Today on the schedule is review day.  So I thought I’d take a moment and write down some tips I’ve discovered and some things I’ve learned in the process before I forget them.

• Photocopies–It’s best by far to use photocopies of the Bible you regularly use in order to memorize.  The reason for this is that your brain automatically remembers the flow on the page, where the text headings are, etc…  For example, have you ever remembered a passage but didn’t know quite where it was, but you knew it was on the right side of the page, about a 1/3 of the way down and highlighted in orange? That’s what I’m talking about.
• Accuracy Check–I often think I have something memorized, but then I go to type it into the memory verse software (memoryverses.org), and I realize that I’m missing some words here and there.  Reading to a person who has a red pen or typing it into some kind of software for grading is very helpful for accuracy.  I would say, almost even necessary.
• Accountability–It’s nice to have this blog on the web as it motivates me to keep at it.  I don’t know really if people are reading this or how often, but when I think there is someone out there who may be following, it makes me want to keep going.
• Other Challenges–This has been an unexpected key for me.  A couple of years ago I tackled a big project that took extraordinary, persevering effort to get done on my own time and with myself as my only motivator.  But slowly, 8 months slowly, day by day I got it done.  Unexpectedly, what it did for me was to create a sense of “I can do this.”  I came to understand in a very practical way that big things things are accomplished by many small steps.  So when it comes to tackling this project, it’s without even a second thought I think, “Why not?”  I don’t have to psyche myself up to it, or give myself pep talks, I just without a doubt believe I can do it.  Having this mental edge helps tremendously.  Not just in this but in other things as well–I’ve started training to run a marathon.  I’m not 18 (lapped that one a couple of times) and I’m very out of shape, but why not?  Completing that big project several years ago is still bearing dividends that I never even expected.
• Encouragement–Encouraging words always help.  There are two quotes that I feel have given me the grace to go forward.  You would think they would be permissions to give in, but when you are given grace to fail, it actually spurs you on.  Here they are:
  •  “Set your goals so high that your failures are greater than every one else’s success.”
  • “It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly; who errs and comes short again and again; because there is not effort without error and shortcomings; but who does actually strive to do the deed; who knows the great enthusiasm, the great devotion, who spends himself in a worthy cause, who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement and who at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who know neither victory nor defeat.” – Theodore Roosevelt