Saturday afternoon: It’s a sweep! 50 out of 50 states! And His banner over us is love.

Friday Evening: Sisters, one of our Siestas worked up some stats but didn’t request it to be listed because it might not be 100% accurate. She felt like it was pretty close though. Listen, if it’s even in the ball park, it’s great fun! Take a look at this:

Siestas Scripture Memory Team Stats:
States: 48 out of 50

Countries or Provinces: 9

Books of the Bible used: 50 out of 66

Verses used most often: Isaiah 33:6 and Zephaniah 3;17

Book of the Bible used most: The Psalms

Number of Bible translations used: 16

Number of Siestas wanting a Jesus-kind-of-year: At 5:42, 2452 and counting!

Is that cool or what? Thank you, Dear Siesta!

Friday noon update: You guys are doing fabulously! KEEP IT UP! We’re looking for just a couple of hundred more from folks who signed up but haven’t had a chance to enter their Scripture yet. Stick with it, Sweet Things! Follow through! I wanted to tell you how timely and wonderful and providential I think our God is. Early in the holidays something (not small) happened that hurt my feelings so badly I almost couldn’t get over it. (Actually, I didn’t get over it very well. Still feel sore today but at some point you’ve got to get a grip.) God knew I’d have to look at about a jillion Scriptures in order to moderate all these comments. You cannot imagine how much He used them (is still using them) to help me push the reset button on my brain. I wrote several of them down and spoke others of them over my own life. He’s so faithful. Nothing is accidental. Anyway, I love y’all and want you to know that my soul is so often fed and encouraged here.

January 1st, 12:04 AM:

UPDATE: Way to go, Siestas! It’s 8:00 AM on New Year’s Day and we are off to a great start! Wanted to answer a question I’ve seen several times. Yes, of course, you can still join us! Sign up on the original “Anybody Game?” post then comment here with your name, city and verse. All are welcome! If you’ll read both posts, you’ll know exactly what to do.

Happy New Year, Beloved Siestas! It’s going to be a JESUS-YEAR for every single one of us who really wants one. And I WANT ONE. NEED ONE.

OK, Ladies! Let’s start memorizing some Scripture! Here’s what you do today (and on the 15ths and 1sts of the months that will follow): You will put your name, your city, and your verse (with reference and translation abbreviation) in a comment to this post . Try to resist making any other comments so that we’ve got almost straight Scripture down the post. It will be a feast for our souls. It will also be fun to see if any of us chose the same verse.

I will always post the verse I’ve chosen in case some of you are having trouble figuring yours out. (You’ll find it below.) You are welcome to memorize the same one I or any other Siesta chooses. However, you still need to put your name, city, and the verse in a comment to this post. It’s a vital part of the accountability. Don’t feel silly or like you’ve copied. That’s what the Body of Christ is for! Many of the first Scriptures I memorized were those I heard other teachers or leaders recite and I knew I wanted those words for myself. It’s a normal part of discipleship so feel free!

Ladies, I’m going to take this privilege that you’ve given me seriously. The ENORMOUS response to the Scripture memory post conveys how much we know we need to get some Scripture in permanent marker on our brains (so pleasing to God!) and what an important factor accountability is. SO, consider me holding you accountable. If you signed up on that post (“Anybody Game?”), I want to see your John Hancock on here two times a month for the next year. And I mean it. LET’S DO THIS THING. NO DROP OUTS. NO QUITTERS. We can do this! And we get to do this together!

Over 2500 signed up and I’m going to estimate that probably 100 accidentally commented twice SO I want to see at least 2400 comments on each 1st and 15th Scripture memory post. Try to do it within the first 24 hours of the post both times each month so you will stick with it and take it seriously. I have learned along the way that when you start putting something off, the power to obey and prosper in it begins to drain and soon we lose our fervor. Resist thinking to yourself by the third or fourth month, “Well, I’m not going to take the time to sign in but I’ll still memorize the Scripture.” I can almost guarantee you (based on experience) that you will not memorize 24 Scriptures by the end of 2009 without sticking with the accountability part of putting your name down each time. SIGN IN TWICE EVERY MONTH! Even come AUGUST!

Along the way I’ll keep cheering you on and will give you some Scripture memory tips if you need them. I’ll be cheered on myself by your priceless participation in the commitment. I’m so serious when I tell you that I believe we’re getting a HUGE nod from God on this. I sense divine DELIGHT.

