What Good is Prayer and Fasting?

I hear it all the time. “I prayed really hard, and STILL God didn’t answer my prayer.” This sense of frustration is common especially during times of serious illness and death of our loved ones. The Gospel tells of just this sense of frustration in the father who had a son so ill that even the Apostles couldn’t heal him, and Jesus said, “This kind does not go out except by prayer and fasting.”