Effective Prayer

God hears all our thoughts and prayers, but we can pray ineffectively. Sin acts as a barrier between us and God, as scripture tells us.

1 _Peter 3:12 For the eyes of the Lord are on the righteous and His ears are open to their prayers. But the face of the Lord are against those who do evil.

James 5:16 Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so you may be healer. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.

We are told not to do squirrel cage type prayers, repeating over and over what we want the Lord to do for us. The Lord knows our needs before we ask, by repeating them to the Lord we just reinforce what is wrong. A man with arthritis telling the lord over and over that he has arthritis is not helping to rid himself of arthritis.

Often it is more effective to rid yourself of a sin than to ask that the results of that sin be removed. A person carrying resentment of someone can do more by curing the resentment than to ask for help with a problem that is sometimes caused by the resentment.

Matt. 6: 15 But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.

Prayer Can Change Your Life by Parker is a book detailing an experiment using these principles and it gives the results.

Matthew 17:20-21
[20] And Jesus said unto them, Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. [21] Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.

Fasting with prayer seems to add more power when accompanied with belief.

Well I only just saw this thread but I am actually very interested in the topic of prayer. Sadly unless you have a thread that creates a lot of contraversy subjects like this tend to fade into the background it is sad really.
I think repenting of sin is important in prayer and there is power in prayer. But as for the type of prayer it is that is another thing entirely. Don't get me wrong it is always important to ask for forgiveness and try to rid our lives of sin but prayer is also not a wish list.
Actually in my prayer life I have seen far more results in my prayers just being a conversation with him, just being with him getting to know him than asking for things. Sometimes even out of nowhere he places on my heart the needs of others like an intersession sometimes it is urgent knowing someone out there right now is broken inside in misery alone and completely lost and I begg him to go to them and envelope them in his arms and it is like in my minds eye I just see something whisk towards them.
Other times I can just be being still and knowing him and our conversation feels like a stream of flowing water there is such beauty and serenity in it. and I just pour my heart out for him.

But if I ask him for something rarely ever do I recieve it but I think there is something important to notice about these kinds of prayers. While yes he says to ask and we will recieve and yes we can be greatly blessed in our asking but there seems to be a difference in the prayer of us praying for what we can recieve and prayer in what we can give him.
He seems to treasure the sacrifice of us spending personal quality time with him more than any other kind of prayer, he loves to just be with us and in turn we adore being in him. For me at least this is the only kind of prayer I have seen power in