Did his followers believe he was the God they were praying too?
If he was God, wouldn’t he be praying to himself. Jesus and God are two different entities , how can a man be God? Man is imperfect, we use the toilet, eat, have bodily functions how is that perfect?
When Jesus prayed, He prayed as a man. Jesus is true God and true man. More specifically, Jesus is the Son incarnate. Christians believe God is three Persons: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. When Jesus prayed as a man, He always prayed to the Father.
When Jesus died, His disciples abanonded Him. Out of all of them - which numbered in the thousands - only the apostle John and some women followed Him to the place where He died and believed He was God. Two of the women who knelt before Jesus as He hung on the cross were Mary, the Mother of Jesus, and Mary, the mother of the apostle John.
While Jesus was dead, His Apostles were in hiding. They were scaried out of their minds. They knew full well that if the Sadducces caught theym, they’d be stoned for committing idoltry. Any Jew who worshipped a man claiming to be God was stoned to death. So they hid. They had lost all hope in Jesus. They thought He was God and King (Messiah), but since He was crucified, their hopes were completely shattered. And becuase they had publicly worshipped Him, they were wanted for stoning. So, in a literal sense, they had lost everything: their respect, their homes, their families, their friends, their jobs, and their very lives. They had given it all up to follow Jesus, and it had all been for nothing.
Than when Jesus appeared to them, they got really scaried. They thought He was a ghost, who had come to reproach them for worshipping Him. But instead, much to their surprise, He showed them He was not a ghost but a resurrected man, and moreover, He was God and King. That’s when they were filled with a newfound courage and strength, and they believed He was who He had telling them He was ever since He had called them three years earlier: God and King.