Prayer to God presupposes the fact of God as a hearer and answerer of prayer, in such relations with or in such attitude toward the one who prays, as to justify the privilege of prayer. One would have little encouragement to make a personal request of God, unless he felt that God would be entreated by him as a petitioner. Hence prayer, as mere supplication or intercession, involves an understood relation between him who prays and Him who is prayed to, that carries with it well-known privileges and duties. A man cannot even ask help of God unless he has hope that God will hear and heed him because God is God, and because the petitioner stands as he stands before God; for a cry of despair is not in the spirit of prayer.

H. Clay Trumbull, Prayer: Its Nature and Scope