All of us who love the Bible have struggled with a desire to memorize verses but an inability to do so consistently. You have tried to do it in the past, but something came up and you gave up. Yes, it is hard work, but method also plays a part.

Now consider the universal language, music. The three parts of good music are these: melody, harmony, and rhythm. When the rhythm of a Bible verse is locked together with the rhythm of a song, this results in Bible songs for kids that really increase remembering the verse, and keeping the words straight and in order.

Here’s an example. Acts 4:28 speaks of the sovereignty of God in the death of Christ by stating, “For to do whatsoever thy hand and thy counsel determined before to be done.”. If you read this verse in ¾ time, stressing every third syllable (do, ev, hand, coun, etc.) you might notice something interesting. You will notice the word and sentence accents are in perfect 3/4 time.

Here is an easy way to remember the verse: match the words to a ¾ melody such as a Strauss waltz, or the verse of “Oh How I Love Jesus”. Just make sure the downbeat (first beat of each measure) is the accented syllable we identified above.

Or, how about writing your own tune to the verse, once you have determined a rhythm. When a melody is unique for a verse, it helps me remember the verse much better.

We know, however, that most verses don’t accent in perfect rhythm as the example above. Then we must compress words, hold them longer, or repeat words or phrases to fit the demand of the time signature. Here is the first part of a familiar example: “I am the resurrection and the life. He that believeth in me though he were dead, yet shall he live” . Notice that the downbeat accents in the first two measures are on ‘I’ and ‘life’. This means that ‘life’ is given a whole note while ‘am the resurrection and the’ fit into the other three beats of the first measure. The two measures have 10 syllables in the words. However, the next two measures contain 11 syllables and must also be compressed. The next two measures in the song have a mere 4 syllables and are, therefore, held longer and repeated.

It is best if you don’t change the accent on a multi-syllable word to fit the song. The accent of the words would fall on the first beat of every measure. Work at making the song emphasize the words you feel are key in the verse. As much as possible, make the music submit to the words.

One rule I had in writing Scripture memory songs is to stick with the text exactly. This doesn’t mean repetition of words or phrases is not used. But I avoided paraphrasing in order to get the words to submit to the rules of the music. Here is an example: “Behold what manner of love the Father has given unto us”. By changing ‘bestowed’ to ‘given,’ this fixes the accent problem but changes the Scripture word. By holding ‘Father’ for two beats, putting the accent on ‘hath’ and then ‘stowed’, the word would have remained and the accents honored.

I’d be grateful if you would visit KJV Bible Songs today and let me know how these techniques have helped you, or if you have more questions.