In the Garden of Paradise, Adam and Eve "heard God walking in the Garden in the cool of the day," and they hid from Him because "they were naked." Had they not been walking (naked) with Him before this and talking with Him without shame?
When we pray, I think that God is already here, "in the Garden" with us, so to speak, walking with us, already seeing and interested in our lives. Our prayer then, is simply that we are no longer afraid and ashamed to walk with Him, naked and open. We are not hiding, but conversing. And like all conversations, we are not always just asking for help, but turning things over with another person. We are "making sense" of our lives by processing what is happening with someone we can trust.
In prayer, we are discovering what God thinks of us and of our lives. We are listening to His opinions and finding rest and confidence in Him. We are seeking His kingdom of truth and justice in a world gone crazy; we are wondering what is happening, from His viewpoint.
The Bible is full of God's conversation with mankind, few of whom seem to be listening. Jer. 9:12 looks at a wasteland---the birds of the air have fled and the animals are gone---and says: What man is wise enough to understand this? Who has been instructed by the Lord and can explain it? Why has the land been ruined and laid waste like a desert that no one can cross?
That chapter of Jeremiah ends like this:
Let not the wise man boast of his wisdom
or the strong man boast of his strength
or the rich man boast of his riches,
but let him who boasts boast about this:
that he understands and knows me....
This, I believe, is the aim of prayer---to enter into conversation with God about what we see happening around us; to understand and to know God's perspective on what is happening, to be instructed by Him, to learn His ways and His knowledge. Then we can truly pray, "Thy kingdom come," because we will understand what the kingdom of God means for us and for the world in which we live.
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