The Jeff Cavins Show (Your Catholic Bible Study Podcast) - 5 Benefits of Memorizing Scripture

Episode Date: March 27, 2026

Have you tried memorizing Scripture? Jeff invites us to commit God’s Word to memory—to hide God’s Word in our hearts so it can guide, strengthen, and transform us. Even a single verse each week can deepen our faith, renew our minds, and help us live with the mind of Christ. Email us with comments or questions at [e-mail]. Text “jeffcavins” to 33-777 to subscribe and get Jeff’s shownotes delivered straight to your email! Or visit https://media.ascensionpress.com/?s=&page=2&category%5B0%5D=Ascension%20Podcasts&category%5B1%5D=The%20Jeff%20Cavins%20Show for full shownotes!

This podcast is brought to you by Ascension. To discover even more free Catholic podcasts, videos, and resources, to help you live your faith every day, visit ascensionpress.com. Welcome to the Jeff Kaven Show, where we talk about the Bible, discipleship, and evangelization, putting it all together in living as activated disciples. This is show 475. Why memorize the Bible? Welcome to the Jeff Kaven show. I'm Jeff. And it is good to be with you talking this week about a topic that is very near and dear to my heart.

Or should I say in my heart? That is the Word of God and committing God's Word to memory. This is going to be an interesting show. I have some scriptures for you that are going to talk about hiding God's Word in your heart. And I'm going to talk to you about the benefits. I'm going to give you five benefits to do this. It's funny because over the years, right away when I mentioned memorizing scripture, people, well, I have a hard time doing that.

I'm not very good at memorizing that, to which I would say, I don't know if I quite believe that because there's a lot of things in life that we memorize because we're either required to or if it's some benefit to us or something we simply want to remember. we liked it songs to or lyrics to a song that really touched your heart, whatever it might be. You know, I don't think that God has created you or created me in such a way that we simply can't memorize something, you know, just a few words. I think we're marvelously made and God created us for himself and he gave us his words. Certainly you would think that this is something that we could tuck away in our heart for the benefits that I'm going to be going over today. So if you're in that school of thought that says, well, there are people who can memorize and people who cannot stick with me here.

And let's just see if we can't work this out. You know, sometimes people say, I'm really bad at memorizing. So I say, well, don't then. Don't memorize the Bible. Just remember it. That's easier. That word memorize kind of scares people. Hey, if you do want the notes today, you can text my name, Jeff Kaven's one word, to the number 3377.

That's 33777. Well, I am approaching, let's see, I have approached, I guess, 50 years of studying God's Word, 50 years of memorizing, 50 years of living in God's Word. And I can tell you that I remember the day that I got my first Bible, the night I was confirmed in 1971, and the time that I went out and bought a Bible after this powerful conversion at 18 years of age. And this library of God's Word that called the Bible has been the very center of my life, dedicated my life to teaching people how to read the Bible, the great adventure. We have Bible in a year, Father Mike and I did.

And I can't think of anything that is worth more of my time than spending it with God in understanding how he thinks, his plan for my life, all of that. So let's talk about that a little bit here today. And by the way, if you don't have a Bible, get on board with the Great Adventure Bible with Ascension. That's the only Bible I know of that will show you actually how to read the entire thing as a complete story. And it's really taken off.

So get a hold of a great adventure Bible. Couple it with a catechism and you're off to the races. So let's talk about this. Okay, now when I'm talking about memorizing scripture, I'm talking about taking a particular verse or verses and really committing it to your heart in such a way that it can speak to you in the future. You can go back and you can hear God's word for you, even if you hit it in your heart 30, 40 years ago. The first time that I can remember really committing something to my heart in memory was on a long trip from Florida to Iowa. I sat in the back of the car and somebody was giving me the ride and I committed Galatians 220 to memorization. And that made a huge difference in my life. I have been crucified with Christ.

It's no longer I who live, but Christ who lives in me. In the life which I now live in the flesh, I live by faith in the Son of God who loved me and delivered himself up for me. That was the first one, and it became my life verse. And I remember a time in my life where I sat in a pizza parlor in Pella, Iowa, Happy's Pizza, and memorized half of the first chapter of John, John chapter one. and then later I memorize the rest of it. And still to today, it feeds me. Now, I'm not talking about you have to know whole chapters or anything like that,

but there are key verses that are really, really solid rocks in your life when you're going through something or you're facing a particular challenge. And it would be good for you to hide that away in your heart. And it's amazing how God will bring it up at just the right moment in your life. I can bear witness to this. It's happened hundreds of times where God's word spoke. In fact, I'll even share an example with you on the show here today. So let's start this, shall we?

