Cold Showers and Surrender to God

I don’t like cold showers.

A hot bath treatment that I have written about recently was introduced to me in the late 1970s. My friend that told me about taking a hot bath to get over the flu told me start the bath with a prayer, and end it with a cold shower. However, I don’t like cold showers. At all. They make goose bumps all over my body and I start shivering – burr, burr! I hate cold showers!

However, I want to tell you about the day when God ask me to take a cold shower, and I told the big Man Up Stairs NO! No way no how, am I taking a cold shower.

It was about 2 in the afternoon in my Santa Cruz, California home I was sharing with 3 roommates. I had a really bad flu, with a runny nose, cough, sore throat, and all the standard stuff. A friend from church had told me about a hot bath treatment that could treat a cold or flu, followed by a cold shower to close the pores. Only thing is, I don’t do cold showers. So here I am today, standing in the hot shower, sniffing snot up my nose because my flu is so bad, and the Holy Spirit tells me “Dennis, I want you to get the water hotter first, then end this hot shower with a cold shower.”

But the spirit of rebellion, of Satan, rose up in me, and I told God, “I don’t like cold showers, and I’m not going to take a cold shower.” Now you know the still, quiet voice in your head I am taking about. That voice that tells you not to take another bite when you are about eat another serving of ice cream, not to gamble the rent money in Vegas, not to take that drug the hot stranger says is fun. That’s God’s voice.

So God told me again, “Dennis, I want you to finish your shower with cold water.” “No,” I quickly replied.

Now I have been memorizing bible texts since I was a 6 year old kid in church. God used that unfairly against me, to remind me of a quote in my head; “Therefore I urge you brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrafices, holy and pleasing to God - -This is your spiritual act of worship.” Romans 12: 1, 2 NIV

The second verse God brought to mind was even Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own; 1:Cor. 6:19 NIV. Or as the bible in Basic English puts it “and you are not the owners of yourselves;”

So here I am, standing in the shower, with the hot water running down my back, feeling so o . . . o…o...o    comfortable, and I reached down to turn the cold water on, and said out loud;

 “OK God, this is your body. If you want to take a cold shower with your body, go ahead.”

 I got out of the shower, dried off, and began to think about what I had just said. I liked it! So I amplified it. “God, these are your feet. If you want to go to South America with them, if you want to go to the ghetto with them, they are yours. These are Your hands, Jesus. If you want to wash dishes with them, if you want to play guitar with them, if you want to dig ditches with them, they are yours.”

These are your eyes. I give up the right to look at sexual smut; I give up the right to look at evil movies and television. This is your mouth. I give up the right to eat anything that is harmful to the body you have made, now Your body, again.  I give up the right to use my mouth for sex that’s all lust, no love. This is your mind. I give up the right to think lustful, evil thoughts, and I leave hate behind. I will go anywhere you lead, and do anything you say, I am yours, God.”

 I was dead serious about my surrender, and that day was a beginning of a journey that led me to becoming a vegan for the first time, going to a missionary training center in Alabama for 12 years, and traveling with a doctor giving spiritual talks, health lectures, Christian music and teaching others how to live a healthier and more Christ filled life.

The only problem with a full and complete surrender of your life, body, heart and mind to God is you have to do it again every day. I went off of the path leading to heaven for a number of years; however I am happy to be back again in the center of God’s will. I am again a medical missionary, again traveling and teaching others how to live a healthier and more spiritual life. Although I am much older this time around and my body fails me at times, I still believe God will use me, an openly gay Christian man, sent to rescue those with no hope, without God, in the world.


keywords: surrender, Christian, God, Jesus, spiritual, victory over sin, spirit filled, healthy, vegan, medical missionary