If you feel like prayer is your last resort instead of your first move, or if you're not even sure what you're fighting against, or whether you have the strength to fight at all, then this episode is for you.

This week, Rachel talks about what it actually means to fight back in prayer when you feel defenseless.

Using Ephesians 6, she unpacks something easy to miss: right after Paul describes the armor of God, he moves straight into prayer, with no transition. 

The armor protects you and helps you stand. Prayer is what moves you forward. Rachel also shares an unusual answered prayer story that ties directly into last week's conversation with Kristy Graham; it was the night Billy Graham laid his Bible on a tree stump in the woods and prayed his way through the doubt that nearly kept him from preaching at all.

You'll discover:

• Why the armor of God doesn't do anything until prayer activates it
• A simple way to stop praying vague prayers and start fighting back with specific ones
• The story behind the Forest Home "Tree Stump Prayer" that helped launch the ministry Kristy Graham's family carries on today
• How to bring your doubts and fears to God honestly, without pretending you have it all figured out

If you're in a season where you feel like you're standing there with nothing to fight with, Rachel's new book, Praying through Life's Battles, was written for exactly this. It releases August 25, but preordering now unlocks a digital copy you can start reading right away.

Resources Mentioned:

• Preorder Praying through Life's Battles: battleprayers.com
• Pray Through It Prayer Guide (free): battleprayers.com

 

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

When you've prayed your hardest and the answer is still no, where does joy come from?

This week I sat down with Kristy Graham, host of On the Ground with Samaritan's Purse, for an honest conversation about prayer in the hardest places. Kristy has walked with disaster survivors who lost everything and still praised God, with relief teams who run toward danger when everyone else runs away, and with believers in persecuted countries who pray not for protection but for boldness. Through all of it, she keeps landing on one truth: the joy is in His presence, not in the answer.

We talk about surrender, what it means to pray "not my will but yours" and mean it, and how to keep praying with confidence even when God's answer isn't the one you wanted. I shared a bit of my own story with my daughter Taylor, and Kristy shared hers, and together we landed on the same place so many of us need to be reminded of: God is far more interested in being the answer to our prayers than simply answering them.

You'll discover:

• Why joy in suffering comes from God's presence rather than changed circumstances
• How to pray honestly and still surrender the outcome to God
• What persecuted believers pray for instead of protection, and why it matters
• The difference between praying for your circumstances to change and letting God change your heart
• Why serving others in your own pain can lift the weight you're carrying

If you're in a season where your prayers feel unanswered, this conversation is a reminder that you are seen by a loving God who understands your pain and meets you in it.

Resources Mentioned:

• On the Ground with Samaritan's Purse podcast: ontheground.samaritanspurse.org
• Learn more about Samaritan's Purse: samaritanspurse.org

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

You're fine all day. Then the light goes off, your head hits the pillow, and the thought you outran since breakfast is standing right there in the room with you, louder than it ever was at noon.

If fear waits until dark to find you, this episode is for you. We're talking about how to pray when anxiety gets loud, and especially how to pray at night, when everything feels worse and morning feels a long way off.

We go to a story you already know, Daniel in the lions' den, but to a person in it most of us read right past. Because there's someone in Daniel 6 who didn't sleep a wink that night, and it wasn't Daniel. It was the king. And his sleepless night might be the most honest picture of two a.m. anxiety in the whole Bible.

You'll discover:

• Why feeling anxious after you pray is not a sign of weak faith
• What to actually do in the moment when you can't shut your mind off
• Why fear gets so much louder at night, and what that's really about
• What King Darius reveals about holding something you cannot control
• The reason you can pray more and worry less even at the worst hour of the night

Whatever you're holding in the dark tonight, hear this: God is not waiting for sunrise to go to work for you.

Resources Mentioned:

The Pray Through It Battle Plan (free guide): battleprayers.com

Praying through Life's Battles (preorder now and start reading the digital copy today): battleprayers.com

 

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Some seasons leave you so worn out that even prayer feels like one more thing you can't get to. You didn't stop caring. You just got to the end of another full day with nothing left.

