Dale Johnson: Today on the podcast, I’m delighted to have with me Bryan Gaines. He’s the pastor of counseling and discipleship at Grace Community Church in Glen Rose, Texas and he is the Director there of Grace Biblical Counseling. Bryan and his wife, Laura, have been members of ACBC for nearly 20 years and just recently celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary. The Lord has really blessed them with four wonderful children, and the oldest of which just entered the supervision phase of the ACBC certification this past summer. Bryan, you’re raising them up right, brother. And he’s a regular speaker and contributor to https://thecbcd.org/ [1], that’s the Center for Biblical Counseling and Discipleship, in North Texas. And He’s taught several breakout sessions at our annual conferences in recent years. Bryan and I have a special relationship; He was the associate pastor at Grace Community there in Glen Rose, when Summer and I were members at that church, for about four years. And so, brother, love you, and appreciate you, and looking forward to our time together today.
Bryan Gaines: Likewise.
Dale Johnson: As we talk about this issue of Scripture memory, sometimes that sounds rigid and like an old-hat and crusty idea for people. But really the idea is that the Lord is giving us to dwell richly on the word. I want you to talk about how we emphasize the authority and sufficiency, by the way in which we capture the Word of God in our hearts. So, talk about this connection and how we internalized the Word and how that impacts our daily lives.
Bryan Gaines: Yeah, I think the big picture is as we consider our calling in the purpose for which God created us, obviously He has called us; He has created us for His glory. We see that in passages like 1 Corinthians 10:31. So, “whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do all for the glory of God.” And I think this kind of begs a couple questions: How do we do that? And probably even more important is, why should we want to do that? And thinking through Paul’s words there in 2 Corinthians 5:14-15, He talks about, “For the love of Christ controls or constrains, or compels us because one has died for all.” And as we think about the person and the work of the Lord Jesus Christ as is revealed in the Scriptures, as we think about the Creator of the cosmos coming down to His creation, that He would reconcile us, fallen sinners, unto Himself, going to the cross, taking the penalty for our sin, and clothing us in His righteousness. It’s that love of Christ, that controls us, compels us, and constrains us. And then, as He says there, in verse 15, “to no longer live for ourselves, but for Him, who for our sakes died and was raised.” And so, as Christ was raised from the from the dead, likewise in Christ, we are raised to walk in the newness of life is Paul writes there in Romans 6:4, and “this newness of life,” what does it look like? And again, we have to go to the Scriptures. In Jesus’ prayer in John 17:17, “sanctify them in the truth.” Your Word is truth. And as the Word of God calls us to be set apart and to Christ, so then the Word of God has to be set apart in our very hearts. I think we see that connection between Scripture memory and how we live; the knowledge of Scripture and how we live. I remember years ago, Dale, you came and you did a family conference for us there in Glen Rose at the Riverbend retreat center. One of the passages that you focused on was Deuteronomy 6, where the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And then you discussed the importance of His Word being impressed upon our hearts; that as parents, we would then be able to impress the Word of God upon our children; In whatever we do, to bring the Word of God to them. And if we’re going to be able to bring the Word of God to them, as we walk along the road, as we lie down, and as we get up, as we drive somewhere, whatever we’re doing: the Word of God has to be treasured up, so it’s available for our use. So, there’s no disconnect between the knowledge of God, His word and how we live in our conversations. Later in Deuteronomy a verse that hit me years ago, was Deuteronomy 32:47; Moses had just recounted the Lord’s goodness to them and what He has done: delivering them from slavery, making them his own people, and He is their Covenant God. And He says, “this word is no empty word for you.” It is to be your very life and inward to be people who are characterized by the Word and that involves in for us to store up that Word in our hearts.
