Prayer does not work

[Jacob(smooth)]

If I want to make someone feel better, I might give them a hug. They feel better, the hug worked.

If I want to make a Christian feel better I might pray with them. They feel better, the prayer worked.

Thus, because there are circumstances where the prayer can have the desired effect, (work) it's untrue to say prayer does not work.

This gets into tricky territory, though. If prayer works in the same way that a hug would, or a comforting talk would, or a helping hand would, then it isn't prayer that works; it is human empathy or sympathy put into action. In other words, if you visit the bereaved person and say a prayer with her the positive effect may not be from the prayer, but from the companionship and the resulting feeling that she is not alone.

It could well be that in that context a prayer works that way yes. But we're back into the realms of how it works.