Recent activity from joosep§↻

Only by the grace of God. I've never met you, PeterP, but I fully believe the same of you. At the risk of sounding overly sentimental, I look forward to meeting you in heaven!

those are beautiful, kind words. Thank you. I seem to recall also that you were also preparing to teach a Sunday School class at the time?

Well, I will try to answer :) I've been here for most of the time since May 2015. At first I used the site as it was intended to be used; add verses, review, and then gradually review less frequently until some of those reach 100% progress, generally after about 14 months or so.
The problem that I've always run into is that I sort of "bounce" between two desires: the desire to focus a lot on a number of different passages and in that way to "internalize" and eventually memorize them, and the desire or the concern that by spending so much time on that, I'm neglecting the very large rest-of-the-Bible. That's one reason why I've appeared to be frequently changing my mind as to what I am doing or as to how I'm using this site -- because I have indeed frequently changed my mind, perhaps 2 or 3 times a year I guess.
So for a while after joining in May 2015 I used the site as intended, but I ended up adding too many verses, because of the fear of neglecting the rest of the Bible. (I'm a firm believer in the importance of reading the Bible and doing one's level best to understand what you read in the context of Scripture as a whole). So as I began to add too many passages, and then those passages came up for review, and then several verses of them went backward in their progress percentage, and then I was dealing with even more passages because the ones where I had "regressed" verses were coming up more quickly for review .... as you can see, my review queue became very, very long.
At that point I think I re-set everything and started over. And then I used some other methods. I worked on Luke in order for a while, and it was indeed a great blessing -- but I finally decided that I didn't want to concern myself with bringing a verse up to 100% progress anymore. I decided that meditating on verses on a day to day basis and using that as a devotional method was the more important thing. So I finally landed with my present method and I'm not promising how long it will last. I can say that I'm aiming for my time here every day that I primarily spend in the presence of God. I'm not always perfect with that, I'm frequently imperfect, but that is my aim. And so I hit on this 98% method.
One reason I don't think anymore about bringing them up to 100% progress, is because I've found on so many occasions when I review them 6 months or so later, half of them lost their "Fully Learnt" status. I just don't want to spend the rest of my life (I'm 68) working on the same verses over and over and over. I want to incorporate into myself as much of God's Word as is possible.
As I've said before, these are personal thoughts, very personal, and not meant as a judgment or criticism of how anyone else may be using this website.
Now to attempt to answer your question: how is it relational? how is it internalized, or what do I mean by that? Part of it being relational is if I act in obedience in response. For example, I mentioned Ephesians 5:15-33. As you probably remember, that includes the phrase, "Husbands, love your wives ....". Paul spends the last 12 verses of that passage expounding on the relationship between wives and husbands, husbands and wives, Christ and the church. It's an incredibly beautiful and rich passage. I hadn't recalled before or focussed on the fact that he spent so long, 12 verses, on this one point. But as to how is it relational, and how is it a matter of obedience? After spending several days on this passage and repeating it ten times, I found that doing so affected how I related to my wife, how I treated her, how I spoke to her. God is my judge, He knows how well I did or did not do. But I did feel that there was some obedience to what I had been "internalizing" and that .... well, it's a "feeling", it's not objective, but it made me feel blessed in the sense that I felt a little closer to God. I felt He was pleased with me, that I had in some small measure, obeyed His word.
It's relational in that I talk to Him about it as I do it. It's internalized in that I remember it later, maybe not word for word, but after repeating it so many times, I can sort of see an image of the passage in my mind, in general. There's a beautiful comment on that video to which I gave you a link; a widow who said, that she remembers His Words in the night. She reads out loud to herself before going to bed, and when she wakes up because of her insomnia, she remembers His words. It's the first comment on that video.
I will quote her here: "A widow, I sit alone in the evening and read aloud. First time through, and I’m seeing things I’d never noticed before. I’m the bread of life: communion, etc. I’m averaging 4 to 5 chapters a night. Then I go to bed. His words stay with me through the night. I am an insomniac and I’m too often awake between 1 and 4 am. Jesus’ words come back to me then and I go back to sleep." That's what I mean by internalizing.
The greatest benefit, is I can see how it affects in a good way my relationship with God. But that was also true way back in 2015 when I came here and followed the recommended review process. It was true then also, and also when I was working on Luke; the Word of God cleanses our minds and affects our behavior, if we obey it. This is the greatest benefit. The difference is for me I'm hoping, if I stick with this, to move on to many 98% passages. Whether or not I will come back to them, I can't say :) I still have that insane desire to internalize as much of the Bible as I possibly can.
How have I been challenged? what comes to mind is sometimes I want to move on too quickly. I get in a hurry, and when I do I'm not thinking so much about what the verses mean, I start thinking about how this is taking too long, or something.