Dale Johnson: Yes, Paul says in Colossians, “to dwell on this richly.” I love the way that you’re describing how when we dwell on it richly, it really starts to dictate how we live, how we think, how we process daily moments that we interact and have experiences. Those experiences then are seen through a grid that is built within us, this valuable Word that we have treasured in our heart. You start thinking the Words of God about your life. You start interpreting your life through that lens of what God has stored up in your heart. This is such a vital piece. I mean, when I’m talking to my students about counseling and them hiding the Word in their heart, it is so that they personally won’t sin against God. But then, they see just how transformative the Word of God is. What often happens is as the Word of God has transformed them, when they walk into the counseling room, in the depths of the Word and they know the Word has been able to change them. My goodness, if I have that confidence that the Word can change me, He can change anybody. And when we see the Word dwelling on radically change our own life, it becomes something that’s vital. So, thinking about that vitality of knowing God’s words, how it informs our thoughts and how it directs our steps in the ways that we live. Talk about some examples about how having Scripture that’s memorized proves to be really valuable in the counseling room.
Bryan Gaines: Yeah, there’s obviously a lot we can talk about there. Maybe most recently, one that really just brought me back to the goodness of God and the sufficiency of His word is through our church. We have a Ministry in Guatemala, and we work with the home, and there are some very difficult situations there, with 30-something young people. A lot of them with abuse, neglect, and horror stories that are just gut-wrenching. I found myself that week, most of them not knowing I was going to have these opportunities but having lots of formal counseling with some very hard stories. As I listened and tried to understand, it was comforting for them and encouraging to me, that the Word that had been stored up in my heart. As I heard these stories, I knew where to take them because God’s word was already there. And so, I was able to open-up and let them see the truth of God’s Word, the goodness of God, even the in the midst of their suffering, struggles, temptations and trials. That may be applied to more specific situations here back home. Many of us are parents. And the value of storing up God’s word in our own Hearts, as well as helping our kids do the same is huge in our formal and informal counseling that we have with our kids at discipling of our kids. And in one way that I’ve seen that played out over the years as with all of our kids, we’ve memorized the 26 verses in My ABC Bible Verses: Hiding God’s Word in Little Hearts, by Susan hunt. We did that even when they were about a year and a half, and just the number of times over the years where we had the opportunity if one of our kids would disobey, (I won’t pick on anyone in particular) we could ask, “What is the letter C? C is children obey your parents in all things for this is well pleasing to the Lord.” We would help them in that moment of their disobedience, to go back to what has God called you to. “Right now, what are you worshiping? And is that pleasing to the Lord?” And then out of that, we get into gospel conversations. So, it’s not “You did this against me, you’ve offended me, I’m frustrated, because you…” It’s. “Let’s consider what you’re worshipping right now and the one who is worthy of worship.”
Ya know, there’s so many other examples: anxiety, a common temptation struggle that we all have in various forms. And as we think through passages and God’s calling, as we memorize perhaps, Philippians 4:6, “Do not be anxious about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, present your requests to the Lord.” To not only have that memorized when you tend to be anxious, but to even know the context and to memorize the context of that is huge. If you’ve got it memorized, even if you don’t have the copies of Scripture with you, you can point them to the God, who is at hand; The God Who has called us because our names are written in the Book of Life to rejoice in the Lord always; Again, Paul says, “rejoice.” And we can do that, then looking to God, trusting that He’ll grant us “the peace that surpasses all understanding” and then we’re called to think on those things—those things that are excellent and praiseworthy, and then to practice those things. And so, to have that memorized, to meditate upon that for ourselves and then be able to counsel those that we work with, with a sufficiency of the Scriptures.
Dale Johnson: So, good brother, and to think we know we’re supposed to hide God’s Word in our heart. We can see as you’ve articulated so well that the value of us hiding it in our heart, has for our own lives. And then as the Lord would see fit by His providence, give us opportunity to minister that very same Word for the benefit and good of another person. And we can see the treasures of the wisdom and knowledge that we find, when we store up God’s Word in our heart. We can see its protection. We can see its guidance for us in our lives, but yet we still neglect to memorize Scripture. It’s so interesting to me about in our country right now. We’re very literate people. It’s not a hard thing for us to pick up the Word. There are so many more difficult things that we do in our lives than to pick up the Word, to read it, to work to memorize it. And yet, it’s something that we don’t devote ourselves to nearly enough. Talk about some of the hindrances that we have or things that might make a more simple task difficult for us, as we think about memorizing the Word. What are some of those hindrances?
