For years, I prided myself on working out in silence—or rather, in the ambient noise of clanking weights and humming treadmills. While others run to carefully curated playlists, I ran with nothing but the rhythm of my breath and the sound of my feet hitting pavement. There was something pure about it, something honest. The exertion itself was enough. The movement was its own motivation.
But something changed at my gym. The music—even at four-thirty in the morning—became unbearable. Not just bad, but hostile to the quiet space I'd cultivated in my mind during those early hours. For the first time in my life, I found myself reaching for noise-canceling earbuds, drowning out the lyrics that felt like an invasion.
What I discovered in that adjustment surprised me.
As worship music filled my ears instead of the building's soundtrack, something shifted. I started losing count of my repetitions during strength sets—not from distraction, but from a different kind of attention. Prayers began rising automatically for people I hadn't thought of in weeks, for situations I'd been carrying without realizing their weight. The Holy Spirit, it seemed, had been waiting for me to clear the channel.
This raises a question I'm still sitting with: Do I truly understand that I have access to God all the time? Not just during morning workouts or crisis moments, but constantly—twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, three hundred sixty-five days a year?
I've spent years convinced that silence was the key to hearing God. And perhaps it is, in its own way. But that morning, surrounded by what I perceived as hostile noise, wearing earbuds I never thought I'd need, I realized something profound: If I can access the Holy Spirit even here—in this environment I'd labeled as less than ideal—what does that say about the true nature of God's availability?
We often wait for the perfect conditions. The quiet house. The empty calendar. The resolved crisis. We tell ourselves we'll seek His guidance when things settle down, when the noise quiets, when we finally have space to breathe. But what if the access has been there all along, unchanged by our circumstances?
The gym hasn't improved its music selection. Some mornings I still find myself annoyed by the intrusive lyrics bouncing off the walls. But I've stopped seeing those moments as obstacles and started recognizing them as invitations—reminders that my connection to God isn't dependent on my environment being cooperative.
The earbuds were never really about blocking out noise. They were about tuning in to a frequency that's always broadcasting, always available, always there. I don't need perfect silence. I don't need ideal circumstances. I need only to remember that the line is always open, the access never restricted, the conversation never out of reach.
Father, help me never take for granted or ignore the access I have to You. Not just in the moments that feel sacred, but in the ordinary, irritating, imperfect minutes that make up most of my days. The access is unbelievable not because it's hard to obtain, but because it's so freely, constantly given—and I so easily forget.
