Daily Devotional
Laboring In Prayer

November 3, 2016

Do you know that it takes energy to pray? I would rather preach for an hour than to pray for half an hour, as far as energy is concerned. It takes great strength to pray. Paul talked about “laboring” in prayer.

The reason many of us don’t pray is, very frankly, we are lazy. We go to pray and our energy just drains out of us. We get sleepy and our heads get full of cobwebs. We just don’t have the strength to pray.

While in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus prayed and asked His disciples to pray. He said, “Watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation: the spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak” (Matthew 26:41). He came back and what were they doing? Sleeping. Many times we are sleeping when we ought to be praying. Why? Because we are not praying in the powerful anointing of the Spirit.

Romans 8:9-10 challenges us: “But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you. Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the Spirit is life because of righteousness” (emphasis mine). Do you want to breathe life into your prayers? Pray in the power of the Spirit.