Turning Your Cares Into Prayers

Did you ever read something then say to yourself I wished I'd read that years ago? I had that experience when I read a sermon that Charles Spurgeon gave about the topic of care & prayer.

Here's a summary of what he wrote:
Once you become careful, anxious, fretful, you will never be able to count your cares, even though you might count the hairs of your head. And cares are apt to multiply to those who are care-full and when you are as full of care as you think you can be, you will be sure to have another crop cares growing up all around you.
Cares are numerous and, therefore, let your prayers be as numerous.
Turn everything that is a care into a prayer. Let your cares be the raw material of your prayers and, as the alchemists hoped to turn dross into gold, so you, by a holy alchemy, actually turn what naturally would have been a care into spiritual treasure in the form of prayer.

Since a large portion of those who read both my blog, pre surgery, & post surgery forum are not Christians, I wanted to reach them without offending them, so I made the decision not include a very important part from Spurgeon's sermon. 

Now I have to ask myself did I misrepresent what I wanted to share about prayer by leaving out an essential truth? I suspect I did. What good is it to pray if you are praying to a God of your own imagination? Is there any value in that? I suppose there could some value in that in the same way some people experience an improvement in symptoms when they are given a placebo.

If prayers are going to be answered by the Creator of the Universe, it's important they be directed to the Creator of the Universe. Otherwise you might as well hold up your pillow and pray to that or anything else of your choosing.

So here's the last line I left out:
Baptize every anxiety into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit—and so make it into a blessing!

Agree or disagree, we are blessed to live in a free country. Our culture places very little value on Biblical truth, but when you are coping with a potentially terminal disease, it's important for me as a Christian to tell the Truth with a capital T.

You can turn your very real fears and cares into prayers. I pray you will be wise enough to do that by directing your prayers to the Creator of the universe.

As a result of my decision to leave out the last sentence, I created a new Facebook Page for Christians Coping with Cancer. where prayer and bible verses will be welcome.

Rick Redner and his wife Brenda are the authors of an awarding winning book written to help men and couples cope with life without a prostate. I Left My Prostate in San Francisco-Where’s Yours? can  be previewed and purchased at
Amazon.com