Woodeene Koenig-Bricker - Asking God for the Gifts He Wants to Give You

Woodeene Koenig-Bricker

Other Books by Woodeene Koenig-Bricker:

Praying with the Saints: Making Their Prayers Your Own

365 Saints: Your Daily Guide to the Wisdom and Wonder of Their Lives

365 Mary: A Daily Guide to Marys Wisdom and Comfort

Copyright 2008 Woodeene Koenig-Bricker

All rights reserved

Published by The Word Among Us Press

7115 Guilford Drive

Frederick, Maryland 21704

www.wau.org

15 14 13 12 11 2 3 4 5 6

ISBN: 978-1-59325-144-4

eISBN: 978-1-59325-441-4

Scripture texts in this work are taken from the New American Bible with Revised New Testament and Revised Psalms 1991, 1986, 1970 Confraternity of Christian Doctrine, Washington, D.C. and are used by permission of the copyright owner. All Rights Reserved. No part of the New American Bible may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

Prayer of Five Graces by St. Alphonsus Liguori taken from the Manual of Prayers, ed. James D. Watkins (Huntington, IN: Our Sunday Visitor), 3rd edition, 1998, pp. 220221.

Cover design by The DesignWorks Group

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any meanselectronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or any other, except for brief quotations in printed reviewswithout the prior permission of the author and publisher.

Made and printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Koenig-Bricker, Woodeene.

Asking God for the gifts he wants to give you / Woodeene

Koenig-Bricker.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-59325-144-4 (alk. paper)

1. Prayer--Christianity. I. Title.

BV220.K67 2008

248.32--dc22

2008017687

For Matt: Just another part of the journey

Eternal Father, your Son has promised that you would grant all the graces we ask of you in his name. Trusting in this promise, and in the name of and through the merits of Jesus Christ, I ask of you five special graces:

First, I ask pardon for all the offenses I have committed, for which I am sorry with all my heart, because I have offended your infinite goodness.

Second, I ask for your divine light, which will enable me to see the vanity of all the things of this earth, and see also your infinite greatness and goodness.

Third, I ask for a share in your love, so that I can detach myself from all creatures, especially from myself, and love only your holy will.

Fourth, grant me the grace to have confidence in the merits of Jesus Christ and in the intercession of Mary.

Fifth, I ask for the grace of perseverance, knowing that whenever I call on you for assistance, you will answer my call and come to my aid;

I fear only that I will neglect to turn to you in time of need, and thus bring myself to ruin.

Grant me the grace to pray always, O Eternal Father, in the name of Jesus.

Do you believe God answers all prayers?

You probably answered, Yes, of course.

Does God answer all your prayers?

Now it gets a bit more complicated. If youre honest, youre probably thinking, Well, Im supposed to believe that God answers all prayers, but a lot of my prayers seem to go unanswered.

I agree. So why am I beginning a book on prayer by asking you to question if God really does answer all our prayers?

Because I know what answered prayer is truly like. I know what its like to recognize that God is guiding my steps and arranging my life. I have experienced answers that have left me awestruck with the Fathers might, power, and love. I want you to have that same experience, so I first want you to let go of your old expectations about how God answers prayer.

Weve all had times when weve prayed and prayed, and the only response weve gotten was silence. When that happened, you may have tried to convince yourself that God really had answered your prayer by answering no, but that explanation wasnt very satisfactory, was it? It didnt make you feel particularly loved or cherished by God as his beloved child, did it? In fact, it may have made you mad or left you disappointed or frustrated or discouraged. At the very least, it probably didnt make you want to keep on asking God for his blessings with confidence and conviction.

I dont blame you. Ive had the same experience. Ive prayed about something, received a stony silence as my answer, and then tried very hard to convince myself that the silence was Gods way of saying no. Recently, however, Ive come to realize that assuming that silence is Gods answer isnt fair to God, and it doesnt do much for my faith, either. If I had been silent whenever my son asked me for something I couldnt give him, he wouldnt have been content. He would have kept asking and, rightfully, been upset if I had just pretended he wasnt there. To be a good parent, I had to answer him in a way he could understand; not just clam up and let him try to interpret my silence as a response.

Now, God is our parent, our good and loving parent. When we come to him in prayer, he doesnt ignore us and use silence as an answer. He always responds to us whenever we approach him in prayer.

So why doesnt it feel that way? Why does it seem that God so often gives us the silent treatment?

The reason lies, not with God, but with us. All too often we pray a prayer that God cant answer.

God cant answer a prayer? Heresy! God can do everything, right? Yes and no. An old riddle asks, Can God make a stone so large he cant lift it? The question is impossible to answer. because the idea of God making such a stone is outside his very nature. Since there is no stone too large for God to lift, he cant create one. Such an action is beyond reality, and God is not only based in reality, he is reality itself.

While this can be a difficult concept to grasp, its implications are very real when it comes to our prayers. One of the reasons we dont get answers to our prayers is because what we ask of God is outside Gods reality.

Let me give you an example. Once when I was very young (and very credulous), I wanted to wear a dress that I had long since outgrown. I lay down on my bed and prayed very hard that God would make me small enough to wear that dress one more time or, barring that request, that he would make the dress bigger. I really believed that when I got up and tried it on, it would fit. Of course it didnt, and I was quite put out with God. I had been taught that God can do everything and that God always answers prayers, so I could see no reason why he couldnt have expanded the dress (or shrunk me) for the occasion. But although God can do anything, and miracles do happen, an eight-year-old isnt going to fit into a garment made for a three-year-old. I imagine God shaking his head at that prayer, just as I did many years later when my son asked me, What does blue taste like? Blue doesnt have a taste wasnt any more satisfactory an answer to him than the silence and unchanging garment was to me. However, I couldnt answer my sons question because it was outside reality. My childish prayer couldnt be answered either because it, too, was outside reality as God has established it in this world.