Page 16 - praiseandthanks

St Paul says to the Philippians again,4:6, “with thanksgiving let

your requests be made known to God”, but he adds to the
Ephesians,2:8, “but remember even trust is not of yourselves. It

too is a gift of God.”

So why all the talk of patience? St James has the answer in

1:14 “when your patience is in full bloom then you are ready for
anything.” This means that we are not to start begging,

pleading for God to change things. I repeat, we are to praise

Him for those very things, not for hoped for results. We may
certainly tell Him what we hope for (which he knows any way)

but not tell Him what to do. If begging and pleading don’t get us
anywhere neither does it depend on how good we feel about it

or how much we screw up our faces when we pray. What

counts is faith, our deliberate choice to believe that God is at
work in our praise. So we don’t give up but with a daily practical

routine through the weeks and maybe the years, we go on our

way, in the safe way of praise and thanks. The peace and joy
that accompany this is the clearest evidence that God is at

work in us. And so the blows that remove more and more of the

illusion that we are able to handle our own situations, bear fruit
in a whole unworldly dependence on God.

And alas, the Holy Spirit is at hand in case we don’t know how

to pray our praise, how to offer our thanks. The Spirit will praise
“through us with unutterable sighs.” Here then is a little prayer

for offering praise. I have placed it in the Divine Will.

“Jesus, Divine Will praise to You, for the way things are, and

thank You for Your perfect plan for us.”

Verse after verse of the Scriptures, especially the psalms, are
right there to encourage us in our praise and thanks. Psalm

145: “my soul, give praise to the Lord; I will praise the Lord all
my days, make music to my God while I live.” And in Psalm

16