Come with Thanksgiving!

Today, we get our verse of the week to meditate and memorize. I want to encourage you to keep trying to focus on just one verse for the week. If you stay determined, the Word will take root in your heart. If you have failed with some of the previous verses, don’t get discouraged and quit, but continue to press on. This spiritual discipline is worth pressing through our failure! So free yourself of guilt and let’s go!

Come with Thanksgiving!
By Shirley Mitchell

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”
Psalm 95:2

This week millions of Americans are preparing for the Thanksgiving holiday and Black Friday shopping. It is time to be with family and friends. It is time to slow down from our stressful work lives.

Let’s be sure to make time to celebrate the true reason for this holiday season. It is to slow down and give thanks to God. Let’s camp in gratitude. The economy may still be hard for many of us, but we still have a lot to be thankful about. We live in a time where we are some of the most educated people who have ever lived. We live in a country of peace and whose soil is not ravaged in war. We have access to medical care like no other time in history. We live in time of many opportunities.

We are heirs of the Most High King and joint heirs with Christ. The Holy Spirit lives in us. We have this treasure in jars of clay.

Gosh, life can be so hard. There are so many battles here. But we can take courage in our God. We can have peace that surpasses what we can understand. No matter how tough it may seem now, we know that glory is waiting for us. Some day we will see Him face-to-face, and we won’t tell Him that we want to talk to Him about the difficulty that He let us endure. No, we’ll just bask in His presence and be so thankful that He made us one of His chosen. So let’s come before Him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song!

Let’s take this next week to give thanks to our God for all that He has done. Let’s lift up His Name in praise for He is so worthy of all praise! Carry this verse with you wherever you go this week – be it an index card or in your heart. Study it, pulverize it, and memorize it!

Memorization Reminders:
Please join me in memorizing these verses and implanting God’s thoughts into our minds. I’m expecting for God to radically change our lives if we do this. Redeem your time to make room for memorizing God’s Word. Take this verse with you wherever you go. Meditate on it, and pulverize it.

We are blessed to live in a time where we can have the Bible at our fingertips even through the internet or an actual Bible in our hands. Yet, this blessing can become a curse if we do not treat the Bible with such honor to savor every word of it as those through the centuries who have longed to have His Word so much. They had to memorize every Scripture they had ever been given because their own copy of the Scripture was not possible.

Most of us probably don’t memorize Scripture because we think that we do not have the time. However, our minds have a lot of wasted space that can be given to God. We have to redeem the time. For women, we can use the time while putting on our make-up or blow drying our hair. For men, use the time while shaving. For both genders, we can use the time while we shower, stop at red lights, do the laundry, wash the dishes, and mow the lawn. Let’s face it: our minds are thinking about something during this time. Instead of being focused on our obsessions, worries, cares, to-do’s, and problems, give this time to God.

Take your verse(s) with you wherever you go. You can type your verse out and put it on beautiful sheets of your choice. You can write it out on index cards. Many people prefer index cards spiral bound to keep them together. For iphone users, I’m sure there is an app. You can write it on your iphone notepad or record your voice speaking it and replay it throughout the day.

Now that we have the verse and we have found the time, let’s focus on the method. We don’t just memorize it by saying it over and over; we meditate on it. We spend time thinking about what each word means and what it doesn’t mean.

Then one of my favorite techniques as taught by Waylon Moore is to pulverize the verse. Say the verse over and over each time focusing on a different word in the verse to emphasize. For example, say Psalm 95:2 (today’s verse) aloud and say with more umph the underlined and bolded word:

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”
Psalm 95:2

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”
Psalm 95:2

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”
Psalm 95:2

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”
Psalm 95:2

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”
Psalm 95:2

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”
Psalm 95:2

“Let us come before him with thanksgiving and extol him with music and song.”
Psalm 95:2


Repeat this process until each word in the verse has been emphasized.

After meditating and pulverizing the verse continuously for a week, the seed planted in our hearts will begin to germinate. You and I will no longer be merely short-term memorizing, but the Word will dwell within us. When God’s Word dwells within us, something miraculous happens. Our minds are renewed and transformed into the mind of Christ. We worry and fret less. We are armed for the attacks of the enemy. Our lips will be full of praise for our God. My friend, I’m ready for that kind of transformation!