Using American Protestants to judge Christianity is even worse than using the opinions of high schoolers to judge all of history based upon their knowledge. American Protestants are constantly re-inventing the wheel; they are not able to leverage hundreds of years of the earliest Christians debating people like you because American Protestants do not know their own Christian history. They do not read the apologists of centuries past to build on their knowledge. If you want perhaps the most mature response to your questions about prayer, I would read this very short book: https://www.google.com/books/edition/Beginning_to_Pray/DI5YIApq2vQC