I have read once that the best prayer is a prayer of thanksgiving. I wholeheartedly agree. Our normal form of prayer is a prayer of petition or asking something. Christians are familiar with the line “Ask and you shall receive” therefore it never wrong to ask. However, if we keep on asking for the same thing over and over again, it only means to us that we are not receiving what we are asking or otherwise we will not be asking for it anymore.
John 20:29 says “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed.”
Voltaire said “Faith consists in believing when it is beyond the power of reason to believe. It is not enough that a thing be possible for it to be believed.”
Claude M. Bristol said “Faith is believing what we cannot see.”
It therefore takes your FAITH in God or Universe or however you conceived that power to be, to say a heartfelt prayer of thanks for granting what you have asked. Indeed, there is already a need to be thankful for at the moment you asked the mechanism for its materialization is already at work. So instead of saying, “Lord, I desire this or I want that” change it to “Lord, I thank you for this or for that”.
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Personally I’d rank prayers of thanksgiving over petitionary prayer too. To me there’s been a certain feeling of arbitrariness when I’ve prayed for something for myself. I guess my best petitionary prayer would go something like “God, please attend to your list of priorities, not mine.” Come to think of it, the Our Father is such a wonderful prayer because that’s mostly what it’s saying – but quite a bit better!