Prayer is just meditation with belief. Many times my meditation sessions turned into spontaneous prayer sessions. I just felt it and decided to go with it.
Prayer feels wonderful. You’re surrendering your immediate mental state so that you can feel a greater connection with, well, something. You don’t have to have a particular deity in mind when you’re praying. But the particular mental state of prayer won’t happen unless you’re actually externalizing towards something.
It’s hard to miss once you’ve felt it.