I want to start off by giving you a couple of scriptures before we get into the five reasons why you should really be hiding God's word into your heart. Psalm 19 and verses 9 through 11 says, The precepts of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart. The command of the Lord is clear, enlightening the eye. The fear of the Lord is pure, enduring forever. And the statutes of the Lord are true, all of them just. More desirable than gold than a horde of purest gold.

Sweeter also than honey or drippings from the comb. That's the Word of God. And then Psalm 119 is very interesting Psalm. If you haven't read that, take a few minutes this week and get into Psalm 119. It's all about the Word of God. and it goes through, you wouldn't know this if you don't know Hebrew, but it goes through the Hebrew alphabet and shows you all the different ways that God's word speaks to you and is beneficial.

So, for example, in Psalm 111, 1911, I have laid up thy word in my heart, memorization, that I might not sin against thee. Now, John tells us, if anyone says they have not sin, the truth is not in them. We all have. We have to deal with that. And here in Psalms are saying, if you lay up God's word in your heart, you probably stand a better chance of not veering off course, sinning. Or as they say in Hebrew, chet, sin. Joshua 1-8 is one of my all-time favorite verses this book of the law shall not depart out of your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night,

that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you shall make your way prosperous, and then you shall have good success. That's Joshua 1-8. So, you know, as I was preparing for this, I thought about something, and that was I remember years and years ago when I got my license. My dad brought me down in Chaska, Minnesota,

to get my driver's license, the test I was going to take. But prior to that, I had to take. take a written test to get a permit so that I could drive with my dad and practice driving. Now, that permit had all kinds of directions in it. It had laws. It had guidelines, regulations from the city on how to navigate on the highway, how to navigate on country roads, signs and what they meant, speed limits and why. And then I had to take the test and, praise God, I passed. You know, I got my permit, but it wasn't over until I took the final test. Now, the test is not simply to pass a test to get your permit when you're 15 years old. The purpose of the test is to see if you have studied

and prepared yourself to actually go out on the road where it could be dangerous. In fact, it could save someone's life if you knew the law, if you knew how to navigate and where not to go and what is permissible and not permissible. It's the same way in life with the Word of God. You're out there on the highways of life, and the question is, how do you live? How do you make decisions? What do you do when you're trapped?

What do you do when you're spiritually out of gas on the side of the road? Well, God's Word will teach you, and it will speak to you for decades to come. So let's look at the first one, shall we? And these are not in any order. But these are reasons why you should memorize Scripture. Number one, Jesus quoted the Old Testament nearly 80 times, 26 times just in the Pentateau, the first five books of the Bible, Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy.

So you have Jesus navigating his life here on Earth 2,000 years ago, and he refers to the Old Testament. that's that big chunk of paper before the New Testament. And he refers to it nearly 80 times. And so in the course of his life, the scriptures became very important. And he had hid in his heart at least 80 pieces of scripture from the Old Testament. So he sets the model for us. He is the plum line.

He is the master. And he is demonstrating to you why you should be, memorizing scripture. Now, Paul said something really important in Romans 1017, and these will be in the notes for you. He said, thus, faith comes from what is heard, and what is heard comes through the Word of Christ. Other translations say faith comes by hearing and hearing by the Word of God. In other words, if you want to grow in faith, you want to build on that theological virtue that was infused in your soul at baptism, then the Word of God is very important in you growing. And if you want to know more about Christ and you want to walk in a deeper faith,

then it's very important to be a hearer of God's word. So that's number one is that Jesus is the model. He didn't seem to navigate life without it. In fact, he used it an awful lot. And I imagine, you know, that's only the things that are written down. Can you imagine all the times that are referred to the Old Testament to talk about his fulfillment? and he didn't write those down. But he thought him, said him, shared him, who knows.

Okay, I've got four more. We're going to take a break when we come back. We're going to hit number two. You're listening to the Jeff Kaven show. Hi, I am Father Colomba, Jordan and Franciscan friar of the renewal living here in Ireland. This lent, I'm partnering with Ascension to bring you crooks, a set of daily challenges and videos in the Ascension app. Starting Ash Wednesday, we'll take on four.

challenges each day that remind us of the cross of Christ. One, reading scripture, two, praying the examined prayer, three, doing one workout or exercise and four, and dietary fast of your choice. Nothing extreme, it's about stepping into small daily challenges that rub up against our weakness so we can learn to meet God in those moments and rely on him alone.

