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Meditate On Scripture
The coach needs to be someone who really believes in putting the SWORD OF THE SPIRIT into the hearts of God’s people by MEMORIZATION (Meditation). The person needs to be dedicated to do that. At our church we ask the coaches to commit two hours a week for three years to coaching. If you are to be a good coach you must really believe in the power of scripture and you must be committed to getting scripture into the hearts of people. Basically, here is what the duties of a coach are:
1. Coach your student at least two hours a week. Go to whatever location necessary, but get it done.
2. Teach your student until he or she can say the entire meditation perfect without halt, help, or hesitation to you. If the student can say it perfectly, sign off.
3. Take your student to two deacons deaconesses, or church officers, one at a time to say the entire meditation perfect without halt, help, or hesitation. If this is done, ask them to sign off.
4. Take the student to your pastor to say the entire meditation perfectly, without halt, help, or hesitation. When done, ask the pastor to sign off.
5. Make arrangements with your pastor for your student to say the meditation before a meeting of the church. Plan for this recital at least two weeks ahead so that your student can invite the people who are important in his or her life to come hear the recital. Help your student mail out invitations to relatives and friends. The student has worked hard on his memory work and that work needs to be honored by parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters.
6. At the recital see that all in attendance sign the meditation. This certificate will be for the memorizer to keep as a keepsake. It is an honor that he or she has received.
7. Your student has said the meditation perfectly without halt, help, or hesitation to you, to two deacons at separate times, and to the pastor. It is important that all this is done. It is important that it is said each time correctly without halt, help, or hesitation. Do not let him or her slide. But at the time of the recital before a meeting of the church, the student may not say it perfectly. This is because of nervousness. In talking before many people, the student could make a mistake. Minor mistakes before so many people is common and should not disqualify the student who has already qualified by saying the meditation correctly four separate times.
8. Plan rewards for your student after he or she completes the third meditation. I do not recommend trips to amusement parks etc. I rather recommend more cultural things like the zoo, or museum.
Now, do you see what has happened here?
1. You have become an important person in the student’s eyes. Your students will never forget you, but more important you will be sort of an accountability partner all their life. They will not want to offend you by falling into sin.
2. The student has become better acquainted with the church officers. In many churches, children don’t have any idea who, or what a deacon is, or whether they are nice people or mean people. Your pupil will know a couple of church officers.
3. The pupil will receive the recognition and praise of the pastor. This is good whether the pupil is eight or eighty.
If you are coaching children:
There is a
“window of opportunity” to teach children the scripture. That window is from ages ten through thirteen.
They still have that childlike desire to memorize.
When we first started the Three Thirty Club, it was our intent to teach
mainly that age. Some of the
adults, however, who were coaches got hooked on scripture memorization and went
on to do all of the meditations as well. Adults
are much easier to coach. Now we
encourage adults as well children from ten up to memorize the meditations.
Children love to memorize. They start early memorizing words, names of animals, names of all their family, including cousins and all their little friends. They love to memorize lines to say in plays, or verses in church. They love to perform for their friends and family after they have memorized things.
Memorization is a wonderful gift that God gave us. We memorize the alphabet, times tables, our favorite songs. Parrots memorize only a little. We humans memorize a lot. In fact we can memorize a lot more than we do. No one has ever ran out of memory like our computers sometimes do. In fact, it seems that the more we memorize, the more ability we have to memorize even more. Some people have neglected the great gift of memory.
Memorization of scripture was called MEDITATION in the days of the Old Testament. The Jews were taught that it was good to meditate on God’s word. They were told that they would prosper if they did. Those today, who memorize scripture, testify that God blesses them for it.
We do not memorize or meditate on scripture enough today. The word of God is the SWORD OF THE SPIRIT. With the word of God, we fight off the fiery darts of the devil. (See Ephesians) You might ask, “Who needs to fight off the fiery darts of the devil?” The answer is everyone…… Old people, parents, mothers, fathers, and the children, but especially the children and especially the teen agers. Yet TEEN AGED CHILDREN generally don’t want to memorize. Most ADULTS don’t want to memorize either. (More and more adults are seeing the need to memorize scripture, as they see the blessings of doing so.) That leaves us with a group of children ages ten to thirteen, grades five through seven, who are open to memorize scripture. It is important that they do memorize scripture at this age because in a few years, they will face the fiery darts of the devil as teen aged people. It is our challenge to take a child this age and teach that child all thirty of the meditations. It takes about three years for a coach to get someone through all thirty of the meditations. The Three Thirty Club is a method to get God’s word into the hearts of children before the age of rebellion begins. We trust God’s word to help them fight Satan as they move into a rebellious age.
This is a wonderful “Window of Opportunity” that God has sent to us. In our church, we ask every week, “How long will our window of opportunity be.” We ask the question for each person who comes to our church. At our church, we encourage every adult to learn the meditations, and we encourage every adult to coach the meditations. We preach that God has made us “fishers of men” and that there is not better way to fish people out of the muck and mire of the sin and temptation of this world than to put God’s word in their hearts.
1. First memorize the Lord’s prayer as it appears in every meditation.
2. Make use of all the student’s senses by reading aloud, a verse of the meditation five times. Then see if the student can say the verse from memory. If that student can, go on to the next verse. If not, read it again until it can be said perfectly without halt, help, or hesitation.
3. Do all the verses in the meditation, one at a time before you start putting them all together. When you complete all the verses, go back to the start and see if you can string some of them together. If not, go through again, one at a time.
4. If the pupil makes an error, it is better to just ask him or her to read the verse once more and say it correctly. I do not waste a lot of time telling a student where a mistake was made. Time will be saved if you just read the verse again, together.
5. If the student is not up to a whole verse, do parts of verses. It is a joy to see students come along in their ability to memorize. I love to coach slow students.
Do you see what has happened?
Your student has learned because it was seen, heard and said aloud. As the words were driven through the brain, over and over, they wore a rut in his or her brain that is permanent. As the alphabet and times table is in your brain permanently, so is God’s word placed permanently in your pupils mind. I recently found that one of my students from twenty years ago could still recite the meditations that she had learned, even though she hasn’t gone to our church for over ten years.
If possible adults should be coaches. We do have a bright ten year old who is coaching a grandmother at our church, but this is the exception. Mothers can coach daughters, and fathers their sons. It is important that the coach’s commitment be strong as the “window of opportunity” is short. It is short whether the student is a child or an adult. If you want to be a “fisher of men,” and if you are a person who makes commitments and keeps your commitments, you should be a coach.
The coach’s reward will be very great.
Coaches are necessary for most of us because we are inclined to put things off if not pressed. A coach gives just enough pressure to keep us on track.
Home / The Meditations / About the Three Thirty Club / Instructions to Students
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Recent Achievers of the Club / How to Memorize Scripture / Why Memorize Scripture / How To Meditate On ScriptureCopyright (c) 2000 Three Thirty Club
All rights reserved. You may use the material on these pages freely, but it may not be sold under any circumstances whatsoever.Scripture taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION,
Copyright (c) 1973, 1978, 1984 International Bible Society. Used by
permission of Zondervan Bible Publishers
Last Updated 11/05/2006
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