"When you pray..." Jesus' address to the crowds would have been incomplete if he did not say something about prayer. And this is because of two reasons: Prayer is basically concerned with our relationship with God as it is our sole means of ‘keeping in touch’ with God, and secondly, Jesus as the self-revelation of God is our best teacher when it comes to ‘keeping in touch’ with God. As such, he would be doing his disciples a great de-service if he didn't instruct them on how to approach and speak with God. In teaching his disciples on how to pray, Jesus was not inventing prayer. He simply wanted to remind them of what prayer is, for as we learn from the Gospels, in the eyes of Jesus, prayer had lost its efficacy and had been turned into a preserve for the elite. Rather than a means of communicating with God, prayer time had become show time. Prayer had been turned into a forum for parading one’s perceived righteousness before God. As if that was not bad enough, prayer could also become a platform for alienating and laughing at others (cf. Luke 18:9-14). To Jesus, this was an abuse of prayer and he sought to correct it. Prayer in all its forms (as well as fasting and almsgiving) had to have as its end the coming to recognition that God is the giver of all gifts. Prayer has to be a supplication, for even the thanksgiving that one renders God in prayer should be given in supplication. There is nothing that one offers God that hasn’t come from God, and there is nothing that one can tell God that God doesn’t know already. An efficacious prayer is one that issues forth from one’s heart and offered in an environment where one feels ‘alone’ with God.