Bryan Gaines: Yeah. And there’s a lot of them. We’re people who are prone and quick to make excuses and Scripture memory can be one of those things that’s easy to make excuses about. Maybe some of the ones I’ve heard most frequently is, for instance: “I’m too old, you know. As a kid, it was easy to memorize things, but now I’m too old.” Whatever that age is. And I was really encouraged by this not long ago: We’ve got an older man in our church who has had a lot of health issues, who suddenly lost his wife about a year ago. He now has cancer, and I just asked him, “How can I be praying for you?” And he says, “I know my days are limited. I want to make the best use of time. And in part of what that looks like is treasuring up God’s word in my heart, increasingly, I’ve gotten out of the pattern of the habit of memorizing God’s word, and so just ask me how I’m doing with that.” Well, a couple weeks later, I caught him and asked him how he was doing with that and he pulled out a couple cards with Scripture memory verses on them—about a dozen, and he quoted almost perfectly word for word. Here’s a guy in his 70s, with immense health issues, suffering from having lost his wife, and in various other things; he wasn’t too old. And if it wasn’t an excuse for him, then it’s not an excuse for most of us. I think other excuses can easily be made. I think I heard this from Randy patent years ago when someone said, “it’s too hard.” Randy came back and countered that with this: “Scripture memory is not a matter of intellect, but of interest” In other words, it’s not that we’re incapable of doing it, it’s that we really don’t value or treasure it enough to actually do it. Then building on that, I had a navigator friend who put this scenario before me. Man, you’ve probably heard it: You know, if we were to be given in the course of a week a thousand dollars, for every verse that we were to memorize, how quickly would we be able to gain the ability to memorize Scripture? And that’s so true. If we would memorize Scripture for thousand dollars a verse, in the course of a week, isn’t there a far greater reward than memorizing Scripture than $1000 per verse? I mean, the Bible itself says that the Word of God is more precious than silver and gold. We need it in standing against the evil one. We need it when suffering to remember who God is and His promises. We need it at all times. And so, it’s not a matter of intellect, but a matter of interest.
Perhaps another excuse that that’s very common is just being too busy. And to that I would graciously tell and have told many counselees, “If you’re too busy to memorize Scripture then you’re absolutely correct. You are too busy. What needs to go? How do you need to reprioritize? How do you make the best use of time?
Dale Johnson: Yeah, well said. As we think about ridding ourselves of some of those very common hindrances, remember that just because they’re common doesn’t make them right or valid excuses. Let’s talk strategically about how we can set aside specific ways to renew our minds with the Scriptures, to think, meditate and to memorize the Scriptures. So, just give some practical steps. Bryan, you are really good at this kind of stuff. So, give us some practical steps that can encourage our listeners in how we can commit Scripture to memory and start really using it in our lives. And even for those of us who counsel.
Bryan Gaines: Yeah, I think maybe one of the things that would be most helpful initially is just to think through this paradigm of trying to memorize Scripture vs. training in memorizing Scripture. We think through Paul, who in 1 Timothy 4:7-8 says to, “train yourself for the purpose of godliness.” This not just, “try to be more Godly,” but it’s to train, to go to whatever effort it takes to accomplish the prize for which you’re after. And Brian Hedges did a great job of putting this fourth. This aspect of training vs. trying in his, book Christ Formed in You: The Power of the Gospel for Personal Change and in there, they use an illustration, I thought was really helpful with music. My son, for instance, likes to play the cello. He’s very good at the cello and if you were to ask me to accompany him on a Bach Cello piece on the piano, it wouldn’t go very well. I used to play the piano. I can maybe play Mary Had a Little Lamb, but to accompany on a masterpiece like Bach, it just wouldn’t happen. I could try as hard as I want it, but it’s not going to happen because I hadn’t been training for that. Scripture memory needs to be a process of training of regularity in our lives, as we seek to continually store up God’s Word in our heart. And so, how do we do that?
