Happy New Year!

I love New Year's. I don't do anything special on New Year's Eve, but I love looking back at the past year and seeing what God has done in my life and in my family. It is humbling and amazing to see His goodness and faithfulness, year after to year. It's also an exciting time for me to set new goals and to re-focus my life on "things above" (Col 3:1).

I have memorized Scripture on and off since HS. But 2 and 1/2 years ago, I made a conscientious effort to memorize Scripture again and more importantly, to review so that I keep remembering what I memorize. By God's grace, He has allowed me to build up a decent amount of Scripture to maintain. So much in fact, that I need to spend more time reviewing than learning new verses which is a great problem to have. One of my goals for 2009 is to memorize 12 passages of Scripture. My verses are mostly topical - verses on purity, heavenly future, humility/pride, marriage, love for God, etc. I list my current passage on the side bar - special thanks to Tim Petta for passing on that great one to me.

As God has blessed my life with the fruit of memorizing His Word in so many ways, I realized that this needs to expand to my kids. I feel that one of the greatest gifts I can pass on to my children as a legacy is Scripture. Hopefully, hundreds and hundreds of verses for God to use in their hearts and lives. I hope that this can counteract my shortcomings as a father and my poor overall example to them.

Now I want to make sure that you understand that I don't think I'm a great parent by any means and in fact, I know that I have many, many areas to improve on as a parent. Also, I am not bragging about Andrew in posting this video because I know that he simply has a gift from God to memorize things fairly easily. I post this video to be a blessing to his grandparents for I know that they will be encouraged by it.

Andrew has memorized 16 passages that are more specific to his current areas of growth which we review on a regular basis. My goal for him is to add 16 more in 2009. His current verse is also posted on the sidebar. We also memorize Awana verses at home for fun and I know he has dozens there, but we don't review them outside of our home Awana time. The little ones are also memorizing verses though we're just working on the basics - Eph 6:1-3 and Col 3:20.