekiel took me basically a year and a half. It was April of 2022 when I started. So we’ve got Jeremiah—I’ve not done that—so don’t think so. And then there’s 1 Chronicles. Those genealogies, bro, that’s going to be book sixty-six. That’s the end.

Matt Tully
You talk about kissing a book goodbye after 100 days. Are there any books, though, or maybe even just passages of Scripture, that have just been so precious to you and so helpful that you have intentionally retained them?

Andrew Davis
Yeah, I haven’t worked at retaining them. They’re just there. They’ve been gifts to me. Ephesians is like that. I’ve proven that I can go five years without having recited it and still recall it. I was in the dentist’s chair and I said, I want to take a shot at Ephesians. And I would give myself a B+ or an A- without any review at all. I was just in the dentist’s chair. It’s been mostly there. But a lot of it has been using it. I use cross references. It’s ready as a toolbox or weapons. I use tool or weapon. It depends on what we’re fighting. “Our struggle is not against flesh and blood.” So fighting Satan, destroying ideas. But I’ve used Ephesians again and again and again. It’s just so powerful. Romans also, apparently, as I’ve told you, it just came back quickly. I don’t think it would be as successful in some of the other books. Some of them I think are not so fresh. But I think God’s given me a gift with Ephesians, with Philippians, with Romans. Those in particular, I think, are pretty there. And some sections of the Gospels. I’m preaching through Mark right now and they’ve been pretty solid.

25:17 - Common Objections

Matt Tully
Maybe we can quickly run through a few common objections people might have related to all of this. The first would have to be This this is just too hard, and I have a terrible memory. And I actually do have a terrible memory. I’m not just making that up. My wife often will bemoan that fact. But what would you say to somebody who feels like that’s them and this isn’t for them?

Andrew Davis
Let me break that apart. First, this is too hard. Let me just take that on. It is hard. I’m not saying it’s not. There’s a movie I was watching recently called Miracle. It’s about the hockey team’s upset of the Soviet Union in 1980. It is probably the greatest sports upset of my life. This was a dominant machine. NHL teams were getting crushed by these guys. And this is a bunch of college students that came together, and it’s like how in the world? But at the beginning, Herb Brooks is being interviewed by the Olympic committee for the job of coaching the hockey team. And he said, “I want to take a hybrid of the Soviet system and the North American system, and beat them.” And their eyebrows went up. Beat them? Beat the Soviet Union? The gold medal winners in 1960, 1964, 1968, 1972, and 1976? That’s a lofty goal. He said, “Well, that’s why I want to pursue it.” And that made an impact. Why not go after something hard? It is hard. It is hard. It’s not going to be easy. You’re going to have hard days. But it is worth it. It is more worth it than the gold medal of the 1980 Olympics. It’s more worth it than that. It has benefit for all eternity. Fruit is going to come. You’re going to lead people to Christ. You yourself are going to grow in grace and the knowledge of Christ. You are going to see fruit. It is worth it. So yes, it is hard work, but it is so worth it. “In all hard labor, there is profit, but mere talk leads to poverty.” That’s Proverbs. And so go for it. Work hard. Secondly, I have a bad memory. Well, there are different kinds of memory. There’s verbal memory, there’s different other types of memory like schedule memory and different things. And so I think It’s an effect of the fall that we forget things. We do. Alzheimer’s is an effect of the fall. I think in heaven we’re going to have perfect memories. We’re not going to forget like we do here. So I look forward to that. In the meantime, I would say this; first of all, your memory can develop. You can work at it.

Matt Tully
It is like a muscle.

Andrew Davis
It is. I think the more you do it, the better you’ll get at it. Secondly, I love Luke 24 in which it says the resurrected glorified Christ was there with his disciples, and he was teaching them Scripture to prove that the Messiah had to die and rise and go to his glory, and the gospel would be preached to the ends of the earth. It says, “Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures.” So ask Jesus to do that. Lord, help me do this. Open my mind. Now let me tell you a story. When I was at Gordon Conwell, one of my heroes was a missions professor named Christy Wilson. He’s since gone on to be with the Lord. Sweet man, loved the Lord, a man of prayer, and just a tremendous role model. And he was big into topical verses and memorizing individual verses. To motivate people who are saying the same things—because he required it as a professor, so it was part of the syllabus; he was requiring this—

Matt Tully
A little carrot and stick here.