OK, my Scripture is one I stumbled on in the NET (New English Translation) some months ago and fell in love with but didn’t memorize right then. I want to do it now as I see so much instability and uncertainty swirling (so unnecessarily) around Christ’s people. The verse is also great in the NIV if you want to give it a look but I’m going to memorize it in this version. Here goes:

“He is your constant source of stability (IS THAT GREAT OR WHAT??); He abundantly provides safety and great wisdom; He gives all this to those who fear Him.” Isaiah 33:6 NET

That’s mine. OK, what about yours? Sign up, Sweet Ones! Keep in mind that it may take a while for you to see your comment show up. We choose to moderate every comment to every post in order to protect our LPM blog from trash. It takes a while to get through several thousand comments when we suddenly have a big response! My blog-brainchild, Amanda, will be flying home with her family all day so I won’t have her help. I’ll get the comments on there though, maybe slowly but surely! And I will treasure every single one and celebrate your impending victory.

Would you pray with me as we launch this year’s commitment?

Our Abba and our God, from cities and states all over this nation and from other parts of this globe, we band together as one beautifully diverse sisterhood to offer You the praise You are so worthy to receive. We thank You for how You have taught us, sustained us, comforted us and even disciplined over the course of the last year and now we entrust every bit of it to You. Redeem what still hurts. Mend what remains broken. Heal what is still sick. We give what is behind us over to You but now we cast a deliberate gaze toward our future. We need You. We want You. We ask You for a pure, unadulterated JESUS-YEAR. We want to have one badly enough to make a joint commitment to hide Your Word in our hearts, to let it renew our brains, and become a Sword in our hands.

We commit this day to memorize or voraciously meditate on 24 Scriptures in 2009. Lord, we know from past experience that You alone can give us the unction to keep a single profound commitment for longer than ten minutes. We believe, however, based on Your Word, that You are the Initiator of all things faith (Hebrews 12:2) and that what You call us to do, You also empower us to do (Hebrews 10:23). We receive from You this day the anointing to memorize Your Word. We invite it to abide in us and bear much fruit. We ask You to make it powerful and healing to us. Transforming and beautifying. Bring forth a one-hundred fold harvest from every Scripture You sow into our spirits and cause us to be mightier in our battles than we’ve ever been in our lives. Start a fire in us that cannot be quenched even by death.

Lord, oddly as I type this prayer to You, it is approaching midnight on January 1st and all sorts of fireworks are going off right around my house as my dear neighbors celebrate the dawn of a New Year. I can see the lights out my breakfast room window and feel the whistles and booms of every bottle rocket all the way down in my chest. I won’t lie. It’s thrilling. But I hope something far more exhilarating is happening in the heavenlies. I pray that some mighty spiritual fireworks are going on over the houses of every single one of these women who love You and seek so desperately to please You…and many under very difficult circumstances. I sense Your own celebration. Your own anticipation. Because as unfathomable as this thought is to each of us, while we want a Jesus-year, You want an us-year. We are looking forward to You. And You, our Lord and our God, are looking forward to us. Mind blowing. We are so relieved that You think more of us than we think of ourselves. Help us to think more like You.

We love You so much, Lord. We want to love You so much more. More love to Thee, O God. More light to see Thee, Lord. Make Your Son the dearest thing in all of life to us this year. And every other thing of true value will be added to us. (Matthew 6:33)

In Jesus’ Saving, Miracle-working, Delivering Name,
Amen.

REMINDER: Tomorrow (January 1st) I’ll put up our first post for our first Scripture so don’t forget to get your spiral index cards today if you don’t already have them!! I’m very proud of you, Siestas! And so honored to be your servant. May Christ be greatly exalted and His Word be our double edged Sword!

UPDATE: Siestas, it’s 7:15 PM and we are already well over 500 strong! I am astounded. I have to tell you something. It’s not that terribly often that I just outright feel the unabashed pleasure of God. I certainly feel His love and approval but that’s not what I’m talking about right now. I’m talking about that glorious sense that God is really smiling over something. Maybe even laughing. When He’s really happy about a thing. Much of the time either life, busy-ness, self-condemnation or just plain sin gets in the way. But, Girlfriends, I feel it right this second. HE IS PLEASED WITH THIS. Sit back, take a second and feel His good pleasure. He LOVES this idea. And I guess you know what that means: it was His idea to start with. Which means He’ll also empower it. One last thing. A few of you commented that you want to become a Siesta in 2009. I’m so sorry that it sounds like some kind of club you have to join. Listen, if you are a girl and you are a Christian, you are a Siesta. Way back when we first began the blog, I was trying to call the women on here “sistas” (sisters) and spell check corrected it to Siestas and it stuck. Everybody’s welcome. It’s just an endearment for sister. You’re already loved and welcomed here!

Original Post:

Hey, Siestas? Anybody want to memorize some Scripture together this year? A few days ago my devotional was on making preparations for a visitation from God. It was based on the Old Testament Israelites preparing (actually RE-pairing) the Temple under the reign of King Josiah after the serious neglect of previous generations and restoring it to a place where God would want to dwell. It made me think that if I really want a Jesus-year – and I do – that there are several things I could do to prepare for it. This is one of them.

