May I suggest that your heart will lead you.  I find that actions follow attitude pretty reliably.  If God has answered your prayer, then apparently you cared enough about something to pray about it. 

I hope that, in the end, you asked that God would bring about whatever He thought best in the situation.  I know that I joke pretty often that we all like to offer advice to God about how He should handle any number of situations.  But at the end of the day, our best advice is to ourselves that we need to be grateful to God as He does what he knows to be best.

If, on the other hand, your prayer actually reflected what God decided, then you are to be congratulated for your good judgment.  That is often what we mean by “God answered my prayer”.

If, in fact, you perceive that God has answered your prayer in a positive way there are a few emotions that you should be feeling.  Joy is one.  Gratitude is another.  Actually, the two go together.  They say that the happiest people are the ones who lead a life filled with gratitude.  If you are grateful, you are much more likely to be filled with Joy.

So what should you do to respond in gratitude?  And who are you showing your gratitude to?  Jesus made quite a point of telling his disciples that our pious doings are to be done in private so that only God our Father sees them.  If we do these things so that other people will see them then all of our motives are called into question.  It is one thing to write a nice thank you note to a friend and send it to them privately.  It is quite another to take that same note and have it published in the newspaper.  One is a private heart-felt communication from one friend to another the other is a bid for public acclaim. 

So what would a response in gratitude look like?  I submit that it would look like making a sacrifice.  Every Lent, we make an offering to God of some favorite thing that we have given up, or some new thing we have taken on.  It is no sacrifice to give up something we hate, or to take up something we love.  Years ago, I had a criminal court judge for a parishioner.  He told me that when it came to sentencing, he often charged a convict with the more meaningful penalty when he had a choice.  If the condemned was a rich man, he was given time to serve.  If the condemned was a poor man he was required to pay a fine.  That may be a good guide for ways that we show our gratitude to God.  For some of us, it is easy to write a check, but hard to take off a week.  For others, a week of work comes easier than finding a substantial amount of cash to give. 

Give God your best.  Give Him what is most precious to you.  In gratitude, give Him what you treasure most.  That is the way that we show Love.