Eugene Peterson in Answering God:
What takes place is that what has happened to us, in us and around us – the facts that stream into us through our genes and our culture and our meetings  – are metabolized into daily life. Prayer takes our genetic, cultural, and social experience and gets it circulating in our bloodstream as faith and hope and love, building muscles, lubricating our elbows and knees, replacing dead skin with fresh, repairing lesions.