He has delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us again. On him we have set our hope that he will continue to deliver us, as you help us by your prayers. (2K 1,10-11)
Who actually taught Abraham to pray? At that time there was no one else who could have been a model for him, from whom he could have learned about the spiritual path. He learned everything on his own as he followed God. However, it seems to be a kind of a spiritual law: once someone has a personal encounter with God, his attitude toward prayer changes significantly. He comes to understand much about it that has hitherto been hidden from him, and his prayer begins to differ from what even unbelievers sometimes give a try when they go through difficulties. They do not perceive God, they do not know when to speak and when to stop, that secret of listening which Abraham already knew. He, too, could have come to God with a fixed purpose, a plan to save Sodom at all costs. He would have shouted, urged and pounded on the closed door, forcing himself to go on up to number one, hoping thus to save Sodom because his (righteous) nephew Lot was in it.
But then he would not have been heard. Clearly God wanted perverse Sodom to be saved if there were at least a few worthy original inhabitants besides Lot's family. If Abraham had not learned spontaneously, through the influence of time spent in communion with God, to pray "according to the will of the Spirit" (Rom. 8:27), he would not have stopped, and his experience of prayer not working (and him not knowing why) would have thrown him into a spiritual confusion. He would not have experienced the answer, and thus would not have anchored his confidence more deeply in God, would not have experienced the foreshadowing of the word "if ye abide in me, and if my words abide in you, ask what ye will, and it shall be done unto you" (Jn. 15:3). On the contrary, he would have gotten the impression that, while it is possible to "pray for the children and bless Israel just before going to bed," religion is otherwise a rather shaky business and it is probably better to live a normal life and not excessively pursue the matter of spirituality.
However, praying according to God's will is indeed powerful! Paul knew this while having asked almost every Christian congregation in the New Testament for it. In Eastern doctrines, the world is not separate from God, and therefore their proponents tend to think that all what happens around is the will of God. Then one should rather accept it and not try to change it. Prayer, if practiced at all, has a purely meditative meaning. But this is not the Jewish conception we see in the Bible. That is based on the separateness of God and the world. Meditative in the sense of abiding in God, yes, but in our verse in the title Paul is clearly saying that things will turn out differently if they pray than if they don't. God will deliver me if you will help me with your prayers... but if you don't, who knows?
