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I feel a sense of urgency to grow in my prayer life. Praying on a consistent basis has always been a struggle for me. But, when I break through the resistance that I often feel when I pray, God’s presence is worth the effort. My goal is to grow stronger each day in my inner man, so that I can pray more effectively for others. Recently my pastor has called our fellowship to a season of focused prayer. God is looking for those who will labor with him in prayer. We must learn the art of “bathing prayer.” I have been encouraged by the quote below by J. P. Moreland.
“Petitionary prayer is a form co-laboring with God in which I invite God’s attention and direct his power on a problem and work on it with God in the very act of prayer itself. You may think of this as a form of bathing prayer: You bathe the issue in prayer; you soak it with the power and presence of God while you pray. In this sense, prayer becomes a form of spiritual labor with God, and the longer you can stay with God, and the longer you can stay with something, the more you work on it by way of interactive conversation with God himself. This means that continuous, repeated prayer is at the very heart of working something over and constantly or repeatedly directing God’s power toward the problem. Here the issue is not to tell God what you want as much as it is speaking together about the issue. And, as one who stands in the place of God’s kingdom, directing the power of God onto something.” – J.P. Moreland, The God Question, page 223.