Below is a helpful thought from D. Martyn Lloyd-Jones on prayer.

David E. Prince

I urge, therefore that there is nothing more important in connection with prayer than preliminary meditation and consideration of what we are going to do. This is what the saints have called ‘recollection’, which really means that you talk to yourself about yourself and what you are doing. 

Our chief fault is that we do not talk to ourselves as much as we should. We must talk to ourselves about ourselves. There is little purpose in beginning to talk to God and praying unless we realize our own condition. To fail to do so means that we may be going into the presence of God in a completely false state. We may feel that we have been dealt with very harshly and unkindly and indeed cruelly; we are full of self-pity; and we go to God in that condition and ask Him for certain things. Had we stopped to analyze ourselves, and had we spoken to ourselves quite honestly, we would have discovered that we were probably in a thoroughly bad and unworthy state, that we really needed to be whipped spiritually, and that the trouble was essentially in ourselves. 

Had we done that, how different our prayer would be! Before we begin to pray we must examine ourselves; and, then, having done so, we must remind ourselves of what we are going to do. We must meditate upon this again, and we must realize the possibilities.¹

1. Lloyd-Jones, David Martyn. 1972. The Unsearchable Riches of Christ: An Exposition of Ephesians 3. Grand Rapids: Baker Book House.