Scripture Study - More Important Than...

Continuing on with Elder Scott's talk, I'd like to share something he said about studying the scriptures.

Don’t yield to Satan’s lie that you don’t have time to study the scriptures. Choose to take time to study them. Feasting on the word of God each day is more important than sleep, school, work, television shows, video games, or social media. You may need to reorganize your priorities to provide time for the study of the word of God. If so, do it!

We are all busy - some of us more so than others. We all have a terrible number of things to get done. And sometimes, it seems that scripture study ends up pretty low on our list of things to do. It's not that we don't think scripture study is important. It's that there are other things that we need to do first. We need to get a project done for work, or we need to write an essay for school, or we need to get some sleep before we collapse. It's not that we consider scripture study to be a low priority; we just have other priorities that are higher.

But Elder Scott reminded us that if we don't have time to study the scriptures, it's because we're spending too much time doing for other things. I think we can all agree that TV, video games, and social media are less important than scripture study, but that hypothetical belief in relative levels of priorities isn't always reflected in how we spend our time. And we know that scripture study is important, but so are school, work, and sleep. Is Elder Scott really saying that we should put school, work, and sleep on the back burner for a few minutes (probably even longer than a few minutes), to read the scriptures?

Well, yes. The scriptures are one of the best sources for messages from God. He communicates with us through the scriptures. If He has a message for us, it's probably in there somewhere. Certainly His Spirit is in the scriptures, and gaining the Spirit can help us with everything else. We may need to sacrifice some time, and even some sleep, to study the scriptures, but according to prophetic counsel, if that's what it takes, we should do it. It's not always going to be convenient. It may sometimes be unpleasant, or even risky, to put scripture study above work, sleep, and school, but a prophet of God has counseled us that that's what we should do.

Apparently, scripture study is pretty important - at least more important than a lot of other things we could be doing instead.