Thank you for your kind words, TheMoviegoer.
I relate to everything you wrote and I truly think it's wonderful what you are doing!
----
Now, I will try to describe succinctly what I've been doing these days:
I'm taking one passage at a time and then I keep repeating it until I can review it at a "high" level of remembering.
For example, recently I was working on Ephesians 5:15-33.
Over a period of several days I repeated it 10 times.
My goal is to reach at least 98% of the possible Learnscripture.net points, not counting bonus points.
For Ephesians 5:15-33, I reached 98% on the tenth repetition; this was a passage I already knew fairly well.
What do I mean by 98%? At the end of each session, having reviewed all the verses, I copy and paste the individual totals of "Session Points" into a spreadsheet. I do this so that I can remove the bonus points. Ephesians 5:15-33 has 348 words (I use an online word counter to get this result). 348 words X 20 points per word is a maximum 6840 points possible for the passage, not counting the bonuses. I remove the bonus points since this skews the results. After taking out the bonus points, I calculate the new session total.
So, on the 10th repetition for Ephesians 5:15-33, I got a total of more than 98% of that 6840 I mentioned earlier.
Once I've reached 98% on a passage using this method, I move on to another passage. Sometimes I work on more than one passage at a time.
I've been doing this since mid-June. I've completed Ephesians 1-5 during that time. The purpose is not to go back to Ephesians 1-5 later but to keep moving forward with other passages. At this rate, it would take me more than 6 or 7 years to complete the entire New Testament. Whether I will persist with that or not, only God knows, but in any case I'm enjoying the ride.
(I've also been working on miscellaneous other passages as you see here from Acts 7, but those I'm not attempting to bring up to 98%).
For anyone who has read all of this, I pray that it is beneficial in some way :)
I'm finding that by the time I reach 98%, I've really got a feel for what the author is trying to tell us; that is, what GOD is telling us!
This is what I mean by internalizing God's Word and making the process relational -- i.e., relational with God Himself!
But everyone has their own method of doing that, and I respect those methods. This is just one method I have been using :)

congratulations, that's a very special achievement, and may God use those verses for the bearing of fruit in and through your life.

amen

Thank you! I'm using a spreadsheet by which I rotate different sections of scripture. I aim for a lot of repetition of a variety of passages. Some days I don't have much time to work on them. I don't concern myself with progress percentages anymore or progress going backward; rather I'm trying to internalize each passage at hand. What I'm talking about is conveyed in this video: https://youtu.be/JoYYy5qoumY?si=wLkYuGU_3VEo-HTu

It's nice to hear from you, and if you have the time, please share what you are working on

Wow. What an amazing speech! Keep up the great work, joosep!

Thank you! I'm using a spreadsheet by which I rotate different sections of scripture. I aim for a lot of repetition of a variety of passages. Some days I don't have much time to work on them. I don't concern myself with progress percentages anymore or progress going backward; rather I'm trying to internalize each passage at hand. What I'm talking about is conveyed in this video: https://youtu.be/JoYYy5qoumY?si=wLkYuGU_3VEo-HTu

It's nice to hear from you, and if you have the time, please share what you are working on

Thanks, Joosep! I am just finishing up II Peter. So, now I have Mark, I Peter, and II Peter memorized. But I really appreciate what you are saying about internalized passages. There are two things that are difficult for me, which are hard on this site too through no fault of the site.

1. Memorization doesn't really take hold when you don't understand the passage. I memorize first, and then eventually get a better understanding of the passage, so I am doing things in reverse.

2. The way verses break sentences make things really difficult to memorize well. For example, in II Peter 2 it says (and i don't usually memorize the verse numbers), "But these, like irrational animals, creatures of instinct, born to be caught and destroyed, blaspheming about matter of which they are ignorant, will also be destroyed in their destruction," Now this ends the verse mid sentence and feels like a sentence. But the next verse starts... "suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing. They count it pleasure..." That phrase "suffering wrong as the wage for their wrongdoing" is the end of the sentence, but because of the verse breaks, you have to really work at getting the thoughts completely right.

Anyway, sorry to launch into a bunch of weird struggles, but it does matter when you are trying to understand the passages well.

Now I will watch the video you sent.

Always good to hear from you joosep! You are such an encouragement.

