Early morning scripture study in a stinky gym

I get up every morning and go to the gym REALLY early.

It is not easy. It is difficult some days. But I am always grateful.

The first thing I do when I arrive is walk on the treadmill for 10 minutes and read my scriptures.

This sounds insignificant but I have noticed this "preworkout scripture study" time is one of the most revelation flowing sessions I have of the day.

I am not sure why that is. Now if you remember I am at a gym. I am surrounded by people in workout clothes, pop-fitness music is playing and Televisions are broadcasting overhead. It isn't an environment that a person would usually feel the spirit.

So why is it that I feel that great "mysteries of God" are revealed to me in those short sessions right before my workout?

I have thought about this alot.

Shouldn't it be only that only quiet moments in the temple are when I get that inspiration?

Shouldn't it be when I am completely away from the worlds influence in all it's forms and I have fasted and prayed or when I am at church?

Why in a stinky gym with music playing, with TV's broadcasting would I have very tender revelations?

The other day it occurred to me.

Sacrificing a tiny slice of my early morning workout time (I get up at 4:45 again it is not easy) to read my scriptures is my own form of a personal tithe or my own "widows mite." I don't always have a lot to offer to the Lord but my workout time is something that its truly something of worth to me.

Reading 10 minutes may seem insignificant but I feel the Lord blesses me for it.

 I try to also read at other times during the day but this is what I do to make sure I get it in before anything else and to make a special offering before the Lord each day.

One of my sessions this week I read Mosiah Chapter 1. King Benjamin is talking to his sons about the Plates of Brass so essentially the "scriptures" hes says:

"My sons, I would that ye should remember that were it not for these plates, which contain these records and these commandments, we must have suffered in ignorance, even at this present time, not knowing the mysteries of God."

I had never considered not reading the scriptures as "suffering in ignorance". But as I contemplated all the glorious truths of the gospel and the great things that we have learned from the scriptures, not even to mention the guidance of revelation or "mysteries of God" in my personal life then yes the word suffering would fit that state of absence without these things very much.

I can't imagine life without what the gospel brings me and not only the gospel but the additional "mysteries of God" or these little slices of personal revelation that I get when I feel connected and doing what I know is right and reading the scriptures.

So yes even in a stinky gym, with pop fitness music playing and television broadcasting while reading scriptures we can feel the spirit!