Master of Memory: Accelerated learning, education, memorization - MMem 0433: Memorize key verses of Philippians

Episode Date: November 4, 2015

Tim mentions memorizing verses from Philippians. I use the episode to present some mnemonics for memorizing 14 key verses of Philippians. What do you want to learn? Leave your question at http://MasterOfMemory.com/. Music credit: Maurice Ravel’s String Quartet, 2nd movement, performed by the US Army Band.

Master of Memory 433. Welcome to Master of Memory. I'm Timothy and I'm here to answer your accelerated learning questions every day and to inspire and empower you to learn anything you want to learn faster than ever. Tim mentioned memorizing Philippians in an email, so I decided to take this opportunity to present the key verses of Philippians along with some mnemonic ideas for remembering the references and relating that to what the verse is about. Now this is very handy because if you know what all the sections are about, what is contained in each chapter, and where to find the key verses, you basically know the whole book. I mean, in the first place, you can

look up, if you think of any topic, you can look up exactly where it is and find the passage. And then in the second place, you're already set up to learn each of these passages and all the verses between the key verses. Now, for all the listeners who aren't interested in memorizing Philippians or any other scripture passage, you can still take the techniques that I describe in here and apply it to many, many other things, such as historic dates, you know, memorizing textbooks, and basically almost any field of learning that involves learning the essentials first and then learning details in between. Now, Philippians has four chapters, and each of the chapters, I would say, is divided into about three or five different topics. The first chapter has the most topics, and then the rest of the chapters each has about three topics, I would say. And so the key verses are, you know, chapter 1, verse 1, chapter

1, verse 9, verse 18, verse 21, and verse 27. And then in chapter 2, verses 4, 15, and 29. And then in chapter 3, verse 8, 14, and 20. and then in chapter 4, 8, 19, and 23. To remember all of these, I would suggest that you choose four rooms in a building that you know really well. Don't choose your house that you currently live in, because in the first place, I've used that as examples in so many other episodes, and in the second place, I generally recommend leaving it for specific uses, either for something very important and long-term and very specific to you, or for maybe your temporary palace, which is how I tend to use the house that I live in. I just use it as a temporary palace. But anyway, choose a building you know really well, maybe the library you went to when you were a kid, and then choose four rooms of that building.

And then I want you to spread certain mnemonic objects throughout those rooms all right so you have the first room and make sure you can picture it and imagine yourself looking around it from left to right and what we're going to do is we're going to imagine certain objects throughout that room and first of, let's go with the object 1 in the very first place in that room. My major system object for the number 1, since it's 0, 1, or S, D, or T, is a dish of acid. So imagine that there's some acid sitting there and slightly spilling on something in that first place in the room. Make sure that it's very visual and you can remember that. The second object is going to be for the number nine, and my object for the number nine is a bar of soap. So imagine that there's a bar of soap in your second location from left to right in that

room, and it's kind of sitting there. Maybe it's sliding along something because it's slippery and wet. The third object is going to be 18. Now for me, 18, since it's t-f, is toffee. So you can imagine this sweet, sticky candy in your third location in the room. The fourth location is going to have a nut for the number 21. And make sure that you can relate the nut to the place that it is very strongly. Maybe it's on a piece of furniture and it's stuck with, it's an acorn with its hook stuck in the furniture or something like that. Make sure that when you think of the piece of furniture, which is your trigger,

you'll think of the nut and then the number 21. And then in the fifth place, we're going to put a mnemonic for the number 27. And this one's tricky because there aren't too many objects that go with an N and a K, but what I've chosen is the word knick-knack. And for me, a snow globe represents that. Now make sure you can look around this room and you can see all five of those objects.

There's a dish of acid in the first place. There's a bar of soap in the second place. There's toffee in the third place, a nut in the first place, there's a bar of soap in the second place, there's toffee in the third place, a nut in the fourth place, and then a knick-knack or a snow globe in the fifth place. Now let's relate all of those objects to what each of these verses and also the sections around them are about. The first verse represents the greeting, so it's just Paul and Timothy, servants of Christ Jesus, to all the saints in Christ Jesus who are at Philippi with the overseers and deacons. So we're naming a bunch

of people, and it's really not that hard to put Paul, Timothy, overseers, and deacons in the dish of acid. Or maybe you'd have Paul and Timothy standing next to it, and then the overseers and deacons are inside the dish, and Paul and Timothy are looking into it. You might have particular people represent Paul and Timothy, but one way or another, it's not too hard to relate that dish of acid to the greeting. Okay, in our second place, we have the bar of soap, and that's verse 9, where he's talking about thanksgiving and prayer. That's the whole second section, and you want to tie the bar of soap specifically to the verse. And it's my prayer that your love may abound more and more with knowledge and all discernment.

