Prayer

I struggle with prayer. For whatever reason I just cannot seem to find any sort of consistency with it. I recently joined an accountability group - and yet find myself still not praying as much as I should. I want to say that I am just lazy and undisciplined...which I am, but I sadly think it might be something more. I am starting to wonder if I doubt the importance of prayer or at the very least the effectiveness of prayer. I say because as I have posted, I have started exercising and eating better. For the past 3 weeks I have had no problem going to the gym 5 days a week. Even when I don't want to - I easily force myself to do it. With eating, I have just gone cold turkey on things like candy, pop, and other crappy foods that I use to eat at will. I see the importance of my health and why I need to eat better and exercise. As a result, I do not let my lazy nature get in the way. So back to prayer - if I saw it as important and critical as exercise, it seems likely that I would be able to do it...even if at times I had to "force" myself to follow through on it. I feel terrible because it seems that working at a church should automatically make me good at prayer. I can pray in the moment, and when people ask me to pray for something I usually do right then and there (to help me prevent forgetting). Yet what I long for is a daily time devoted to prayer. Can I simply find at least 15 minutes a day to block out distractions and pray? Sadly, I have struggled to do this. I pray a little here and a little there, but fail to get that daily devoted time. So it comes back to this...do I believe that prayer is critical? If so it seems that this would develop. If I feel that prayer is useless then it will continue to be that elusive discipline that cannot be conquered because I simply don't have the courage, heart, and passion to pursue it.