One morning in (traditional) school (looooong ago), I entered the Bible class feeling good about knowing the Bible Books of the Old Testament in sequence. I knew I was probably the only one, but it meant a lot to me and made me feel good! But my bubble was busted when the teacher entered the classroom, calmly walked up to his desk and took a seat, paging through the papers on his desk, desperately looking for something to present, and when we reminded him of the pre-assigned task of learning the Bible Books, he said that he saw no reason to memorize them, and that was what the index was for!
This made me loose interest in more than just memorizing the Bible Books, because it also made me think that it was pointless in memorizing Scripture. And apart from that, it made it more difficult to find the Scriptures I already knew in the New Testament, because I had given up knowing how to get to them!
Regretfully I lost out on a LOT of treasure through my primary school years. Only later in my adult life, after I gave my heart to the Lord, did I come to know how helpful a small thing as memorizing the Bible Books can be. So, last year I determined to teach my son (7 at the time) the Bible Books, but I didn’t know how to introduce it to him (there are so many!). I set up a “schedule” for learning only 5 Bible Books per week, and amazingly we got through all 66 of them (with some review in between) in 22 weeks!
I left it at that, and a lot of time passed until we started Grade 3 this year. I thought it good to learn the Bible Books again, but to my surprise, he only needs a little help to remember them! And even when we speak of a Bible character such as Nehemiah, he out of the blue will repeat some books that follow or precede the Book we’re reading from (e.g. Nehemiah, Esther, Job…).
So, it is totally worth it to encourage learning the 66 Books of the Bible in order, and you can download my Bible Book Memorization Schedule here.