This week we sit with the worn-out kind of tired, the everyday depletion of a season with no margin, and the guilt that creeps in when prayer starts to feel like one more thing you can't get to. Anchored in Exodus 33, where Moses, worn down by the weight of all he's carrying, asks God for the one thing he needs most: His presence. And God answers, My Presence will go with you, and I will give you rest. That rest is personal, and it doesn't wait for a calmer season.

You'll discover:

• Why your exhaustion doesn't disqualify you from prayer, and what Romans 8:26 says about praying when you have no words
• How to step out of the guilt loop that drains what little energy you have left
• The difference between prayer as one more task and prayer as the place you finally get to stop
• What the singular you in Exodus 33:14 means for the rest God is offering you by name
• How Corrie ten Boom learned that rest comes from handing the burden over, not carrying it better

If you're worn out today, you don't have to gather yourself up before you come to God. He's already in the season with you.

Resources Mentioned

• Praying through Life's Battles: 90 Days to Strengthen Your Faith— preorder now and start reading a digital, watermarked copy today by submitting your receipt at battleprayers.com (releases August 25, 2026)

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Have you ever faced something so big you didn't even know how to start praying about it?

In this episode, we sit with a king named Jehoshaphat who caught news of an army he could not beat, and we watch what he did instead of panicking. His prayer in 2 Chronicles 20 hands us a pattern for the battles we never asked for, the ones that show up before we have any idea what to do. The place where we don't know what to do turns out to be the exact place God's answer begins.

You'll discover:

How fear and faith can sit in the same chair, and why that isn't a sign your faith is failing

Why "we do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you" is one of the strongest prayers in Scripture

What it means that the battle is not yours, but God's, and how that changes the way you pray

Why Jehoshaphat's people worshiped before the battle was won, and how George Müller did the same thing in front of a table of empty plates

A simple six-step way to take whatever you're facing and turn it into a prayer this week

Whatever you're walking into, you don't have to know what to do. You just have to know Who to look to.

Resources Mentioned:

The Pray Through It Battle Plan (free guide): battleprayers.com

Praying through Life's Battles, a 90-day devotional, releasing August 25 from Harvest House. Preorder now at battleprayers.com

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Have you ever looked around your life and realized that the people who were supposed to be in your corner aren’t there?

Maybe it was the slow ache of carrying something alone and realizing you’re the only one carrying it.

David knew that feeling. He wrote a whole psalm from inside a cave — hunted, betrayed by someone he trusted, with no defender at his right hand. In the cave, he didn’t just cry out to God. He taught us how to pray when we’re cornered.

In this episode, Rachel walks through Psalm 142 and we'll discover what David teaches us about praying inside the cave and not just trying to pray his way out of it.

We close with a recently answered prayer story about a grandmother who was praying for an earlier specialist appointment for her daughter — and watched God answer it through a doorway no one was looking at.

You’ll discover:

• What David means by "no one at my right hand" and why it matters for your loneliest seasons
• The Hebrew word at the top of Psalm 142 that changes how we read the whole psalm
• How to pray when the cave is also a prison — and you can’t see the way out
• Why God sometimes shows up inside the cornered moment, not after it

If today’s episode put words to a season you’re in, remember this: God is your refuge in the place — not just out of it.

Resources Mentioned

Desperate Prayers: Embracing the Power of Prayer in Life’s Darkest Moments — desperateprayers.com

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Have you handed your worries over to God, felt lighter for a few days, and then realized you were carrying them all again?

This week, Rachel sits down with longtime friend and Bible study author Mary Boswell to talk about the exhausting cycle so many of us live in: theologically, we know Jesus offers rest, but practically, we keep putting on our "big girl pants" and shouldering everything ourselves.

Mary opens up about the season that broke that pattern for her — caregiving for her mom through pancreatic cancer, parenting through a child's hard season, supporting her husband through a doctoral program, and then COVID. She shares the early morning when Matthew 11:28-30 stopped being a familiar passage and became an actual invitation, and how learning to release her burdens (over and over) has built strength she didn't know she needed.

You'll discover:

• Why many Christian women believe God offers rest but rarely receive it
• The quiet way we take our burdens back without realizing it
• What real rest actually looks like in a season that won't slow down
• Mary's "something's not right-a-meter" — how to notice when you've picked it back up
• Why prayer that's honest and ugly is sometimes the prayer that lights the load
• The muscle that grows every time you hand it over again

If you've ever wondered why surrender feels like a one-time prayer that never quite sticks, this conversation is for you.