So picture whatever the soap is slipping on. And imagine that there are suds building up, suds with bubbles that are shaped like hearts. And they keep growing and growing. And then you see numbers and other facts and things inside the bubbles. So that just represents the love growing and the knowledge and discernment being involved with that. So that's verse 9 because it's soap. Next we have the toffee, and the section that this is about is about preaching the gospel, about the advancement of the gospel. And what Paul says is, what then? Only that in every way,

whether in pretense or in truth, Christ is proclaimed, and in that I rejoice. In other words, regardless of the motive, it's still happening. And so you want to relate the toffee to that somehow. For me, what I would do is, wherever the toffee is in that room,

imagine that it's kind of melting and dripping in two directions. But both of those directions that it's dripping end up in a puddle on the floor. In other words, the two methods of getting there are still getting the job done and adding to the same puddle. Next we have the nut, and this is talking about to live is Christ. And what he says is, for me, to live is Christ and to die is gain. Now that for me is extremely easy to relate to the nut because you can imagine that the nut is growing, but it's also dying. And it reminds me of another verse of, you know, if a seed falls in the ground and dies, that's how it grows. And so it's pretty easy for me to relate it to the nut although you want to make sure to

relate it to the location as well and then finally we have 27 the knick-knack or the snow globe and what it says is only let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of christ so that whether i come and see you or am absent i may hear of you that you're standing firm in one spirit with one mind striving side by side for the faith of the gospel. That's an unusually long verse, but all you have to relate it to for now, if you don't necessarily need to memorize the entire verse, but just want the idea of the passage. What you want to do is relate this to the idea that Paul knows

that they're doing well spiritually, whether he's there or not. So you can imagine that this snow is constantly falling, but the snowman inside the knickknack is half there and half not there. That's how I would picture this, and it's just a trigger to remind me of what the verse is actually saying. Now let's just check and see how well that worked for those key verses. If you visualize this really well, you should be able to know as soon as I mention one of these topics where it is in the chapter, roughly, you know, from beginning to end, and then also give the object that it's related to. And if you have these major peg mnemonics memorized, then you can actually remember the reference of these verses as well. So let's try it. One of the topics that we mentioned was thanksgiving and prayer. And what he was talking about was praying that their love may abound.

You should remember that that's the soap. It's near the beginning of the chapter. And if you know that soap is major system for nine, you're going to remember that it's Philippians 1.9. And then if I talk about the advancement of the gospel and the way that it's advanced from envy and rivalry, but also from goodwill, you'll remember to relate that to the toffee.

Remember that it's after we were talking about the idea of the love growing. And if you know that toffee represents the verse 18 or the number 18, then you'll remember that it's Philippians 1.18. So you should hopefully already see how well this works, how amazingly this works. If you have, you know, these four different rooms for the different chapters, and then you continue filling in the different major system objects and relating them to the topics, you can think of any topic and quickly find it in Philippians, either by opening your Bible or, if you've memorized it, just opening it in your mind with this memory palace. So to continue and to complete this project, you would just relate the remaining nine verses to what they're talking about.

So just to touch on each of these really quickly without creating the mnemonics for you, just mentioning what they would be. The verse 4 of chapter 2 in the second room, well, the object is going to be a sari, or a sort of blanket that you wear, and you want to relate that to humility and the interests of others. Verse 15 would be a doll, and you want to think of shining as light in a broken world. And then verse 29 would be represented by a knob, like a doorknob, and you want to have that have something to do with receiving Epaphroditus with joy and honoring God's workers. And then in the third room, you have the number eight, which is a sofa and counting all as lost for the sake of Christ. Then verse 14 would be a tire, and you want to think about pressing toward a goal. And then verse 20, in the last place in the room, is a noose, and the verse is about how our citizenship is in heaven.

And then in the final room, you have the number eight, which again is a sofa, and it's the famous whatever is true, whatever is honorable list, that whole list of things. Think about these things. You want that on the sofa. And then the 19th verse would be a tuba. And you want to relate that to the idea that God will supply every need. And then verse 23 finally is a gnome or one of those lawn decorations. And you want to relate that to the final benediction or blessing that Paul gives to his readers. I know this was a very long episode, but hopefully that gives you all a very strong idea of how extremely powerful these memory palaces are

for quickly storing not only the way that the book is laid out, but even the specific verse references so that you can remember any given verse and look it up quickly or actually memorize all of the verses with this palace. This episode was really fun to do, and the book of Philippians is important to me, so if anybody else wants to work on collaborating on some collaborative mnemonics for actually creating materials so that everybody can memorize this book, just shoot me an email at timothy at masterofmemory..com and I'll be happy to do it with you. I just need someone to collaborate with me just so that we can make it happen because I'm working on lots of other projects at Master of Memory as well. Meanwhile, what do you want to learn? The world's

knowledge can be yours. Leave your learning request at masterofmemory.com slash question and I'll talk to you again soon. And now, on Easter Island, our tribute to 20th century art. you you you you you you you you you you you you Fien. If you know what you just heard, you're probably a nerd.