So far, this Partnering to Remember project has been a lot of fun—but it’s also been a lot of work.

But it’s the good kind of work.

My third week into memorizing Philippians I hit a snag. That snag?

Philippians 1:20

…as it is my eager expectation and hope that I would not be at all ashamed, but that with full courage now as always, Christ would be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.

(In case you’re wondering, yes, I did type that from memory. I did check it to make sure it was correct afterward, though. Is that cheating?)

This is one of the most complicated verses I’ve come up against so far. To actually get through it, I ended up splitting it into three separate chunks and working on it over the course of two days. While this slowed down my progress a little, it did give me an opportunity to chew on the content of this verse a little more.

Paul’s confidence in Christ is inspiring. In verses 18b-19, he writes, “Yes and I will rejoice, for I know that through your prayers and the help of the Spirit of Jesus Christ, this will turn out for my deliverance…”

He’s in a filthy Roman prison. He’s likely going to die for all he knows, but he is confident that Christ will deliver him from his imprisonment should He choose to do so. And what’s Paul’s response? “That with full courage now as always, Christ would be honored in my body, whether by life or by death.”

He’s not concerned about whether he lives or whether he dies.

He’s only concerned that Christ be honored in both.

I’m trying to imagine what it’s like to live in that confidence; it would be incredibly freeing, wouldn’t it?

If there’s one thing I’m hoping to come away from in the rest of this project, it’s that I can have the same kind of confidence that motivated Paul to say, “For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain.”

How has week three of partnering to remember gone for you?

Two weeks into my memory moleskine and how am I doing?

Last week, I managed to get a full two weeks memorized in one. The upside is that it left me some wiggle room for memorizing the rest. The downside is it left me a little cocky for week two.

And this was a bad week to be cocky.

Philippians 1:12-18 is a surprisingly tricky set of verses. Where v. 15-18 are relatively smooth sailing, v. 12-14 are fairly complex. One of the great challenges of memorizing in the ESV is that, because it’s a formal equivalence translation, it sometimes has rather unusual sentence structure. I had to spend several days on these verses before feeling somewhat confident in them.

One of the more exciting things about this project is being able to see real progress. Before I started I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to keep the verses I learned the prior week (or as it progresses at the beginning of the project) in my mind. This is where the discipline of constant repetition comes into play. I find myself reciting Phil 1:1-11 at least two times a day now, and I really enjoy it, especially as I play with emphasis. It’s a lot of fun to try to imagine which words Paul would have been stressing as he dictated the letter.

The other pleasant side effect of the project has been how applicable each section has been week-to-week. As we prayed at the end of the Truth Xchange conference, Phil 1:9-11 were incredibly timely to keep in mind as we had spent several days seeking to grow not only in our knowledge and discernment “so that [we] may approve what is excellent, and so be pure and blameless for the day of Christ,” but that our love might abound more and more as we seek to apply this knowledge at home.

So, that’s been my second week. How has week two of partnering to remember gone for you? What challenges have you seen, and what has been the most exciting thing for you so far?

So last Saturday, I started working on memorizing the entire book of Philippians as part of Tim Brister’s Memory Moleskine project. When I started the project, I didn’t know how it was going to go – would it be quick and painless? Excruciating? Somewhere in between?

And the answer is… yes.

Surprisingly, it was a lot easier to make it through the first six verses than I anticipated. I actually picked them up very quickly (by Sunday night I could recite them from memory without much difficulty).

However, the one significant challenge that I came across was with one word: “all.”

You’d think that it would be a simple one to remember, but for some reason I kept tripping up on it. Phil 1:3 says, “I thank my God in all my remembrance of you,” but it would come out, “I thank my God in my remembrance of you.”

Already the weeding has begun.

I’m, as of today, a good part of the way through week 2 (Phil. 1:7-11) and the “alls” are coming at me again. (As is the weird sentence structure of v. 7.)

Still, I am persevering, and for the most part have these verses down. Since I can’t prove it to you in typed form, you’ll have to wait until I get brave enough to do a short video post of the whole first chapter.

Are you partnering to remember? Tell me about your journey to remember Philippians so far.