I am more convinced each day that the passion of Christ, the joy set before him that allowed him to endure the cross, was the relationship He had known as a part of the Trinity before creation. It wasn't his regimen of prayer as a man alone, that strengthened him, but rather the experience of renewed intimacy with Abba each time He prayed...prayer is a tool, not of religious obedience, but the foreplay of intimacy with God. Think about true intimacy as modeled by both bride and groom in marital bliss.
Anything less is religious zeal, a monotonous attempt at pleasing an unknown god and falls short of the means necessary to labor through one's Kingdom call.
Lord, teach us to pray!