…we made our prayer unto our God… – Nehemiah 4:9

It is a very commonplace remark to make, that prayer must go to God if it to be of any avail; but it is very necessary to make it. When prayer does not go to God, what is the good of it? When you come out of your closet, and feel that you have only gone through a form, how much are you benefited? Make your prayers unto your God. Speak in His ear, knowing that He is there; and come away knowing that He has replied to you, that He has lifted up the light of His countenance upon you. That is the kind of prayer we need for our protection against our enemies both day and night.

I gather from the words before me that it was a prayer saturated with faith. “We made our prayer unto God”? No, “unto our God.” They had taken Jehovah to be their God, and they prayed to Him as their God. They had a full assurance that, though He was the God of the whole earth, yet He was specially their God; and so they made their prayer unto the God who had given Himself to them, and to whom they belonged by covenant relationship. “We made our prayers unto our God.” Those two little words carry a vast weight of meaning. The door of prayer seems to turn on those two golden hinges: “our God.” If you and I are to be delivered from the evil that is in the world, if we are to be kept building the church of God, we must have for our first guard, mighty, believing prayer, such as Nehemiah and his Jewish friends presented unto the Lord. ~ C.H. Spurgeon

https://www.blueletterbible.org/Comm/spurgeon_charles/sermons/2254.cfm