Thank you for your kind words, TheMoviegoer.
I relate to everything you wrote and I truly think it's wonderful what you are doing!
----
Now, I will try to describe succinctly what I've been doing these days:
I'm taking one passage at a time and then I keep repeating it until I can review it at a "high" level of remembering.
For example, recently I was working on Ephesians 5:15-33.
Over a period of several days I repeated it 10 times.
My goal is to reach at least 98% of the possible Learnscripture.net points, not counting bonus points.
For Ephesians 5:15-33, I reached 98% on the tenth repetition; this was a passage I already knew fairly well.
What do I mean by 98%? At the end of each session, having reviewed all the verses, I copy and paste the individual totals of "Session Points" into a spreadsheet. I do this so that I can remove the bonus points. Ephesians 5:15-33 has 348 words (I use an online word counter to get this result). 348 words X 20 points per word is a maximum 6840 points possible for the passage, not counting the bonuses. I remove the bonus points since this skews the results. After taking out the bonus points, I calculate the new session total.
So, on the 10th repetition for Ephesians 5:15-33, I got a total of more than 98% of that 6840 I mentioned earlier.
Once I've reached 98% on a passage using this method, I move on to another passage. Sometimes I work on more than one passage at a time.
I've been doing this since mid-June. I've completed Ephesians 1-5 during that time. The purpose is not to go back to Ephesians 1-5 later but to keep moving forward with other passages. At this rate, it would take me more than 6 or 7 years to complete the entire New Testament. Whether I will persist with that or not, only God knows, but in any case I'm enjoying the ride.
(I've also been working on miscellaneous other passages as you see here from Acts 7, but those I'm not attempting to bring up to 98%).
For anyone who has read all of this, I pray that it is beneficial in some way :)
I'm finding that by the time I reach 98%, I've really got a feel for what the author is trying to tell us; that is, what GOD is telling us!
This is what I mean by internalizing God's Word and making the process relational -- i.e., relational with God Himself!
But everyone has their own method of doing that, and I respect those methods. This is just one method I have been using :)

This is very commendable, joosep! I do believe there is great value in your approach. There is another user on the site that has at least started each verse of the Bible (A1, I believe). I am probably the opposite as I really try to thoroughly commit and refresh the passages I work on. However, moving through as you described and achieving a high percentage of recitation is awesome. My question for you is open... What is the greatest benefit of your method? Or How have you most enjoyed or been challenged by your process? I believe I am still learning some ways to benefit from my own approach (cooky as it is at times). However, I am always curious about how this site and memorization as a whole informs people who undertake it. You mention some things, like getting the feel for author's intent (and God's of course), but internalizing and the relational are more subjective and harder to understand. To me, I love that when reading through the OT, I see things differently for having memorized Mark's Gospel and Peter's letters. Some direct reference and some not so direct. I just hope I can keep going. I find this much better than my previous devotional approaches.

