Prayer as a Performative Speech Act

What is this thing called 'prayer' that we engage in? I'm very interested in the phenomenology of prayer because it can be so many things at once: a set of words, a state of being, a mental disposition, a connection, an action, a thinking, a listening.

Most of the time, however, we think of prayer in grammatical form - whether it is said aloud, written, or thought silently in the head. It has always seemed strange to me that we have to rely so much on the communicative aspect of prayer. Why is "talking to God" the most natural and usual way of experiencing God?

I was excited the other day, because I learned in my Linguistic Anthropology course that certain forms of speech function both as communication and as action - perhaps this is why we feel that the 'idea' has efficacy. These particular speech events are not merely descriptive, but actually constitute the subject at hand. For example, when we say "I promise" or "I testify" or "I pronounce" we are doing exactly those things! By saying something, we do something.

Perhaps prayer is a performative speech act, which would mean that we are part of the phenomenology. If
I pray for "comfort for all those who are sick," then I am not merely telling an external, third-person God to make nice things happen to all those sick people in the world, but actually dedicating myself to the God within me to comfort the sick.

And perhaps it is only the petition kind of prayer which needs to be newly understood in this context. Prayers of praise and thanksgiving are already obvious speech acts; after all, to say 'Glory to God!' is to really glorify God, and people generally use it in that way. But petition prayers are often perceived in solely communicative terms. It's all too easy to pray "for all the homeless who suffer from the cold that they may find shelter" but do nothing more than posit a set of instructions for some exterior God to fulfill. But if that prayer were made as a speech act, then it would involve wrapping one's heart around the Holy Spirit within: I promise, I proclaim, I declare, I dedicate, I vow, and I name myself to the comfort of the homeless. That is a prayer of unity and of efficacy.

So maybe 'talking to God' isn't so strange after all? It's less an externalization of God, and more a bringing forth of God? Less a description of the reigning kingdom, and more a manifestation of it?