So here's the invitation. Join me every day this Lent in the Ascension app. Get ready for a Lent that stretches you, challenges you, and draws you closer to God. Download and subscribe to the Ascension app to get started today. God bless you. I'll see you soon. Welcome back. We're talking today about why is it so important to memorize scripture or remember scripture. For those that are allergic to memorizing, we use the word remember,

kind of tricks them, but they end up doing it. So the second reason is that when Jesus was tempted, oh my, you say he was tempted. Well, yes, he was in Matthew chapter four. Remember Matthew 3, he was baptized by John the Baptist into Jordan, comes up out of the water in chapter 4 and goes off into the wilderness for 40 days and 40 nights, tested by the devil three times. And what did he do when he was tempted? Well, number one, he didn't sin, did he?

No, he didn't. He didn't at all. But when he was tempted, he didn't just bear with it. He didn't just put up with it and weighed it out. things will be okay. No, he hit it head on. How? He quoted the Bible. And in chapter four of Matthew, he specifically quoted Deuteronomy 6 and Deuteronomy 8, where Moses wrote to the younger generation in the wilderness that was going to go into the promised land. He wrote to that younger generation about the older generation, their parents, and how they failed in the desert three times. And so

Jesus, when tempted by the enemy, goes directly to Scripture and quotes it, it's a sword of the spirit. It's a weapon. It's powerful. It's sharper than any two-edged sword. Amazing. Number three, memorizing Scripture is the way to hide God's word in your heart so that it can speak to you later. Now, this is amazing. No doubt you've heard about compound interest in investing when you're young, right? I can hear my dad saying, start a savings account, start putting in some money now because you have the advantage of compound interest in years. Wow, was he right, you know? If I had been 14, 12 years old, 13, 14 years old, mowing lawns and shoveling driveways in Minnesota,

and I had put away $4,000 or $5,000. Can you imagine how that would grow over time? Well, I think it's kind of like that, you know. If you hide God's word in your heart, it seems to grow exponentially and compounding interest is really an amazing thing. And that seems to be what happens, you know, in the human heart. If you put God's word in there, it grows and it will feed you and it will correct you and it will encourage you and it will warn you and it will admonish you and it will instruct you

and all these different things if you will put it in there. Now, if you don't put the word of God in your heart, how is he going to speak to you? Now, I know he can speak in a lot of different ways. Don't get me wrong, but primarily he speaks through his word. If you want to know what God is saying, be where he's speaking. And he's speaking in his word. So Paul wrote to the Colossians, chapter 3 and verse 16, that's easy to remember. Just remember John 316, but it's only different. So, Colossians 316 says, let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly. Let me pause there for a moment. Is that happening in your life? Is the Word of God dwelling in you richly? Richly, not just dwelling in you Sunday to Sunday and kind of forgetting. Is it dwelling in you

richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing, solving, and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. Very powerful. This point number three is very important. You put it in today, it may speak to you tomorrow. You put it in your heart today. It may speak to you in a year. It might be five years.

It might be 10 years. Let me give you an example of how this spoke to me. I was back, oh, what was this? Back in 1992, I think. I was a pastor in Dayton, Ohio, if that's before, obviously, before I came back to the Catholic Church, but I was also getting a degree at a university by, I was just, it's sort of fun. You know, I wanted to learn. So I got a degree in the Harvard Great Books program.

And you have to read all the literature from ancient Mesopotamia to the Industrial Revolution. You've got to give oral presentations, written presentations, and demonstrate that you have a good grasp. of all the literature in different disciplines. It really was an awful lot of fun. But anyway, one day I was walking across the campus, wasn't prepared for anything, really. I needed to just so check something out, I think, at the library. I had my jeans on, my Birkenstocks and a T-shirt.

I still remember it, a white t-shirt, walking across the campus. And suddenly one of the instructors who knew me started yelling, Pastor Jeff, you know, yelling at my name. And I turned and said, what? And they came huffing and puffing and puffing. and running up to me and they said, we got a big problem. And you can help. I said, what's the big problem?

And they said, well, we're having a debate, a pro-life, pro-choice debate in the theater on campus. We got five women who are on the pro-choice side, but the priests that we were going to have, we can't use them because, and I know this sounds crazy, we can't get them in the elevator. It was up, I think, on the third floor of the debate or something like that. And back then they had these elevators

that were so small, and this priest must have been much bigger. And they couldn't get them in there. And they said, can you debate the women pro-choice, pro-life? I thought, oh, my. I looked down, saw my burke, saw my jeans, my white t-shirt. Oh, my. I wanted to say, you know, I'm not really prepared. But then you know what happened?

