It is not the stubborn and the diligent who pray to Azelf or indeed any other gods; when they run into difficulty, they seek to overcome it through raw determination alone. Azelf is a god rarely thanked, but often pleaded to, and yet those Azelf is said to favor accomplish so much that some consider them the strongest of the gods.
Inborn talent and hereditary position can offer a great deal in life, but pokemon is the great equalizer. Never has there been a master who lacked that ultimate drive to become the greatest, for the top pokemon trainers spend so long training, practicing, strategizing, and studying the battles of old. A few genuises rise quickly through the ranks, but most are beaten down by failure so many times that a lesser man (some say a sane man) would give up long before reaching the League.
The most famous legend of Azelf is that of its own creation. It appeared before its companions, who were created as a blessing for humanity; indeed, before most of the gods. The work of creation was an extremely long process; theologians may debate when Arceus began shaping a planet into the world we know, but if this god indeed created every pokemon, the work must have taken around five hundred million years. Faced with such a painstaking, enormous task, Arceus felt its own will to create suffering, so it poured every ounce of determination it had ever possessed into a single pokemon to create a god of willpower; with Azelf and its power to instill determination beside it, Arceus never wavered again.
Some have doubted the accuracy of this tale, but rest assured: it is more true than any other story men have told about the gods!