Andrew Davis
Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so they had a list of twenty-five verses that were key topical verses. And he told a story about a blue collar guy, a plumber I think it was, and he just wanted to memorize one verse, John 3:16, “For God so loved the world, he gave his only begotten Son, so that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.” Just that. Just to be able to say that. And Christy Wilson, the sweetest man I’ve ever met, said this man was so dense after two weeks he still couldn’t recite John 3:16 without looking at the Bible. But he didn’t give up. And eventually he got it and went on to memorize over a thousand verses. God was testing him to see, Is this worth it to you? And when he had passed the test, he opened his mind and gave him a thousand other verses. And so I remember that story and it’s like, look, stick with it. The enemy of Scripture memorization is giving up. That’s all. Just don’t give up. Work at it day after day. So beyond that, I would say you have a better memory than you think you do. Lyrics to songs. Sports statistics. People’s phone numbers. Different things stick with you. So you have a better memory than you think you do.

Matt Tully
Another objection is I just don’t have time. I’m sure I could do it if I had hours to devote to it, if I had a more flexible schedule. But I get up early, I go to work, I work hard all day, I get home, I help put the kids to bed, I do chores, and then I’m exhausted, mentally physically. How am I supposed to find time for this?

Andrew Davis
Well, I understand that, and we are busy, but we also are responsible. We are stewards, and we are given those 24/7. "Teach us to number our days so that we may gain a heart of wisdom (Ps. 90). The Lord is going to ask you what you did with the time he gave you. He’s not going to listen to I didn’t have time. You had the time I gave you. The question is stewardship. What did you choose to do with your time? So I would say this is worth it. It is worth it. It will pay off. Again, Psalm 1, you’ll be blessed in whatever you do. So I’m not advocating that you do what I’ve done. I have a special calling to be a verse by verse sequential expositor of the Bible. It’s what I do. And I counsel, I do biblical counseling, I do evangelism, I speak at conferences. I put a lot more time into it, like a musician, going back to that music. This is my music. This is what I do. But in terms of an everyday life, you can farm off and you can find the fifteen minutes a day that I’m advocating. It’s not much more than that.

Matt Tully
Fifteen minutes is all it would take to really start to make progress.

Andrew Davis
A verse a day. I do three verses a day. Other than that, Ezekiel would have taken three times as long. But just literally. It’s mathematical. So three verses a day is a good pace for me, but it’s hard. It’s a strong pace. But a verse a day, I think you’re looking at fifteen minutes a day.

Matt Tully
Maybe a last objection. There could be somebody who’s saying I think I’ve caught a vision for why we’re doing this, so that we can glean these insights. You want to have that, but they might rationalize away a lack of enthusiasm for this by kind of telling themselves, If I need to refer to Scripture or look something up, I can always pull up my Bible. I have my Bible with me all the time. I have it on my phone. I can look up a word and find all kinds of references for that. Why do I really need to get it in my brain, which is fallible, and I’m going to forget stuff anyways?

Andrew Davis
Well, the key thing we need to understand is the role of the brain of the mind in the Christian life. You think, then you do. You think, then you say. Out of the overflow of the heart the mouth speaks. My question to you is, What are you thinking about? The beautiful thing about this is it’s not about Ephesians or Romans or Ezekiel. It’s about what you’re thinking about. And if you’re working and working and working on this, even if you never really can recite it, but it is what you’re thinking about, it’s a win. You are transformed by the renewing of your mind Ephesians 4: “So I tell you this and insist on it in the Lord, you must no longer live as the Gentiles do in the futility of their thinking. They’re darkened in their understanding and separated from the life of God because of the ignorance that’s in them due to the hardening of their hearts.” It’s like four different things Paul says about the mind. We are transformed by the renewing of our minds. Philippians 4: “Finally, brothers, whatever’s true, noble, right, pure, lovely, admirable, excellent, praiseworthy, think about these things.” Scripture is all of that. Jesus is all of those things. And so if we are thinking about that, we’re not thinking about dark, lustful, carnal, evil thoughts. So that’s a win anyway. So I would just say this, you just constantly have the river of clean water running through your mind. And guess what’s going to happen? Someone once said when all you have is a hammer, the whole world looks like a nail. Well, when you’re doing Philippians, everything is connected to Philippians. You just can’t stop talking about it. Every situation comes back to Philippians. Well, you know, it’s funny, Philippians 2 says this. It’s just going to happen.

Matt Tully
Did your wife and your kids over the years always know exactly what book you were in?

