Why Pray

I have struggled with the concept of prayer all my Christian life. At first it was questions like, why bother to tell God things He already knows? Why ask God for things if He'll only do them if it's His will? Do I really believe God would make a sick person die just because I wouldn't pray for them? More recently God has showed me how amazing it is to be in the presence of God - I've had moments of joy that I wouldn't trade for the world. From that I learned that prayer helps me, but what about the other six billion people on the planet? Well, obviously if I'm full of the presence of God, everyone I touch will experience His presence as well. And what about people on the other side of the world? God showed me that when I pray for them, I bring them into His presence as well.
All good stuff, and all totally true, but I think my focus is wrong. Once again, I'm looking for God to DO something. I'm praying to get that tingly feeling all over or because I don't want to se someone suffer. But the point of Christianity is to BE with Christ. How can I sit and tell people Jesus is everything if He isn't everything to me? Prayer isn't just about getting stuff from God, it's acknowledging that there's nowhere else I'd rather be. It's giving up all my selfish desires of what I'd like to do with my time as I dedicate my life to sitting at His feet. It's total surrender. And when God has a people who pray like that, He has a people He can use to do anything!
Of course, it could be that when we pray, we're otherwise occupied and not able to get in the way of God's plans! Joking... sort-of! ;)