Well, I will try to answer :) I've been here for most of the time since May 2015. At first I used the site as it was intended to be used; add verses, review, and then gradually review less frequently until some of those reach 100% progress, generally after about 14 months or so.
The problem that I've always run into is that I sort of "bounce" between two desires: the desire to focus a lot on a number of different passages and in that way to "internalize" and eventually memorize them, and the desire or the concern that by spending so much time on that, I'm neglecting the very large rest-of-the-Bible. That's one reason why I've appeared to be frequently changing my mind as to what I am doing or as to how I'm using this site -- because I have indeed frequently changed my mind, perhaps 2 or 3 times a year I guess.
So for a while after joining in May 2015 I used the site as intended, but I ended up adding too many verses, because of the fear of neglecting the rest of the Bible. (I'm a firm believer in the importance of reading the Bible and doing one's level best to understand what you read in the context of Scripture as a whole). So as I began to add too many passages, and then those passages came up for review, and then several verses of them went backward in their progress percentage, and then I was dealing with even more passages because the ones where I had "regressed" verses were coming up more quickly for review .... as you can see, my review queue became very, very long.
At that point I think I re-set everything and started over. And then I used some other methods. I worked on Luke in order for a while, and it was indeed a great blessing -- but I finally decided that I didn't want to concern myself with bringing a verse up to 100% progress anymore. I decided that meditating on verses on a day to day basis and using that as a devotional method was the more important thing. So I finally landed with my present method and I'm not promising how long it will last. I can say that I'm aiming for my time here every day that I primarily spend in the presence of God. I'm not always perfect with that, I'm frequently imperfect, but that is my aim. And so I hit on this 98% method.
One reason I don't think anymore about bringing them up to 100% progress, is because I've found on so many occasions when I review them 6 months or so later, half of them lost their "Fully Learnt" status. I just don't want to spend the rest of my life (I'm 68) working on the same verses over and over and over. I want to incorporate into myself as much of God's Word as is possible.
As I've said before, these are personal thoughts, very personal, and not meant as a judgment or criticism of how anyone else may be using this website.
Now to attempt to answer your question: how is it relational? how is it internalized, or what do I mean by that? Part of it being relational is if I act in obedience in response. For example, I mentioned Ephesians 5:15-33. As you probably remember, that includes the phrase, "Husbands, love your wives ....". Paul spends the last 12 verses of that passage expounding on the relationship between wives and husbands, husbands and wives, Christ and the church. It's an incredibly beautiful and rich passage. I hadn't recalled before or focussed on the fact that he spent so long, 12 verses, on this one point. But as to how is it relational, and how is it a matter of obedience? After spending several days on this passage and repeating it ten times, I found that doing so affected how I related to my wife, how I treated her, how I spoke to her. God is my judge, He knows how well I did or did not do. But I did feel that there was some obedience to what I had been "internalizing" and that .... well, it's a "feeling", it's not objective, but it made me feel blessed in the sense that I felt a little closer to God. I felt He was pleased with me, that I had in some small measure, obeyed His word.
It's relational in that I talk to Him about it as I do it. It's internalized in that I remember it later, maybe not word for word, but after repeating it so many times, I can sort of see an image of the passage in my mind, in general. There's a beautiful comment on that video to which I gave you a link; a widow who said, that she remembers His Words in the night. She reads out loud to herself before going to bed, and when she wakes up because of her insomnia, she remembers His words. It's the first comment on that video.
I will quote her here: "A widow, I sit alone in the evening and read aloud. First time through, and I’m seeing things I’d never noticed before. I’m the bread of life: communion, etc. I’m averaging 4 to 5 chapters a night. Then I go to bed. His words stay with me through the night. I am an insomniac and I’m too often awake between 1 and 4 am. Jesus’ words come back to me then and I go back to sleep." That's what I mean by internalizing.
The greatest benefit, is I can see how it affects in a good way my relationship with God. But that was also true way back in 2015 when I came here and followed the recommended review process. It was true then also, and also when I was working on Luke; the Word of God cleanses our minds and affects our behavior, if we obey it. This is the greatest benefit. The difference is for me I'm hoping, if I stick with this, to move on to many 98% passages. Whether or not I will come back to them, I can't say :) I still have that insane desire to internalize as much of the Bible as I possibly can.
How have I been challenged? what comes to mind is sometimes I want to move on too quickly. I get in a hurry, and when I do I'm not thinking so much about what the verses mean, I start thinking about how this is taking too long, or something.

What a joy, Joosep! It is truly good to hear the honest, heartfelt desire to grow closer to God through His word, while at the same time recognizing that it make take time to find the best process to do it. It is funny how much I recognize many of the difficulties you have faced with using the site. I may have told you this, but I started memorizing Mark because I was reading a commentary that would present a passage and then spend several pages unpacking it while referencing earlier parts of the chapter. Well, I would get frustrated because I would have to relook up the earlier passage and reread it to understand what the commentary was referring to. I said to myself, "it would be easier if I just had the gospel memorized. Sure enough, I googled it, and found a guy on the web who while preparing to write a commentary on I Corinthians, took time to memorize the book first. I was so inspired, I found this site and jumped in with both feet. Years on, I feel like you. I believe I have been richly rewarded with insight, recall, and a sense of knowing the word more. But at the same time, I don't want to get fanatical or obsessed improperly. I can see why you changed motives, methods, etc. over the years. But to me, the most important thing is that you are still committed to the word. It is our most powerful and best means to know our lord and savior. For that, I am super grateful. Keep up the good work, brother! I hope when I am 68, I am still going strong in the word as well!

those are beautiful, kind words. Thank you. I seem to recall also that you were also preparing to teach a Sunday School class at the time?

Thank you both for sharing. It’s truly a pleasure to read this thread, ‘listening’ to two people who are so deeply committed to knowing the Bible and living in the presence of God.

Only by the grace of God. I've never met you, PeterP, but I fully believe the same of you. At the risk of sounding overly sentimental, I look forward to meeting you in heaven!

Yes! It is a delight to see and hear from you, PeterP! And I agree with joosep... all by the grace of God. And that grace includes those who have built this site and the people on it who share such encouraging words.

Congratulations on reaching that mark! I pray that you will have God's peace inside and that His Word in you will bear much fruit.

Thank you JDJDJD. I'm actually not using that spreadsheet anymore, I've taken a different approach, but I'm still here and still seeking to internalize God's Word. Good to see you back, JDJDJD!

amen, God is good

May the Lord bless you as you study :)