{"id":9443,"date":"2021-03-07T12:35:04","date_gmt":"2021-03-07T17:35:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=9443"},"modified":"2021-02-07T13:37:07","modified_gmt":"2021-02-07T18:37:07","slug":"elder-aimilianos-on-prayer","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/?p=9443","title":{"rendered":"Elder Aimilianos on Prayer&#8230;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>[We] initially experience prayer, when we begin to pray, as a wrestling match, a struggle. &#8230;I begin a battle which will be painful, which will be endless&#8230; a battle with God Himself&#8230; Let us suppose&#8230; that we have begun to pray, and I feel that I am engaged in this fearful wrestling match with God, that I have entered the fray, and that I have gloved up and begun to strike God. He defends Himself, dodges and resists. I do too, and the question now is whether I will be the winner or Him. The only options for me are to be knocked down, covered in blood, or to beat Him, and hear Him say to me: \u201cNow you\u2019ve won.\u201d In other words, that He will surrender Himself to me, as He did to all the saints, who did whatever they wanted with God. If I stop, I will be a broken man, forever a failure. I cannot say that I am working, living, or praying, unless I win this fight.<\/p>\n<p>&#8211; &#8216;The Church at Prayer&#8217;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-medium wp-image-9444\" src=\"http:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/246990.p-300x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"300\" srcset=\"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/246990.p-300x300.jpg 300w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/246990.p-150x150.jpg 150w, https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/02\/246990.p.jpg 550w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>[We] initially experience prayer, when we begin to pray, as a wrestling match, a struggle. &#8230;I begin a battle which will be painful, which will be endless&#8230; a battle with [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9443","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-modern-orthodox-elders","has_thumb"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9443","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=9443"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9443\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9445,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9443\/revisions\/9445"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=9443"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=9443"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/orthodoxinsight.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=9443"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}