6 Easy Ways You Can Memorize Scripture Successfully

No matter how many times you’ve tried to memorize scripture in the past, most likely you’ve just haven’t found a way that works for you. Here are 6 different ways to memorize your favorite Bible verses along with helpful resources to make memorizing scripture a success.

When it’s helpful to have Scripture Memorized

The other night I couldn’t sleep. With the house quiet and nothing to distract me, negative thoughts began to creep into my mind.

I began to fear every noise I heard. The longer I lay there, the longer my mind began worrying about the day ahead of me and the worries it would bring.

I prayed to God for a calming word or verse that I could repeat in my head that would counter the negative thoughts.

I will say of the LORD, He is my refuge and my fortress: my God; in him will I trust. 

Psalm 91:2

It’s a time like this late at night or when a friend confides she’s going through a hard time and the Holy Spirit provides a scripture for me to pray over her that I’m grateful I’ve memorized various Bible verses.

What are the easiest ways to memorize scripture?

Before you begin any method listed below, ask the Holy Spirit to help you memorize the Bible verse and recall the verse in the future for a time when you need it most.

Read, Write, Recall 

Most people naturally memorize scripture by immersing themselves in reading the Bible.

Over the years, you’ll memorize verses through reading the same verses over and over, listening to others speak these verses either through sermons or during a bible study, and recalling and saying them yourself.

To be more intentional in this practice, I love to write out specific scriptures during my daily prayer time with God.

Related: Promising Tips for Uplifting Quiet Time with God

Your prayer time is a great time to meditate on a particular scripture verse.

These hand lettering practice sheets are perfect to use for this very thing!

Learn the Context

Learn the context of the verse you’re trying to learn.

Just repeating or writing the verse over and over won’t help your mind memorize anything if you don’t understand what you’re saying.

It’ll be like that chemistry test you studied for then promptly forgot all the answers to.

  • What does the verse before and after it say?
  • Who is the author of the book?
  • Why was the verse written?
  • Who was the verse written to?
  • How can you apply this verse to your life?
  • What was life like when this verse/book was written?

Say it out loud

Write the verse out or print it out and place it at various places around your life. Whenever you have a spare 30 seconds, read the verse out loud.

The only danger is that you will be surprised how quickly the verse will become part of your décor, and you won’t notice it anymore.

I tend to put my little verse cards on the corner of my fridge or desk or mirror, and within a day, I barely glance at it.

For this strategy to work, you might need to be more obvious and place the verse in the middle of your fridge or mirror.

There’s a lot of printable verses to hang up around your house and memorize inside the Mini-Faith Bundle.

 First letter of each word

I learned this way to memorize scripture last year, and it’s one of my favorites.

You take the first letter of each word in the verse and write it down. You look only at those letters to help your brain recall the actual words and then begin to memorize the whole verse.

Sometimes I write the first letter of each verse down on my wrist or hand to look down on it during the day and test myself at various times.

There are fun tattoos that do the same thing from Dwell.

Bible Memory app 

A great app to help you memorize Bible verses is the Bible Memory App. You set up an account and can work on multiple verses at the same time. It tracks your progress and brings back verses to make sure you haven’t forgotten them.

This app is great because it slowly removes words, and you type in the first letter until you can recall the full verse.

Spiral Notecards

For years I used a spiral notecard to memorize scripture.

Each day I would repeat a verse and work on memorizing it. When I complete, I’d mark place a mark on the back. Then I would add another verse.  

After 50 days of working on one verse, that verse now gets moved to a weekly rotation. After 50 weeks, it gets moved to a monthly rotation.

The idea is that each scripture gets memorized for 50 days, 50 weeks, 50 months.

You can add as many verses as you want, whenever you want, but no more than one new verse a day.

the most fun way to memorize Bible verses

The most fun way to memorize bible verses is through song. And from all the ways I’ve tried and researched, it’s also the easiest.

Memorizing by song is also how I taught my kids (and myself) to memorize 26 Bible verses in 26 weeks. We didn’t learn that many bible verses because we worked hard but because we were having so much fun.

Each verse was transformed into a different song. And although I searched to find super catchy songs so my kids would gravitate to them, it worked for me too.

You can find the index to the 26 bible verses here.

What are the best scriptures to memorize?

The best scriptures to memorize are the ones that speak to your heart and draw you closer to God. If you don’t know where to start, here’s a list of encouraging bible verses.

6 Easy Ways You Can Memorize Scripture Successfully