Scripture memorization has been among the most profoundly effective disciplines of the faith that God has ever given me to practice. Honestly, I think I would’ve lost my mind by now if He had not pasted His Word all over it. Every personal battle we face is won or lost on the playing field of our mind. I’m deeply serious when I tell you that I have some ongoing areas of relational challenge that would absolutely overtake my thought life with anxiety, fear, resentment and bitterness if I didn’t grab my index cards at critical moments and start saying my Scriptures. I did it as recently as yesterday when, concerning a particular situation, I thought to myself, “I cannot take this again.” It calmed me and kept me from acting like I felt. And then I slowly felt better. Scripture memory has long since been a necessity for victory for me. My mind is very prone to obsessive thoughts. I’ve never broken a single stronghold without deliberatly repeating Scriptures more times than my mind could repeat a destructive or unhealthy thought. The Truth finally trumps the lie or comforts the hurt. God prevails and I get the victory. This is the essence of 2 Cor. 10:3-5.

SO, yesterday I was thinking to myself that if I really wanted a Jesus-year, I needed a fresh commitment and plan for Scripture memory for 2009 then wondered to myself who might partner with me. I’ve practiced the discipline for years by myself but the times I’ve been most victorious and consistent with it have been those times when I enlisted accountability. So, who could I get to be my partner, I wondered? Then the thought just popped into my head: SIESTAS! After all, what on earth is a Siesta for if not to stir you up to love and good works and all the more as the Day is drawing near (Heb. 10:24,25)?

SO, anybody want to do this with me? Let me say quickly that there’s no pressure to sign up or condemnation here if you don’t. Many of you have your own accountability groups for various Spiritual disciplines and that’s fantastic. Face-to-face is best of all. Others are up to their eyebrows in commitments already. I certainly do understand that! I’m just making the offer to anybody who wants to. Don’t just do it because you need to. Do it because you want to. We will never sustain a practice based solely on what we need. At the end of the day, each one of us does what we want to.

Don’t worry. This won’t take over the blog or make you feel left out if you don’t sign up. It will just be an additional thing among many that we’re doing on here. That said, here’s what I have in mind so that you can think it over. We’re going to make this really doable.

*Commit to memorize (or seriously meditate on) 2 Scriptures a month. See? Very, very doable! Doesn’t seem like much at first but imagine that, in exactly one year, you’ll have memorized 24 new Scriptures! That, my dear sister, is a feat. The reason why I threw in the parenthetical “or seriously meditate on” part is this: a number of people have told me through the years – especially those in their 50s, 60s, and 70s or those of any age with chronic ADD – that they just can’t memorize. OK, so meditate! Listen, the whole purpose of the process is to take our minds captive to the knowledge of Christ and demolish strongholds or nip potential ones in the proverbial bud. As long as those Scriptures are rolling around in your head, your mind is being held captive to Christ-centered thoughts and led away from destructive or carnal thoughts whether or not you’re getting the words in the exact right order. At least three huge things happen when we memorize: our brains are bathed. Our brains are sharpened. Our ammunition is loaded.

*Sign up on this post with your name and the city where you live. Really give it some serious thought before you jump on here and sign right up. Let’s pull together a group that makes it all the way to next December! Do you really want to do this all year long? Will you commit to hang with it? Then sign up, you darlin’ thing!

*Watch for posts on the 1st and 15th of every month where I’ll ask you to turn in the Scripture you’re feeling led to memorize. (You’ll write it all the way out in the version of your choice and put the reference with it because one of your Siestas might read it and want to memorize it next.) This is an important part of our process! We’re NOT going to memorize the same Scriptures. I’ve learned through the years that we have the most victory with the verses that we each need most. Ask God to give you what He wants to prioritize for you this year then listen carefully through your quiet times, your Bible studies and your pastor’s sermons for verses that really resonate with you or that you know you really need. He’ll highlight one of those in your heart. Choose it with confidence. You’ll most easily memorize what means most to you.

*Buy a brand new set of index cards with a spiral that is only for this Scripture memory plan. (Most grocery stores and pharmacies have them. Easy to find.) You’ll need to have it by New Year’s Day so that you can write your first verse in it. Keep it with you A LOT. The car is a really great place to practice your Scriptures. Also be sure to get them out and say them every time you’re feeling tempted to obsessive thoughts. You will be amazed at the impact God’s Word will have on your thoughts. This right here, Girlfriends, is how we learn to wield the Sword of the Spirit.

*Watch your prayer life change. Check out John 15:7-8. The more God’s Word abides in us, the more the mind of Christ is developed in us. The end result will be that we will pray more and more of God’s will and get more and more of what we’ve asked. Do not think for a moment that praying in the will of God narrows your requests. It blows them wide open! Ask Him in this Jesus-year to explode your effectiveness in prayer then watch it happen.

*Have fun with it! Scripture memory is some work but it’s also really fun. Especially if we do it together!! Anybody game?