By Joe Torosian

“I was young and now I am old, yet I have never seen the righteous forsaken or their children begging bread.”
— Psalm 37: 25

I love a cold house.

I’m not talking about cold in attitude or spirit, but cold in temperature. Everything is fresher, I breathe better, I cannot put an exact finger on why but I do.

I enjoy the feel of my bed early in the morning when the comforter comforts. My face feels the cold but the rest of me is tucked away nice and warm.

This is where I was at 5:30 this morning when prayer time came. Sometimes it can be earlier but generally, I will get up at 5:30 and disappear into the living room for some morning minutes with the Lord.

This morning it was cold.

This morning I was working off of four hours of sleep.

This morning my bed and comforter felt like they never had before. Like an ephemeral addiction, I needed them. Just for the now.

My bones were tired, but my eyes were open. My brain was clear. No cobwebs, no middle ground between dreaming and being awake.

Did I mention it was cold?

My eyes shifted, I looked around in the darkness; it was the perfect time to pray. The perfect time to get my day started. It was the perfect moment. God saw fit to clearly wake me, as he does so often, on this Friday morning, March 12th at 5:30 A.M.

My mind attempted to claim fatigue, but it wasn’t there. My rationale brought up all the praying I had done at the board meeting the night before, and the Bible study the night before that.

Plus, it was cold and I could not bring myself to do this thing.

I don’t know what your path or God’s plan for you is…but this is something he set me on a while ago.

The testimony is I have abandoned myself to God. I am sold out. I have surrendered what Rev. Ron Kearns used to call “that self-centered, carnal, focus.”

This is a moment in the day the creator of the universe wants to have with me…to enrich me, equip me, to bless me…to show me something new…and I reasoned, and I rationalized, and I made my case for staying in bed.

Because it was cold.

When I settled I wasn’t going to move from the comfort of my comforter, I digressed to the next level of apathy.

I attempted to pray lying down in bed.

The Creator of the universe wants to have a moment with me, perhaps with you too, and I can’t throw on a pair of sweats and go out to meet him the living room?

It’s cold, and I was all about his business the previous night at the church board meeting.

(Lets not waste time on how praying in bed might work for you, the elderly, or the infirmed…We’re talking about a healthy adult male)

The prayer went nowhere and in the middle of rolling back over in my bed I apologized to God.

First instinct is to say “Well, pray at noon Joe” or “Go get’em tomorrow” or “Go to bed earlier tonight”…

Sure, but even if I employ all those efforts…I will never get back this morning. I will never get back the opportunity I had with the creator of the universe, who I willfully chose against meeting with this morning.

“If we lose the vision, we alone are responsible, and the way we lose the vision is by spiritual leakage.”
— Oswald Chambers

How easy it is for us to trade out God.

We won’t trade him out for a calf made of gold. We are wise enough to know we shouldn’t trade him out for money, fame, or any other form of sex, drugs, and rock and roll.

But we will trade him out to be comfortable. We will trade him, him who is most faithful, him who has never forsaken us, for a pseudo peace.

Oh, so careful we should tread each and every moment. Oh, so careful we should be to recognize the precious majesty of his times.