When I was a child, and far before I was a Christian, the biggest prayer I ever made to God was to make me white. “Why?” you may ask?

Frankly, I didn’t like being a little black girl.

None of my favorite movie heroes were black and neither were the most popular celebrities. Black people weren’t making the annual “100 Sexiest People” lists. (No, number 99 does not count.) To my childhood mind, black people, by and large, seemed like nobodies. I didn’t want to grow up to be a nobody. I wanted to be heroic. I wanted to be attractive. I wanted to matter! I believed that if God were to miraculously make me white, I would somehow feel better about being myself. Though I now laugh when I think about that prayer, I distinctly remember the sinking disappointment of mornings when I woke up feeling "the same." I didn’t want to open my eyes and find that I was really going to have to go another day being black.

Memorizing the Scriptures not only molds our minds, but leads us to learn our Lord’s voice. As we listen over and over to the voice of the Shepherd, we accustom ourselves to his timbre and intonation. The more we hear his accent, and put it to memory, the more ready we are to know his voice, and follow, when he calls. “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me” (John 10:27).

The process of memorizing can be can a profound opportunity to make sure that we “do not refuse him who is speaking” (Hebrews 12:25). Here are five simple tips for doing a February refresh on Scripture memorization.

You can memorize whole books, or whole chapters (Romans 8 is a great starting point, or Philippians 3) or big chunks, or key sections. My preference over the years has become key sections (say four to seven verses, like Titus 3:1–7) that I come across as I’m moving through a Bible-reading plan. It’s often a section I find so densely rich that meditating on it for just a few minutes feels woefully inadequate. To enjoy more of its goodness, I need to put it to memory. (If you’re looking to get started on a few key sections to memorize, try Colossian 1:15–20,John 1:1–14, Hebrews 1:1–4, Philippians 2:5–11, or these short lists of “gospel passages” and “gospel verses.”)

I didn’t hear the phrase “human trafficking” until well into my 20s. (I’m now in my mid-30s.) Initially, I brushed it off because I could not bear to carry in my mind the reality of such atrocities. But awareness is the most important step to engagement, and it’s this first step where many of us get stuck.

The words of Dr. Diane Langberg, member of Biblical Theological Seminary’s Global Trauma Recovery Institute, are instructive here: “The things we cannot bear to hear about are the atrocities that he/she has had to live through.”

When this sinks in, we have no choice but to repent of our passivity and beg God for the strength to engage in what is close to his heart. Often the next question becomes, where do I begin? Try starting here:

Ask the question, Why is this hard for me to hear? Maybe you can identify with one of these:

• It’s viscerally uncomfortable to read about these atrocities.

• It brings up issues of your own past of abuse. (If so, skip to #2 below.)