can you covet a prayer?

I was already out of college the first time I heard someone say "I covet your prayers." I knew exactly what they meant, but wondered how they could be so blind to the actual meaning of the word. To covet, after all, is to do something wrong, to want something in a wrong way.

But the phrase caught on, and it's now difficult to go through a Sunday or a weeknight prayer meeting without someone coveting your prayer. One friend did that so much that one time when he asked for my prayers that way I said I'd "lust after God's will for him." His response? "Oh thank you, man."