How We Should Pray

The Book of Hebrews exhorts us to labor to enter the rest of God. When we are living in the rest of God we think, speak, and act in accordance with the thinking, speaking, and acting of the Lord Jesus. We mirror what He is doing, just as the Lord Jesus mirrors what the Father is doing.
The purpose of prayer is not to persuade God to do something. It is to find out what God wants and to pray in that direction. This is true even of intercessory prayer. To pray against God's will is folly.
"Your will be done" is the greatest of all prayers.
Living in the rest of God determines how we pray. Our prayers always must be what Jesus is praying. This being the case, the first thing we must pray for in every situation is to know what God wants.
There may be two kinds of prayer: defensive and offensive. Defensive prayer is our petition for ourselves or someone else who is in distress. In a way it is a prayer for survival. Sometimes the prayer for survival is a deep groan as we seek to break through the darkness that is pressing on us.
Then there is the offensive prayer. This is our petition when we are not fighting for survival but are asking the Lord about a positive occurrence in a situation. We are not under duress but pray for something we would like to happen. "Ask and receive that your joy may be full."