What is going on is that you cannot petition the Lord with prayer!! 
I’d like to echo Zagadka. Noting that I aint a Christian (heh), but I find that most of my prayers are granted. It depends on what you pray for. I pray for the strength to deal with what’s happening around me, I pray for patience in raising my children, I pray for guidance in making decisions.
Prayer changes the person who prays, it doesn’t change the world, it doesn’t change other people. (I think that’s a paraphrase of someone like Herschell.)
Those aren’t prayers, they are wishes. Pray for strength, pray for guidance, and chances are you get what you asked for. Pray for divine intervention in earthly matters, and more often than not you will be disappointed.
I believe that God gives you what you need. Just sometimes, what you need is a metaphorical swift kick in the rear.
I believe (from experience) that any negative event can make you into a better person. It’s up to you to do that, though.
And before anyone asks, I’m not Christian (not anymore, anyway).
Okay, I get it. I was under the impression that Christians believed that God would “grant wishes”. (Maybe some Christians do believe that.) This “praying for God to make a change in the person who prays”, now that makes a bit more sense. Thanks for helping the ignorant agnostic!
My religious answer so take it with a pillar of salt.
Prayer is an insult to God.
“Excuse me, but in creating the universe you forgot my Mercedes Benz.”
A slave does not question his Master. A slave thanks the Master for his life.
It is permissible to ask for help in doing what God wants.
Worship is okay but is not to interfer (too much) with living the life given.
Dung Beetle:
Maybe two out of three are successful.
The little girl receives an answer – not along the lines of “Don’t worry, God is here and God will stop him” but more along the lines of “This IS wrong, and it IS right to do what you need to do to get out of this situation. Believe in that, believe in yourself, and do what you have to do. Now…who can you talk to?”
Maybe three out of three, even:
The old man pays his rent and indeed doesn’t have enough money for food, and in response to prayer attains calm and thinks strategically: how can I obtain food, what sources are available to me, and where to I have to go or who do I have to contact in order to secure those options?
I do consider myself theistic (although nontraditionally so) and I do believe in prayer. But God isn’t Santa Claus, Superman, or the Genie of the Aladdin-Lamp.