How to Motivate Teens to Memorize Bible Verses

It is important to motivate teens to read the Bible, until they start to take responsibility for it themselves.

It is a challenge to motivate anyone to memorize Bible verses. It can be twice as challenging to motivate teens to memorize them. If your teenagers accept Christianity, they will in turn guide their own personal devotion times. It never hurts to get them started, though. There are ways you can motivate them to accomplish this. It takes a little creativity, and the understanding of your teens, to accomplish this.

Instructions

1. Appeal to their sense of Christian curiosity. Many teens come to adults in the church seeking answers to various questions. An excellent way to answer their questions is to show them Bible verses that relate to their question. Once they see that the answers to their questions are in the Bible, you can then motivate them to memorize key verses that will help them in everyday life. It can be an enlightening experience for your teens. It also shows them God's Word is the answer to everything.

2. Choose Bible verses that are easy to remember. Psalms are always a good section of the Bible for someone to begin memorizing verses. Try to progress into more difficult verses gradually. It also helps to have teens memorize verses from a modern language version of the Bible, such as NIV. King James is difficult for teens to understand, especially if they are just beginning to learn how to memorize verses. You don't want to choose anything that would intimidate them.

3. Hold a contest to see who can memorize the most Bible verses. This is a fun, friendly way to motivate teens to memorize Bible verses by themselves. Offer a prize such as an engraved copy of the Bible or tickets to a popular restaurant. Some people may consider this bribery, but there is nothing wrong with offering a material reward for going above and beyond what is required.

4. Ask the teens to memorize verses to help put on a special program for church. This is a good way for teens to participate in a Christmas program. Some churches like to put on different types of programs where children and teens show the adults how hard they have been working in Sunday school and Youth Group. This is also a good way to involve teens in Vacation Bible School.

References

• MemoryVerses.org; How to Memorize Scripture
• Surf-In-The-Spirit; How to Motivate Your Children
• Sharefaith; Teaching Teens to Read the Bible