Prayer is of transcendent importance. Prayer is the mightiest agent to advance god's work. Praying hearts and hands only can do god's work. Prayer succeeds when all else fails.
I think christians fail so often to get answers to their prayers because they do not wait long enough on god. They just drop down and say a few words, and then jump up and forget it and expect god to answer them. Such praying always reminds me of the small boy ringing his neighbor's door-bell, and then running away as fast as he can go.
Importunity is a condition of prayer. We are to press the matter, not with vain repetitions, but with urgent repetitions. We repeat, not to count the times, but to gain the prayer. We cannot quit praying because heart and soul are in it. We pray "with all perseverance." we hang to our prayers because by them we live. We press our pleas because we must have them, or die.
Faith, and hope, and patience and all the strong, beautiful, vital forces of piety are withered and dead in a prayerless life. The life of the individual believer, his personal salvation, and personal christian graces have their being, bloom, and fruitage in prayer.
Prayer is a trade to be learned. We must be apprentices and serve our time at it. Painstaking care, much thought, practice and labour are required to be a skillful tradesman in praying. Practice in this, as well as in all other trades, makes perfect.