The prayer of a skeptic makes me wonder if the same really applies to the broader scope of life, the question for me expands, from "Have you ever prayed and haven't received?" to a number of similar questions:

"Have you ever worked and haven't achieved", "Have you ever played and haven't enjoyed", "Have you ever loved and haven't been blessed by love", "Have you ever experienced art and haven't been inspired", OR in short term:

"HAVE YOU EVER LIVED AND HAVEN'T BECOME ALIFE"

It seems to me that for whatever you experience, with every breath you inhale, you receive much much more than what you give.

So what stops me, so many times, from being filled, is not what I live or how I live it, but what I don't live and why I don't. I fear so many things in life...

I fear to pray and receive nothing...so I don't pray, and so I receive nothing
I fear to work and not achieve...so I don't work, and so I don't achieve
I fear to play, I fear to love, I fear to create......................
I fear to live, so I just stop being alife.

How the hell don't I - being a prestigious successful deep aware intelligent experienced etc etc etc man - remember this very simple lesson when the next minor choice of whether to be or not to be emerges. How come it is so simple but so difficult to inhale life starting from the next second I write these words?

I have no answer now, because I was just writing the question for you. I was not asking it!

As it goes along the same line of truth, that every time you really ask, you will be answered.