Praying is not the answer.
Praying precipitates the answer.
It is for the sake of obtaining an answer.
It has an objective. Prayer is not itself an objective.

If I invite you to come for supper, but do not give you food, how would that be? Coming for supper makes eating food possible. It doesn't actually fill your belly.

Prayer is entering the King's court, abiding, communing and waiting with Him. In such a fellowship, you receive what you came for. You leave His court with the answer to your prayer. That is the objective. That is the promise of Jesus Christ.

To say that you have prayed and not to have obtained your objective is . . . unfinished. To persist in a lifestyle of unfinished prayer is futility.

Jesus makes plain this most profoundly essential operational process:
Ask, and it will be given to you;
seek, and you will find;
knock, and it will be opened to you.

Jesus then doubles down with the most extravagant, limitless, affirmation:
For everyone who asks receives,
and the one who seeks finds,
and to the one who knocks it will be opened

This is how things work in this unseen Kingdom. Sons and daughters born into the King's family may ask anything of Him - and get it. This is not a bait and switch. This is no genie granting three wishes. This is the ultimate promise. This is the word spoken to us by the Son of God.

so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it

The only catch - isn't a catch at all. True sons and daughters love their Good Father (whose extreme pleasure is to give His children good things) and delight to honor Him and tell everyone how good He is. So, they are to simply act like true sons and daughters, e.g., be themselves.

Could Jesus possibly swear to the certainty of such a process with the full weight of His character if it were not utterly reliable? Would He extend to us full access to the infinite treasures of His Kingdom, if it didn't work? It's the golden key! The modus operandi of life in the land of promise - all the riches of His wisdom and glory and goodness.

There exists no scale able to measure the magnitude of what we forfeit by our refusal to believe what our Savior has told us. As a man, rightly related to God, Jesus Himself practiced and proved this vital process.

Our Father holds the answers FOR us. Not from us.

Not every answer to prayer requires climbing a high mountain. Some do.Some don't. No matter the height of the mountain, it's the believing heart of the climber that reaches and captures His.

Our Father hears us clearly, and knows the yearning and the weight of our entreaties. If you care about a person, if you must have a thing, then that will be plain to Him. He will care, too. He has sworn to answer us. We must position ourselves with expectant hope, an immediate readiness to receive - to let Him finish, and give what He promised.