Congratulations, MrsSpooner! As has often been said here, the points represent a lot of repetition of God's Word, and keeping our thinking centered in and founded upon the truths of God's Word is always a good thing. I heard a preacher say that the Word of God as we meditate upon it, cleans our minds. He used John 17:17 as a reference.
I totally agree. When I was first converted someone told me that the Psalms would grow in their comfort and wisdom, and they have. Thanks for saying hi, many blessings to you as well.
Amen! You know, I am finding so much more comfort and instruction in the Psalms that I used to. And I just want to give you a morning "hello" after not doing so for a long time. May the Lord bless you!
I totally agree. When I was first converted someone told me that the Psalms would grow in their comfort and wisdom, and they have. Thanks for saying hi, many blessings to you as well.
Hi Joosep, thank you, great I was hoping for some advice too! I have 'learnt' Romans and Mark's gospel, so I am trying to concentrate on them only. A spreadsheet is a good idea...
I realized that I was guilty of not reading your comment very carefully, regarding how your review list is daunting.
I'll only say it's a problem I've experienced too, because I was too enthusiastic at the beginning, for me back in 2015, and started too many verses. It's not easy as a beginner to anticipate what your review queue will look like 6 months or 1 year on.
I use a spreadsheet now instead of the review list, and I choose what sets I will work on from that spreadsheet.
In your own case would it help to perhaps to focus on 2 or 3 specific books of the Bible, or 5 or 6 passages, and work on those for a while until they are off your review list? What I mean is to in some way, "let go" of the review list.
I'm not trying to tell you what to do, only offering "food for thought" and hoping that it will be helpful :)
Hi Joosep, thank you, great I was hoping for some advice too! I have 'learnt' Romans and Mark's gospel, so I am trying to concentrate on them only. A spreadsheet is a good idea...
Another possible way of managing the review queue… when I was in the same position, I realised I had to ‘let go’ the one-new-verse-every-day habit. I was motivated towards the consistent learner badges, and it was a great rhythm, to add one new verse each day. But the review queue was growing ever longer, because I was completing verses at a lot less than 7 per week. (I’m sure I have some verses that have been in the review queue for literally years, because I stumble over them again and again!) So I told myself I didn’t need to add a new verse each day - the daily habit of Bible memory work is what’s important for me. And now I allow myself pauses between adding new chapters, which gives me time to keep up with the review queue. I’ve found for myself, that having 600-700 verses uncompleted is manageable. But it will depend on how much time you want to spend each day, and how good your long-term memory is.
Regarding the review queue, sometimes it is good to combine sets to maintain your mental sanity. For example, I have almost 70 sets for the book of John. As a result, my review queue goes on for days, and it was depressing to look at sometimes. Since perception is reality, I decided to change the perception. So I combined those 70 sets into 21 chapter sets. Eventually, I created sets that were several chapters long, reducing John to 5 sets. My review queue now looks a lot more manageable.
Sometimes you also just have to perform triage on your review queue. There is no rule that says every verse you learn must go to 100% completion. There is also no rule that says you must review a verse tomorrow that you learned today. There is no need to put that pressure on yourself. If you need to put aside some verses to fit your schedule, go for it. Memorizing is hard, but it need not be a chore.
Personally, I like learning a new verse every day even if I don't keep them all actively on the path to mastery. I like that no matter how my day looks or my review queue looks, I'm going to learn something new today. I do not, however, review the verse the next day as most probably do. Instead, I prefer to begin reviewing them as a set once the section has been learned. I find that the verses stick better in memory when they are memorized in context with the section. I end up doing the same amount of work but just all at once instead of spread out across several days.
So, for example, I am currently in Romans 2. The first set is vv. 1-16. I found that it is easy to spread that section into vv. 1-11 and vv. 12-16. So for the first 11 days, I will learn one verse per day until the section is complete with no subsequent reviews on the following days. Once I reach the 11th verse, I will cram that section the next day, reviewing it over and over until I make no mistakes that day. The next day I will repeat the process for 12 while reviewing the previous section. So today, for example, from this hypothetical situation I will do the following in this order:
1. Learn Romans 2:12 2. Review Romans 2:1-11 multiple times 3. Review Luke 15 4. Review Romans 1 5. Review any John verses that have come up for review 6. Review any individual verses that have come up for review
This is all time permitting, of course. For example, the last few days I have done my new verse and no reviews because I've been sick. Today, I'll start my reviews again after my new verse is done. No stress, no mess.
No one process fits all. Pick and choose what works for you. We have lots of great users who find success with different processes and memorization philosophies. Just make sure your process avoids the stress which leads to burnout.
Onfire has given a lot of good advice here. One thing that both he and I do is to, in the case of a new set in which one verse is added at a time, I wait until all verses in the set have been added before I begin reviewing them regularly. I agree with onfire on this point; in my own view, in this way the verses can all progress as a group.
I personally (and here I emphasize the word personally) prefer using a spreadsheet, for these primary reasons:
1 -- I can set my own intervals for any set. Perhaps Learn Scripture thinks I can wait 6 months to review a set, but I believe that I will have forgotten a lot of it by that time; so perhaps I set an interval of 90 days instead.
2 -- Using a spreadsheet, I no longer have any problem with those "crippled verses"; meaning specifically, in a set of 10 verses, perhaps 9 of them are at around a 90% progress percentage, but one of them is at 55%, due to a lower review score. Learn Scripture will have that set appear on my review queue much sooner because of that one verse at 55%. This clutters the review queue. So, I personally, have decided not to worry about those crippled verses. As onfire said, not every verse will reach 100%, unless one limits himself to a smaller number of verses according to one's own ability to memorize; I would rather cover a larger number of verses, and accept the fact that some of them will take a very very long time to reach 100%, or perhaps they never will.
3 -- I set my own intervals in this way: my spreadsheet has a column for all the sets which I am currently reviewing. There is also a column titled "Date of last review". The next column is for the inteveral. Here I input the number of days for the interval. The next column is for the date of next review. I then input a formula, Date of last review + number of days for the interval = date of next review.
Then, I sort the spreadsheet when necessary, so that the whole sheet is ordered by that Date of Next review. In that way, all of the sets which are due today appear together.
In this way, I ignore Learn Scripture's review queue, and have established my own according to what I feel are my own abilities to memorize.
Yes, there is a lot of work in initially setting up the spreadsheet, but it is work which pays off in the long run -- again, in my own opinion :) Of course I understand that not everyone will want to go this route.
JDJD, I will pray for you. I am a twice cancer survivor, and was so dependent on the prayers of my brothers and sisters in church. Praying you will continue to feel God is really close to you as you go for your operation, and that the surgeon will get rid of all those cancerous cells. God Bless you.