Christian Prayer.

If you pray against or outside the will of God, you can hardly expect prayers to receive a positive answer.

Selfish prayers do not work at all.
(Prayers for myself - even on righteous matters - always seem to be my least successful ones!)
Prayers by the faithless will generally remain unanswered - right up to the point where someone calls out to God from the heart for salvation and then .....
When we recall that even Jesus's powers were limited during His return to Nazareth because of their lack of faith - perhaps herein lies a clue.
That's a lot of prayer 'unanswered'!
Prayer for others is where 'success' is to be expected and in the early Church they saw many more positive results than we do today.
When we pray - just how dedicated are we to the Saviour? It is not the only factor - but it is certainly a vitally important one.
Our handful of prayer warriors on most Thursdays at dawn have seen successes in our praying - but WE WANT MORE!
So should you! If that means getting closer to God - so be it.