Kierkegaard's observation cuts against the grain of what most people actually *do* when they pray—asking, bargaining, petitioning. He's suggesting that the real work happens inward, that our words reshape us rather than move some cosmic ear. The insight matters because it relocates prayer's power from the external (will God listen?) to the internal (am I listening to myself?), transforming it from a transaction into an act of self-examination. A person praying through genuine anger might find, by the end, that they've had to honestly name what's beneath the rage—and that naming, not divine intervention, is where change begins.