I think of a lot of different ways. Number one, what are some verses that we most need to memorize, that we most need to meditate on? I would encourage people to put together a list: Who is God? What perfections of God do you need to be encouraged by? What do you need to keep in mind in the midst of your suffering or your Temptation? What are the precepts to callings in the imperatives of Scripture that God has called you to live by? You need to memorize those, to meditate upon them, that you might, then live them out. And so first, just put together a list of Scriptures. And then second, when are you going to do that? Because again, we’re all busy and our time is quickly filled up with various things. And so, when are we going to do that—set a time each day whether you’re brushing your teeth, or perhaps on your commute, you can work on Scripture memory there or at the end of your devotional time. Whatever that may look like, set a time in which you can do that. And then I think another very helpful component of that is accountability. You talked about Colossians 3:16, “let the Word of Christ dwell in you richly.” That’s something that’s done together, and just encourage each other in that. So, if we wanted to run a race, we set a date, we pick a race out. We would probably do better in that race if we got a group of guys to train with us, to encourage, to meet with us, to push us a little bit more. And when it comes to Scripture Memory often times, we can make an excuse not to do it. But if we know we’re going to meet these guys every Friday morning, and we know they’re going to ask us, “What verses have you memorized,” you are probably going to be a little more inclined to have memorized that. And so, it helps just involving others in the process to encourage us in what we’re learning, and then to help us to live out those verses to the glory of Christ in all of life.
Dale Johnson: Yeah I would add that one thing is I want to things have been really helpful to me is, as you think about memorizing passages, and go about that particular day, whether it be a promise or a precept, some sort of command where that day you’re working on, you’re seeing okay, “God help me to implement this today,” and I find that I often memorize better when I see how valuable it is in a given days’ time. Where, “Lord, I needed to call to mind today this promise that I’ve been working on in memory, and it was so perfect today.” This begins to link it to an experience in my life where I see that is who God really was, and it plays out in your life. And so that Word starts to become deeply rooted in you, because it was so meaningful in a day’s time or a week’s time or something like that. And we’ve done this in our own house, where we struggle with certain things, maybe even I think often Ephesians 4:29, “let no unwholesome communication proceed for your mouth.” I don’t know about you guys, but in our household sometimes, with lots of sinners, that’s a struggle. And okay, guys, how do we practice this with how the Lord tells us to put that stuff off? So, when we hear unwholesome language come from our mouths, “Okay, we’re going to pause and we’re going to practice what the Lord tells us to do. So, we’re going to put that off and we’re going to put on the speaking in ways that are edifying.” And then there is this sort of extra level I’m going to think about: How you’re going to hear it. I’m going to bring grace to the one who here. So how do we speak? “Okay, Sister or brother. You know, you spoke harshly, wrongly, unwholesomely or corruptingly to your sibling. We’re going to pause for a second. How do you speak a word that is satisfying? Tell me three things that you love about them and that you appreciate about them.” Hopefully now they are hiding the Word in their heart because they’ve seen how God has told us to practice these particular things. So, in learning how to take the Word, putting it into practice, and what will happen, I think is exactly what you described. As it starts to create a hunger and a treasure that we start to see. My goodness, this Word is so much more valuable and applicable to the minutiae of daily life for us to live in ways that are overcoming in terms of temptation and battles that we might struggle with or just encouragement and comfort, that we need. It’s so important in such critical times. Brother, thank you for modeling that. As I mentioned, you are an associate pastor at the place that we were members for a while. Thank you for modeling that and for teaching our people to do that, and in counseling with the beauty of the treasures of wisdom and knowledge found in Christ. So right, thanks for leading us in this discussion. I really appreciate you encouraging us in something that people look at and may even scoff at. But this is such a valuable thing for us to discipline ourselves towards. So, thanks for your time brother.
Bryan Gaines: My pleasure. It’s an honor to be here.
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