[adapted from The God of Miracles]
God loves when we’re grateful. During thanksgiving we are expressing love for Him. We are close to Him. We are brought into His Plan. When we thank God, we are stepping out of ourselves and into His power. Have you gone back through the entire year, reviewing what you sought in prayers and thanking Him?
That makes a world – a universe – of difference. Miracles are often instant and big when we go to Him, thank Him in advance, and don’t force things.
Too often, we get an idea and push for it despite gut feelings. We shouldn’t do that. We should respect the intuition that God gave to us. Get in touch with your deepest inclinations. Those are your signposts. There you will find His still, small voice (1 Kings 19:11-18). If we’re honest, we know there are countless times when we sense that the Lord may want something but forge ahead with what we want. We convince ourselves that something is right when in our hearts we know that it isn’t right, and in this way we force matters to fit when they don’t. Most failures are the result of jamming our ideas into a situation that requires a different course of action, and the fruit of forcing anything is breakage.
We break things. Sometimes, it is even disaster. Take a key that does not go with a lock and it won’t open the door. The fruit of forcing something is blockage.
God answers only those prayers that will accrue to our eternal benefit.
Thank Him for the times He didn’t give you what you wanted because it would have been bad for your soul (in ways you could not imagine)!
True, there are also times when we’re blocked because we’re doing the right thing and it is the enemy stymying us. But most of the time we are wasting our time when we push one way despite signs pointing in the other direction.
How do we tell the right course? How do we discern the “signs”? A feeling of tranquility is a benchmark. When something is “right” for us, when it fits in God’s Plan, we feel at peace.
Only when we die will we see that a mechanic can be as important in God’s plan as a senator or a laborer as crucial as a world-famous writer.
Perhaps the best example is a housewife: she has a tremendous influence on her children, and so down through the generations – as the descendants geometrically multiply – she could end up affecting hundreds of thousands of people at a level that even the president of the United States can not affect them. (There was a couple who landed at Plymouth Rock and is now thought to have three million descendants.)
The feeling of peace usually is accompanied by the lifting of our spiritual blinders. We begin to see the spiritual reasons for all that occurs around us. It’s like stepping backstage, and it comes in a special way through fasting, deep prayer, and the sacraments.
During Communion — which means communication, and during which we should offer deepest thanksgiving — Christ often communicates what He expects from us. The Lord wants us to be humble, accomplish our duties according to our stations in life, and be open to His inspiration. Every inspiration, every good thought, is a miracle. They let you know or “feel” which decisions are right and which are wrong, according to your purpose in life. A decision that’s not in God’s Will oppresses, binds, worries, and causes you to second guess. Always be on the lookout for uneasiness. Other hallmarks are anxiety, vacillation, and confusion, which signify that for some reason the Lord is distant. As soon as you sense confusion, you should stop deciding whatever you’re deciding and go to the Lord until the confusion lifts.
If you start by doing that, you’ll begin to invoke God on a more frequent basis. He’ll become more involved — and the involvement of God is the involvement of the supernatural.
“There are two ways to live your life,” goes the saying. “One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is.”
[resources: The God of Miracles and Christmas specials]