Avoiding a "rest" from prayer

In Proverbs 24:30-34 (NLT), Solomon writes,

I walked by the field of a lazy person,

the vineyard of one with no common sense.

I saw that it was overgrown with nettles.

It was covered with weeds,

and its walls were broken down.

Then, as I looked and thought about it,

I learned this lesson:

A little extra sleep, a little more slumber,

a little folding of the hands to rest—

 

then poverty will pounce on you like a bandit;

scarcity will attack you like an armed robber.

These verses literally apply to our day-to-day employ, but they also have a dual interpretation regarding our spiritual lives. Simply put, rattling off something that sounds prayer-like is easy, but praying in "spirit and truth," as demanded by Jesus, is not nearly as simple. Such praying requires removing ourselves from human perceptions of space and time, and conversing with God on a spiritual plane.

Because deep, spiritual prayer is difficult, it's tempting to "take a day off" here and there. But the aforementioned verses in Proverbs 24 provide a stark warning: Don't take such rests!