A scripture popped up in my mind that I had hid in my heart. heart. Probably a couple years before that. It was Isaiah 49-2. Listen, he has made my mouth like a sharp sword. In the shadow of his hand, he has concealed me, and he has also made me a polished arrow hidden in his quiver. That came into my mind out of nowhere. I don't own a bow. I don't have an arrow, but I studied it. And I studied Isaiah 49-2. And there I am put on the spot in what happens, cha-ching, the word of God pays out. And it speaks to me.

You, Jeff, are a polished arrow in the quiver of the Lord. You make my mouth like a sharp sword. And I knew what the answer was at that point. The answer was yes. And I went on and conducted, I was part of a debate. On the way in, the lady said to me, she goes, oh, there's only a couple things you can't do. One, you can't quote the Bible or mention God.

Number two, it's based on Aristotelian logic. I thought, oh, okay. What she didn't know was that logic was one of my favorite classes in undergrad. So the debate went very well. It really did. Isaiah also said in chapter 26 and verse 3, you keep him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on you because he trusts in you.

Isn't that beautiful? Okay, so number four, we're talking about why should you remember, I'm not going to memorize, why you should remember God's word and hide it in your heart. And here's number four. The scriptures give you the heart and plan of God.

You need a plan. Everybody needs a plan for life. Everybody should know what this road of life looks like and what the goal is. Scripture gives you the plan of God. Hebrews 413 says, For the Word of God is living and active sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing to the division of soul and spirit of joints and marrow, and discerning the thoughts and intentions of the heart. You see, God has a plan, and his word can guide and lead you on it, and in the midst of it can correct you when you go off course, can comfort you when difficult things happen, and encourage you

when you feel down. Number five, the fifth one, and I love this, Paul told the Corinthians about it, and that is this, we have the mind of Christ. Whose mind do you have during the day? Whose thoughts are your thoughts? Where do your thoughts come from? Whose advice do you take? Who gave you that stock pick for life? Well, the Word of God will give you the mind of Christ. Paul said in 1st Corinthians 216, he said, for who has understood the mind of the Lord so as to instruct him?

But we, speaking of the church, but we have the mind of Christ. Well, you didn't just get it. You didn't just show up in church and say, wow, this is very transformative. I just walked into a church and I have the mind of Christ. No, you have the mind of Christ because you listen to His Word and you have hidden it in your heart. That's what you did. Even if you can't say it, you did it.

In Romans 12, too, Paul said, do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed. You get that? but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect. You talk about good stuff here. You know, what I'm sharing with you right now could make the biggest difference in your life

five years down the road here, 10 years, next week. Don't be conformed to this world, which is exactly what this world is trying to do right now. Trust me, you know it, right? you know it, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. How do you do that? It's the word of God. That you may prove what is the will of God.

See, the mind being transformed by the word of God also reveals the will of God, kind of our first point. That is amazing. So as we get ready to close here, let me give you just a little bit of advice that might be helpful for you in remembering God's word. do you know that if you set out to memorize one verse a week, a whole week you have to memorize one scripture, I'm just thinking about this, let me just figure this out. We've got, in one week you have 168 hours. Do you think that in 168 hours you could memorize one verse?

Now, if you do this every week, you have 52 verses. Isn't that something? You have 52 scriptures. Here's another approach. Memorize one verse from each of the 12 periods in the Great Adventure timeline. Just one. You'll have 12. use index cards or pop-up reminders on your smartphone.

Carry a card, an index card around with you in your back pocket or your purse wherever for the week. There's so many different ways that you can go about this, but my main point today is do it. Do it. You know you can. So let's go ahead and do that. Let's commit ourselves to remembering God's word for those five reasons that I gave you. Let's pray. Name of the Father's Son and the Holy Spirit.

Jesus, thank you so much for the life you've given us. Thank you for giving us your word, the Holy Spirit, to dwell in us. We do have your mind. You've given us a mind that can be renewed with your word. Lord Jesus, help us to take the next step in dipping our hearts into your word and learning from your word and being transformed by your word, led by your word too in life. we thank you for this opportunity and we rejoice in the fact that we all have access to your word. In Jesus' name, amen. Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit. Love you.

God bless.