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 Unless otherwise indicated, all Scripture quotations are from The Holy Bible, New International Ver-
sion® NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by Biblica, Inc.™ Used by permission. All rights
reserved worldwide.
Verses marked esv are from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version, copyright © 2001 by Crossway
Bibles, a division of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.
Verses marked nasb are taken from the New American Standard Bible®, © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968,
1971, 1972, 1973, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation. Used by permission. (www.Lock-
man.org)
Cover by Dugan Design Group, Bloomington, Minnesota
Cover photo by Kristy-Anne Glubish / Design Pics Inc. / Alamy
Back cover photo of authors by Jim and Mary Whitmer, Wheaton, Illinois

LIFE-CHANGING BIBLE VERSES YOU SHOULD KNOW

Copyright © 2011 by Erwin and Rebecca Lutzer
Published by Harvest House Publishers
Eugene, Oregon 97402
www.harvesthousepublishers.com
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Lutzer, Erwin W.
Life-changing Bible verses you should know / Erwin and Rebecca Lutzer.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-0-7369-3952-2 (pbk.)
ISBN 978-0-7369-4123-5 (eBook)
1. Bible—Memorizing. 2. Bible—Quotations. I. Lutzer, Rebecca. II. Title.
BS617.7.L88 2011
242'.5—dc22
2011012493
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or trans-
mitted in any form or by any means—electronic, mechanical, digital, photocopy, recording, or any
other—except for brief quotations in printed reviews, without the prior permission of the publisher.
Printed in the United States of America
11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 / VP-SK / 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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 Contents

From Our Hearts to Yours . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

Part 1: Key Bible Verses You Should Know

Adversity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Anxiety . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
The Armor of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Assurance . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
Character . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Conscience . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
Courage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
The Cross . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
Discernment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Eternal Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
Fear of the Lord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
Forgiveness . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
The Glory of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
Grace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Grief . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Heaven . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
Hell . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81
The Holy Spirit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85
Hope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Jesus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Justification . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99
Loss . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109

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 Peace . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
Prayer . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
Purity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Redemption . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
Renewing the Mind . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Rewards . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133
Satan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
The Second Coming of Christ . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141
Sensuality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
Sin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 149
Temptation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Thanksgiving . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
The Will of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Witnessing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 165
The Word of God . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169

Part 2: Additional Bible Memory Verses

for the Topics in this Book
Additional Bible Memory Verses . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Notes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201

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 ADVeRsItY

Psalm :1—God is our refuge and

strength, an ever-present help in trouble.
1 Peter 1:-—In all this you greatly rejoice, though
now for a little while you may have had to suffer grief
in all kinds of trials. These have come so that the proven
genuineness of your faith—of greater worth than gold,
which perishes even though refined by fire—may result
in praise, glory and honor when Jesus Christ is revealed.

W hen we think back to the devastating earthquake in Haiti that

killed nearly 200,000 people, many images come to mind, but
one image that stands out well above the others is that of a young
mother being interviewed on television as she held a baby in her arms.
“I lost my son…he died in the rubble.”
“Did you get to bury him?”
“No, no chance; his body was crushed in the rubble; I just had to
throw him away.”
Just then the camera zeroed in on her backpack as she prepared to
board a bus. Stuffed in a side pocket was a Bible. As she boarded the
bus she could be heard, speaking to no one in particular, saying, “God
is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble…” Her voice
trailed off as she disappeared from view.
When the report was over we just kept staring at the television for a
while, pushing back tears and letting what we’d just seen sink into our
souls. A dead child with no chance to plan a funeral and pay respects

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 14 Life-Changing Bible Verses You Should Know

to her precious little one, a baby in her arms, and she was boarding a
bus that was going she knew not where. Yet she still expressed belief;
she still trusted that God is her refuge and strength.
Faith in adversity!
This mother—God bless her—began quoting Psalm 46, which was
written as a praise song after God spared the city of Jerusalem from an
invasion by Assyrians who were threatening to annihilate the inhab-
itants. In the midst of a harrowing escape, the Israelites found God to
be an unshakable pillar.
God is our refuge. A refuge is a safe place you can run to for shel-
ter when life’s storms are swirling around you. No wonder this dear
mother found solace in this psalm, which continues, “Therefore we
will not fear, though the earth give way and the mountains fall into the
heart of the sea, though its waters roar and foam and the mountains
quake with their surging” (verses 2-3).
Yes, the mountains did give way and fall into the heart of the sea,
but God is unaffected by the fluctuation on events of earth; He is
always there, solid, unmoved. When the mountains are shaking and
the ground beneath you is quaking, run to God, and He will meet you.
Yes, even when our world falls apart in the aftermath of a horrendous
natural disaster, God is unchanging and remains with us.
In the midst of the devastation, God is our source of supply. The
psalm continues, “There is a river whose streams make glad the city of
God, the holy place where the Most High dwells” (verse 4). Most likely
that refers to a tunnel that had been built some time earlier to bring
water into the city in case it was ever besieged. The people of Jerusa-
lem saw this provision as God giving them specific help at their time
of their need.
Then the psalm gives us a command: “Be still, and know that I am
God; I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth”
(verse 10). Let us cease striving and let God be God. Even in adversity
He is there; or perhaps we should say especially in adversity He is there!
Adversity should not drive us away from God; rather, it should

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 Adversity 15

drive us into His arms. He is there for the grieving mother, and for the
family that has experienced indescribable loss. The psalm ends, “The
Lord Almighty is with us; the God of Jacob is our fortress” (verse 11).
God wants to be believed. And our faith is more precious to Him
than gold, which perishes. When we continue to trust Him even when
there appears to be no reason to do so—and we go on believing God’s
bare Word, our faith will “result in praise, glory and honor when Jesus
Christ is revealed” (1 Peter 1:7).
Reverend Henry F. Lyte was a pastor in Scotland who battled tubercu-
losis most of his life. On his final Sunday, September 4, 1847, amid many
tears the congregation sang a song he himself had composed, “Abide with
Me.” It spoke of the unchanging God in an ever-changing world:

Abide with me; fast falls the eventide;

The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.
When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;

Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

Hold Thou Thy cross before my closing eyes;

Shine through the gloom and point me to the skies.
Heav’n’s morning breaks, and earth’s vain shadows flee;
In life, in death, O Lord, abide with me.

The young mother in Haiti—who was clutching an undernour-

ished baby in her arms and had no time to mourn the tragic death of
her son—found solace in the God who was still beside her when the
earth gave way. “God is our refuge and strength,” she said amid her
grief and uncertainty of the future.
In times of adversity, our faith can hold fast. And God is both hon-
ored and pleased.

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 16 Life-Changing Bible Verses You Should Know

Taking God’s Word to Heart

1. Reflect on the account of the Haitian mother who tragically
lost her son. How has Psalm 46 been a source of strength for
you during adversity? What other Scripture passages do you
turn to for help in difficult times?
2. What does it mean to you that God is your refuge? In life’s jour-
ney, why is God’s unchangeable nature a source of strength for
us?
3. Recall an instance when God provided timely help for a spe-
cific need. What did that experience teach or confirm for you
about God’s character?
4. What are some ways God has used adversity to shape your life?
5. Why is God honored and pleased when we exercise faith in
times of adversity?

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