the goal of prayer is to get on the same page as him. At the same time, we believe that God relates to us personally and is >concerned about we're concerned about, so it is proper to pray about things that's going on in our lives even though they may be (are) trivial.

These make sense to me. Chilling with god and chatting about your troubles makes sense, because if you have troubles then talking about them with a loved one makes you feel better if nothing else. The intercessory part still doesn't make sense to me, though... I get "yo my spiritual father, I want to go back to school" and God replying "cool bro, cool". I get "I want to go back to school and I'm concerned about xyz, please reassure me". You talk to people to strengthen your relationship. You do it for you. It's the asking for things to change that I don't get, the intercessory prayer. Like when people say "please pray for me". Like.... why? You're praying about that issue, so why would anyone else need to? The prayer is for your sake, not God's. It's petitioning, but petitioning is unnecessary because God is omniscient; you're trying to convince him of something, which can't be done, unless God is not omniscient and/or omnipotent. If God's always right, petitioning is pointless. You'll never convince him and you'd be wrong to try. If he's not, then it makes total sense. Petitioning, bargaining etc work with other deities fine, just not the one in Christianity. If God's still working his plan out, he's not omniscient and omnipotent, which is fine by me but may well conflict with the dogma.

Although now I think about it it's probably more of a problem with people not understanding the concept of an all-powerful and infallible god more than it is a problem with the concept itself. People need a God they can petition, a God they can understand on some level.