TheMoviegoer §↻

Wow, Joosep!

It is always encouraging to hear what you are up to and about your process. Not because there is a particular process that should be followed, but rather that the process reveals much about your heart. Keep up the good work.

First, I applaud your efforts on Luke without aiming for perfect recitation. While my work on Mark was with a desire for perfect recitation, I am still not there. I am not sure I will ever get there. It is a monumental task, and by way of encouragement, I have benefited much much more from a more thorough knowledge, emphasis, and focus on Mark than recitation can give. I Peter is radically different. I feel like letters are easier to get right in terms of recitation, but they are much more compressed in terms of depth. So, I am progressing ok (1st three chapters done), I don't feel like I get it yet. It's coming.

Always good to hear from you Joosep. Thanks for your faithfulness to the work!

Congrats on starting Ephesians 5. Are you still working on Luke, or have you finished?

I like the name... you were predestined to reach 2 million points ; )

Thanks, joosep!

It is fairly easy to get to the 70% mark on this site... it is the 80-100% that is really complicated. However, it really is about the process. In your earlier post, you mentioned your thoughts on Luke 11:8, and I believe that this is one of the great things about memorization. The focus provided by memorization leads to further study, meditation, contemplation, etc. and it just helps. My devotional life used to be very problematic. I would sit down to read and I would be overwhelmed by expectation. Kind of knowing that I should be doing something, but always feeling like I was now in some kind of special moment where I was supposed to have connection and revelation... I don't know. It is hard to explain. However, over the last two years, the focus of lengthy memorization has removed all of that. I no longer have time to worry about whether I am getting it right or getting something out of it. Yet, when I think about where it has taken me, my mind, my heart, etc., I know that it is good and helpful.

I love that you are digging into different translations and the Greek. My dad used to do that (he was a pastor and was pretty good at Greek and Hebrew), and his study was profoundly enhanced by knowing the language. I would come home from school and he would be surrounded by books. I would ask him what he was working on, and he would say, "you're not going to believe this, but the word x in the original Greek has multiple meanings, but we normally see it translated as x, but it can also mean y." His enthusiasm and joy of learning was awesome. You took me back a bit with Luke 11:8.

On a humorous note, I went to look up Luke 11:8 to get a sense of the verse you were mentioning, and I accidentally went to 11:18... and was totally lost.

Also, I agree with FinalAsgard. You're point about being more heavenly minded in order to be earthly good is really the heart of the Gospel. So often, we are driven by our performance and try to fix ourselves instead of focusing on Jesus and the Gospel. It isn't about improving, fixing ourselves, or what we do. Rather our attention should always be on what He has done. All action, obedience, work, etc. is informed by that.

I don't know, I hope this makes sense.