The Difference Between a Memory Verse and the Word of God Is Application

I'm excited to keep going in this series, because today I want to hand you the single clearest test I know for telling the difference between a memory verse and the actual Word of God working in your life.

Memorizing it and applying it are not the same thing

There are atheists who can quote the Bible better than I can, and they don't believe a word of it. So clearly, just having it up in your head isn't the thing that produces a harvest.

The difference between a memory verse and the Word of God is application. If you're not applying it, it's just something you memorized.

If it's actually the Word of God at work, you'll put it into practice.

Persecution doesn't show up because the devil hates you — it shows up because you quit

Stony ground gets excited about the Word, receives it with gladness, and then stops watering it. It never deals with the rocks underneath. And then tribulation shows up.

Here's what's really happening: the enemy isn't attacking you out of nowhere. He knows you quit sowing, quit watering, quit putting the Word into practice — and now you're easy pickings, because you left behind the very thing that would have protected you.

You get mad and say, "I thought this word was supposed to work." It does work. You quit working it.

Consistency has a cost — and that's exactly why it works

During a massive drought years ago, a man's garden made the front page of the newspaper — corn stalks taller than his head, right in the middle of everyone else's crops dying. Turned out, he'd left the hose running by accident before a trip and came home to an enormous water bill.

Everybody in that town could have had a garden like his. It just would have taken being consistent, and it would have cost them something.

That's why some Christians receive more than others. Not because they're special, and not because they've earned it from God — because they're willing to water no matter the cost, consistently, when everyone else quits after a dry week.

Get up and go again — offense will keep you stuck

In every skill I've ever trained in, there were things I couldn't figure out at first. I got dumped on my rear end, sometimes pretty hard, and I got back up and went again — because I understood the instructor wasn't attacking me, he was teaching me.

The same is true here. If you've been knocked down by the devil or by your own choices, don't quit. Get up and go again.

I refuse to get offended when something doesn't work the way I expected. If it works for other people in Scripture, and it works for the people I trust who walk with God, then it isn't broken — I just haven't learned how to apply it yet. That's on me to figure out, not a reason to blame God or the Word.

Whatever you sow, that you will also reap

“Do not be deceived, God is not mocked; for whatever a man sows, that he will also reap.”

Galatians 6:7 (NKJV)

This isn't only about finances. It's about whatever you consistently put into the ground of your life — the Word, your time, your attention.

If you're only opening your Bible Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, you're not actually watering anything. That's seed sitting in dry dirt.

Be consistent. Not for a few weeks and then give up when nothing visible has happened yet — give it a few weeks more, and then a few weeks more after that. The Word of God does not work for quitters. But it has worked for me every single time I've actually done it, for thirty years running. And when I haven't done it, I've gotten exactly the results of somebody who didn't do it. That's the whole difference.

Fight To Win.