If you are in danger, you ask your friends to help you. This is prayer.

So our prayer is, … "My dear Lord Krsna, I am Your eternal servant.
Somehow or other, I am now fallen in this ocean. Please pick me up and fix
me again as the dust of Your lotus feet." …

Prayer is needed because we are in danger. … [That] we are in this material condition of life means we are in danger. Therefore we should pray.

(Srila Prabhupada: City Hall Lecture — October 7, 1975, Durban)