Resources Mentioned

Come to Me: An Invitation from Jesus to Find Rest for Your Soul by Mary Boswell

Connect with Mary: Website: thecalmofhispresence.com 

Connect with Rachel

Website: rachelwojo.com 

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Are you living in the gap between the motherhood you pictured and the motherhood you actually have? If Mother's Day stirred up grief you didn't know was still there — or if something has been quietly hardening around the edges of your heart — this episode is for you.

In this post–Mother's Day episode, Rachel sits with the question almost no one says out loud: How do I pray when bitterness keeps creeping into my motherhood? Anchored in the story of Naomi in Ruth chapter 1 — the woman who came home and told her whole town to call her by a different name, Mara, because the Almighty had made her life bitter — this episode gives moms permission to name what they're actually feeling and reminds them that the bitter chapter is not the last chapter.

Rachel shares the season in her own life when bitterness was closer to her than it had ever been: losing her mom at 62 when she was 27, and grieving the grandmother her mom would have been to her kids. She talks about how reading the Psalms — not one specific psalm, just the whole book of them, day after day — became her lifeline through a season she didn't know how to pray through.

You'll discover:

• The difference between grief and bitterness, and why naming it matters
• What Naomi's honest "call me Mara" prayer teaches us about coming to God with the actual word for what we're feeling
• Why the Psalms hold both honesty and faith on the same page, and how that becomes a lifeline
• How God works in the gap between the motherhood we pictured and the motherhood we have

If you're in a bitter chapter today, this episode is a gentle reminder that God is doing something underneath the surface — even when you can't see it. The bitter chapter is not the last chapter.

RESOURCES 

• 31 Prayers for a Mom's Heart prayer cards — rachelwojo.com/shop
• The Hope Circle women's community — rachelwojo.com/the-hope-circle

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Have you ever stopped praying boldly because you've been disappointed by God's answer before?

In this episode, we're sitting with one of the hardest questions a praying woman carries: how do you ask God for another miracle, when last time you asked, the answer wasn't the one you wanted?

Anchoring in Psalm 78, where Asaph reminds Israel that God divided the sea and made the water stand up like a wall, Rachel shares about why disappointment makes us forget who God really is and what it looks like to pray boldly again. 

Especially fitting for the week before Mother's Day, when so many of us are carrying motherhood that didn't look the way we expected.

You'll discover:

• Why disappointment shrinks our prayers without us realizing it
• What Psalm 78:13 actually teaches us about asking for the impossible
• The difference between praying in faith and praying in self-protection
• Why remembering what God has done is a form of spiritual warfare
• A personal answered prayer story tied to the release of Rachel's new book

This week, may you find the courage to pray boldly again, even from your hardest losses.

Resources Mentioned: NEW AND AVAILABLE FOR PREORDER: Praying through Life's Battles 

Connect with Rachel: Hope Circle Membership Community

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Watching your child struggle and not knowing what they need? You're not alone. Whether your kid is two or twenty-two, there are seasons where you can tell something is off but you can't fix it, can't name it, and don't know how to pray about it.

In this episode, Rachel explores how to pray for your kids when you don't know what to ask for, anchored in Psalm 139 and 1 John 5. She shares a personal story about her daughter Tris going through her keep boxes ahead of her fall wedding, and what those old school notes revealed about a slow, faithful answer to years of prayer.

You'll discover:

• Why not knowing what your child needs doesn't disqualify you from praying for them
• What Psalm 139:13–16 says about how well God already knows your child
• The 1 John 5:14–15 prayer you can pray when you have no other words
• How God answers prayers we didn't even know how to pray correctly
• Rachel's honest reflection on praying through Tris's seasons and watching God form the answer over twenty-two years

If you're praying for a kid you can't read, a season you can't decode, or a need you can't name, this episode is for you. God hears you. He's already at work on an answer you can't yet see.

Resources Mentioned: 31 Prayers for a Mom's Heart — rachelwojo.com/shop

Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.