For Jesus prayer was the intimate, continual ROOT from where His life found strength and power.
Christianity is about having a personal relationship with God and we often talk about ways to live for God - but prayer is how we live with God - it’s how we actually have a personal relationship with God.
Jesus taught that who we pray to is more important than how we pray. Jesus saw prayer as the intimate connection between a dependant child and a loving parent. So when He responded to His disciples request to teach them to pray - He didn’t give them a mechanical process or special words for prayer - instead He wanted to develop their communion with God. He knew that how they saw God would determine how they communed with him.
Jesus wanted to shift their and our understanding of God and by telling two stories - He challenged the assumption that answers to prayer depended solely on the goodness of the person praying and instead Jesus pointed to God's character being more important than ours.
