In a recent survey of 100 self-proclaimed Christians, 70% responded that it was not worth as much as a single latte each month to guarantee they would memorize scripture; take a look at some of the other key findings from the survey…
The use of the term discipline in this context has nothing to do with corrective action. Instead, it refers to the need for routine habit.
For example, praying or reading the Bible for at least 15 minutes each day is a great “spiritual discipline.”
In our mission to support your personal spiritual growth, we took a particular interest in two of these spiritual disciplines in a recent survey we fielded.
Survey Background
We all seem to understanding the importance working spiritual disciplines into our lives to actual experience the spiritual transformation we seek. However, actually taking the time to do them routinely is another story.
As such, we wanted to take the temperature of where Christians are at with regard to a couple of these critical spiritual disciplines. Specifically, we focused on two key spiritual disciplines. 1. Prayer Time 2. Scripture Memory
We pulled together a handful of questions, and then distributed our survey to a random population of self-identified Christians. The results were not all that surprising, but at the same time, ALARMING!
Prayer Time Results
Our first series of questions focused on Christian’s perspectives on prayer time. Most of our respondents do believe it is important to pray to support their spiritual growth, but 30% were neutral or disagreed.
More alarming, only 38% believe they are spending enough time in prayer.
When asked about the biggest barriers to praying more often, we found that approximately 50% forget to pray and 50% get distracted with their busy to-do lists.
Approximately 10% flat-out admitted they don’t have time to pray and another 11% reported they don’t know what to pray for.
We did have one respondent report that they “never had a prayer answered, so why bother?” Our hearts go out to anyone that is feeling that hopeless. We can all pray for for that individual - we all need our prayers answered!
Scripture Memory Results
Scripture memory is one of those spiritual disciplines that we suspected Christians do even less than take time to pray. We were right! While 38% believe they are spending enough time in prayer, only 25% believe they are spending enough time in memorizing scripture. Over 40% realize that memorizing scripture is important to their spiritual growth with another 32% unsure.
Again, we asked about the barriers Christians experience that block them from this important spiritual discipline. Here’s what we found…
Over half (55%) admitted they just don’t take the time to do this. Another 31% admitted that distractions prevent them from memorizing scripture. Several commented that they simply don’t want to, don’t care to, and believe it or not, don’t think it is required in the Bible to memorize verses.
Of course, Christian maturity tells us how important memorizing scripture is to real transformation! It starts with the the rich blessings that come from having scriptures memorized to apply in the very moment you need them (e.g., 1 Corinthians 10:13 in a moment of temptation or Philippians 4:13 in a moment of self-doubt)
In addition, the Bible DOES speak to the importance of memorizing scripture when it speaks frequently about placing His Word in our hearts (Proverbs 3:3-4, Proverbs 4:20-21, Psalm 37:31, Psalm 40:8, Psalm 119:11, Psalm 119:16, Colossians 3:16).
Of course, it may feel like a command to someone who doesn’t realize the massive blessings in store, but there is some simple logic involved. When we have His instructions programmed into our brains, we are much more likely to follow their ways as we go about our lives.
One of the clearest illustrations of this to me is when Jesus himself models the power of scripture memory when he rebukes the devil himself in the desert (Matthew 4). He doesn’t argue with God in His own words… He doesn’t ask Satan to hold on a minute while he pages through His Bible … rather, he recites scripture from memory.
Recognizing the importance of this less-than-prioritized spiritual discipline, we wanted to understand how much guaranteed scripture memory is worth to our Christian sample.
Needless to say, we were alarmed by our findings! Literally, 7 out of every 10 Christians believed guaranteed scripture memory is worth $0 to them!
When given a choice to trade off a single cup of coffee or more to make sure they consistently memorized scripture, only 3 out of every 10 Christians thought that was a good deal.
Conclusion
We reviewed the results of our informal survey of 100 self-identified Christians today. While it seems many Christians understand that prayer time and scripture memory are necessary for spiritual growth, they just aren’t doing it that often.
The reasons are varied, but generally reflect our busy lives that somehow do not find the time for what likely should be our biggest priorities. When we asked about the monetary value of guaranteed scripture memory, 70% responded that it is worth exactly $0.00 to them.
Are these the kinds of priorities we can live with? Or should we be striving for more? We’d love to hear what you think about our survey. Please leave a comment below!
