Maybe you remember that in the parable Jesus goes on to say that when the young man finally did return, although he was afraid of his reception by the father, yet the father had compassion upon him and fell on his neck and kissed him and clothed him with a new robe and put a ring upon his finger. Those words certainly are expressive of a felt need to pray. When we look at the words of the prodigal son in the light of prayer, we see that his words are expressing a simple, yet basic truth about true prayer. Without genuine repentance in your heart, there is no true prayer. Wherever there is the genuine work of the grace of the Holy Spirit within the heart of the man or woman producing a genuine repentance and sorrow over sin before God, there will also be a felt need to pray.
Prayer arises out of the soil of genuine repentance.
As contradictory and incredible as that may sound to an unbeliever, to someone who does not know the things of God, yet, when a person knows himself to be a sinner, and when a person, by the grace of God, feels the shame for his sin and understands that he is without excuse for his sin, he is drawn by these things to God. Repentance produces prayer. It is exactly impenitence in a hard heart which separates a person from God. The Scriptures are very plain on that. There the Scriptures are telling us that when heaven appears to us as brass and when prayer apparently has no power in our lives, it is not because God is absent or that His ear cannot hear or His mighty hand of grace cannot help us.