Andrew Davis
Rolling their eyes. I would say to the staff when I would get in, You guys want to hear today’s Ezekiel insight? And they love it. Because Ezekiel is a mystery book. People don’t know what’s in it. There were some things like Ezekiel 20. This is so interesting. One of the recent sermons that we heard was on Exodus 12 and the Passover and how God was saying to Israel You deserve to die. If you don’t shed this blood, I will kill your firstborn, and you deserve it. And imagine Israel hearing that. And most good preachers will see that. What I didn’t realize is that in Ezekiel 20:6–8 God says, going back over his history with Israel, he said, I told them when they were still in Egypt to give up their idols, which they had acquired in 400 years. They’d become pagan—overtly Egyptian level pagans. I told them, but they wouldn’t do it. And so I wanted to kill them in Egypt, but for the sake of my name—I was like, Whoa! That’s not in Exodus. That whole moment there never happened in Exodus, but it happened. And it was God telling Ezekiel—and it must have been Moses and Aaron that said, Hey, look, this is what God requires of you. And this is before the Ten Commandments, but they wouldn’t do it. They wouldn’t give up their idols. That’s an aha moment. And right now I really believe the next thing I need to do, I’m almost done with Ezekiel 48 and my one hundred days, is I need to just go back over the forty-eight chapters and write my aha moments. Because they weren’t given just to me. They were given to the church.

Matt Tully
Have you done that over the years? Have you tried to keep a record to some extent?

Andrew Davis
Not like that, but with Ezekiel I need to do it. And I’m not even going to do it so I can write a book. I just need to write down what I’ve learned, because I’ll forget them. I’ll forget those insights.

35:40 - Don’t Give Up; It’s about the Journey

Matt Tully
Last couple of questions. Here’s a fun one. Complete this sentence as many different ways as you can: If you want to memorize the Bible, don’t what?

Andrew Davis
Don’t give up. The enemy of memorization is giving up. So don’t give up. Go at it day after day.

Matt Tully
Anything else?

Andrew Davis
Don’t give up. Don’t make it a negative. Don’t get discouraged. Don’t boast over it. Don’t be arrogant about it.

Matt Tully
Maybe keep it a secret for a while?

Andrew Davis
Yeah. Just because we’re so prideful. It’s like, Hey, look what I can do. Don’t do that. Don’t forget that every good and perfect gift comes from God. Don’t underestimate the value of it. Good fruit is going to come as you keep going. So I would say those are a bunch of don’ts.

Matt Tully
Last question. I heard you say in an interview that you did previously that at some point it flips and it isn’t about finishing new books anymore. It’s about the journey.

Andrew Davis
Absolutely.

Matt Tully
And that just struck me as such a profound thing to say and emphasize, especially for somebody who has seemingly accomplished so much on this front. What would you say to the person who’s just starting on this journey on that front?

Andrew Davis
I am in awe of the word of God. I’m in awe of it. I’m in awe of its simple division into two categories: milk and meat. I’m in awe of the fact that a child can understand the basics of God and man and Christ and repentance and faith. A child can learn that. But Einstein, you mentioned him, you could have that level of intellect, and the Bible will swallow you alive with its truths. It is a vast complex interconnection of truth that will never end. So I’m in awe of it. I feel like I’m only beginning to learn its truth. But here’s the beautiful thing. Now this will blow your mind. First Corinthians 13, Paul’s talking about tongues and prophecy. It’s in this whole section in 1 Corinthians 12–14 on the spiritual gifts and specifically tongues and prophecy. “Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, if I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and if I have all knowledge”—tongues of prophecy. At the end of chapter 13 he says, “Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror. Then we shall see face to face. When I was a child, I thought like a child, talked like a child, reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me.” When we get to heaven, Matt, we are going to leave nouns and verbs and syntax and logic behind, and we will be in the immediate presence of the God of truth and we will begin, in some sense, our real education then. We will see his glory in ways we can’t even fathom. Right now, we’ve got logic and syntax and exegesis and sequential exposition. That’s like baby talk. Heaven—now that’s the real truth. So that’s pretty exciting.

Matt Tully
Amazing. Andy, thank you so much for helping us think through this. It’s just mind blowing the potential here that is right at our fingertips that we have that God has given to us if we would only commit ourselves to it. We appreciate it.

Andrew Davis
Matt, thanks for the time. I’ve enjoyed talking with you.

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