Prayer gives the one prayed for the responsibility to change and help themselves. And maybe to maybe ask you for help and how to help.
Why do you want to give them responsibility? They already have it you might
say. Why do you want to give it to them as if they don’t?
You want to feel it is up to them and the supernatural not you.
Yet you feel they need to be given responsibility.
So you both want something else to do the work for you and patronise them.
Many who pray don't care what they are actually praying to as long as their request is considered. That flatters them that they are important. They hope it will even get a reaction from the divine. Those who say to you if you are involved in yoga or the occult, "Hey you don't know what you are opening yourself up to", need to apply that thinking to praying too.
They all say that they pray to what they hope is an all-loving and all-powerful God. They must think that God is as bad as them or worse.
Prayer is inherently insinuating that it is the one prayed for's fault if nothing happens. If nothing happens you make yourself blame them. This halo shining is not concern for the other. This victim-blaming is a disgrace. And the bigger the suffering they have the worse the disgrace. And you want and expect their thanks if they know you pray!
If you tell them you have prayed you make them feel responsible if nothing happens. That is even worse. That kind of prayer is what going to Church is all about. Many who go do to Church do not feel comfortable but go along with it. And no wonder.
What of the teaching, "No answer to prayer is an answer." What if you have a serious illness and hear that after praying for things to at least get bearable?
You may suspect or decide that somebody else may or could help a person in dire straits better than you. You pray for a helper for them. So that you end up giving the responsibility to that helper. And somebody can help them better and if you help you will never know if you did the best. So everybody when they pray do so while being open to the notion that if they could help they might not be the best or the most efficient.
You see cases of people praying for the doctor to help a friend while they go out and raise money for the poor instead. They want to do the good that suits them not the good that is just good. It makes sense if prayer sends God to a person. The halo comes first.
Say you have a kindly elderly neighbour who prays for you. She should be asking you first. Why? Because if she is Christian, Jewish, Muslim, Mormon or Hindu she is certainly praying to a morally dubious entity. Consider how the Bible God had women stoned to death. Consider how the Qur'an describes Hell as Allah's torture chamber. Consider how the Book of Mormon has the Holy Spirit helping in the murder of the brother of Laban. In fact she should not be praying at all and what if the praying is passive-aggressive? What else are we supposed to think?
That is the biblical question of how an all-good God can do evil. There is also the general discussion of how an all-good God can let evil things happen to the innocent.
A real God who has nothing to do with the religions would be offended at being accused of things and then being prayed to.
If she is praying in secret she does not see herself as really praying in secret. She thinks God and dead people and angels and saints see her. As long as you even wrongly think somebody is watching, passive-aggression is possible.
I would smile at her if she says she prays and say, "For me prayers work in contraries. Thanks for thinking of me though."
We conclude we should not co-operate with praying people. They may agree with us more than they admit so why put them before what you know makes sense?