Prayer is work because it is difficult, especially for those who are not use to it.  It involves communicating with another world—a spiritual realm.  Thus prayer is often neglected because it seems to be too much work.  Our toil in prayer is an effort to break out of our world into God’s world, an effort to reach Him and to submit ourselves to Him.  The effort then is mostly a struggle within us, a battle that is fought against our own sinful flesh.  In this battle we constantly call on God for strength—strength to overcome our troubles and to continue in the hard work of prayer, to persevere in prayer with great pain and intensity.

Since Jesus Himself prayed with loud crying and tears, through much suffering (Heb. 5:7), we can be assured that He understands our difficulties and can help us in our prayers.  Thus in all our troubles and in our travail, let us fix our eyes on Him.  For when He prayed He never grew weary or lost heart (Heb. 12: 3).  And when times were especially tough, as in the garden of Gethsemane (where he was wrestling against all the sins of the world and against all of Satan’s evil forces), He prayed more fervently, to the point where His sweat became like drops of blood (Lu. 22: 44).  Thus, we find here a lesson: the greater the difficulties we have, the more we must travail in prayer to overcome them.