I like to listen to podcasts while I work, so while I was plugging away yesterday, I decided to listen to a podcast by Online For Life*. On this particular podcast, the show host interviewed a published author and PhD who had, in his youth, led self-destructive lifestyle which resulted in intense shame, guilt, despair, and the abortion of his first child. Before he went into his story, however, he read from a letter that his mother had written to him when he was a teenager. In it, she told him about how hard she'd prayed for him throughout his tumultuous life, how she'd asked God to help him.
And then she said that it was only when she changed the theme of her prayers that she began to see a change in the life of her son.
Instead of asking God for something, she started praising and thanking Him for blessings that were yet to come.
Interesting concept, right? Not one you hear everyday. Yes, you hear people say to praise the Lord in spite of the hard times, but you rarely hear them articulate the idea that you can praise Him for things that He (in terms of our limited human conceptualization of space and time) hasn't done yet.
It really struck me.
On the same day, I read a couple pages from the diary of St. Faustina*. She wrote to Jesus and about Him all the time in her diary. One day, she wrote: "I see that God never tries us beyond what we are able to suffer . . . One act of trust at such moments give greater glory to God than whole hours passed in prayer filled with consolations."
In my mind, that corresponded with what I'd heard on the podcast. The mother who wrote that letter to her son had had to make the move from begging to trusting; and so her prayers had become those of thankful praise to God for results she could not yet see, and the results turned out be be very powerful, resulting in her son's conversion.
I decided that that was the way I wanted to pray, but it seemed God really wanted me to stick to that decision, because this morning He reminded me again. I'd randomly retrieved Norman Vincent Peale's Positive Thinking Every Day from my bookshelf. I'd only read bits of it before. I decided to flip to today's bit of advice. I read it: "Whatever yo do, do not make all your prayers into the form of asking God for something. The prayer of thanksgiving is much more powerful."
Not to sound cliched, but I couldn't believe it I had come across the message yet again in so short a period of time. It's a great message to be exposed (and re-exposed) to.
So, I think, if you're feeling stuck right now, go ahead and thank God in advance for the things He's going to do with your life--they might be things you've never thought of. Have confidence in Him because "we know that to them that love God, all things work together unto good..."*
*http://onlineforlife.org/?feed=podcast
*http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faustina_Kowalska
*Romans 8:28
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