Untangling Prayer with Rachel Wojo

Is there a scar you carry that healed a long time ago and still never went away?

Rachel has one, completely healed from years ago, and still there every single day. This week's episode sits with one of the hardest questions there is: how do you keep praying when you don't see God's healing? And especially the version that's harder to say out loud, when the healing came but the mark stayed, and you don't know what to do with a God who heals you and leaves the reminder.

Rachel walks through Isaiah 61 and the...

You've prayed about the fear. You handed it to God. And a few hours later (or even minutes) it's back, knocking at the door of your heart like it never left. If you're tired of fighting the same fear over and over, this episode is for you.

This week on Untangling Prayer, we sit with an honest question: how do I pray when fear keeps knocking? Drawing from Psalm 34:4 and 1 John 4:18, Rachel unpacks a shift that changes everything about praying through fear. Not fighting harder, but receiving God's perfect love because it is stronger than the fear...

Is there a part of your story you've stopped praying about? Maybe you don't doubt that God can do anything. You've just decided this particular thing is too far gone.

This week on Untangling Prayer, Rachel sits with a hard question: is it ever too late for God to redeem the chapter you've already given up on?

The answer starts in Ephesians 1:7, where Paul roots our redemption in the blood of Christ and the riches of God's grace. That same grace doesn't stop at forgiving your sin. It reaches into the broken places you've written...

Some seasons don't need a pep talk. When you're caring for someone who's slipping away, or worn down by a fight that won't end, being told to "stay positive" can feel like the loneliest thing in the world.

This week's episode sits with a real email from a listener named Lucy, whose husband has Alzheimer's, and with the honest question underneath it: how do you stay positive when you're in the thick of the battle? Anchored in two of the smallest, strongest words in Scripture, Romans 8:3's "God did," Rachel walks through why the goal was never...

Are you afraid of what could still go wrong? A lot of us carry a fear about the future, and it reshapes how we pray. We start asking God for the small things because we're scared to hand Him the big one, the one that would wreck us if the answer came back no.

In this episode, we sit in Romans 8:37-38, two verses that don't promise a future with no hard things in it. They promise something you need a lot more. Paul goes corner by corner through every place fear can hide, your body, the...

You've prayed about it more times than you can count. You've said the words, cried the tears, done all the asking. And now you're just standing there, waiting to see if God is actually going to move this time. That in-between place, after you've prayed but before you've seen anything, is one of the hardest places to stand in the whole life of faith.

In this episode, the first in our For the Winning series, we sit with the prophet Habakkuk, who shows us what to do in exactly that place. After he brings his honest complaint...

Do you lie awake at night bracing for everything that could go wrong, feeling like you're the only one keeping your family and your own heart safe? If you're exhausted from standing guard, this episode is for you.

This week, Rachel opens Psalm 4:8 and the devotional "The Way He Protects Your Heart" from her new book, Praying through Life's Battles. She unpacks the enemy's lie that your heart is unprotected and worry has every right to take over, and the very different strategy God gives in answer to it: when you praise Him for His protection, His...

Have you ever prayed for something so specifically that you could picture exactly what the answer should look like, only to watch the years go by while nothing happened?

Eventually you stop expecting anything at all. You start praying with your eyes half-closed, bracing for disappointment instead of watching for good.

In this episode, Rachel opens up Psalm 81:10, where God says, "Open your mouth wide, and I will fill it," and Psalm 77:14, where a man in the pit fights his way back to faith by remembering what God has already done. Together they show us...

Have you ever felt like you are carrying something really heavy and you're doing it all by yourself?  Nobody knows what it's costing you. Maybe you're so worn down that fighting for even one more day sounds impossible.

If that's where you are, this episode will help! Rachel walks through one of Scripture's most dramatic moments. The Israelites are trapped between Pharaoh's army and the Red Sea, with no weapons and no way out. And Moses says this over them: "The Lord will fight for you; you need only to be still."

But being still d...

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 m...

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...

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...

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...

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:<...

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 thro...

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 he...

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 dif...

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 f...

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...

f Mother's Day feels heavy this year because your arms ache for a child in heaven, this episode is for you. I'm sitting down with my friend Jennie Lusko, author of The Fight to Flourish and mama to a daughter in heaven, for one of the most honest conversations I've had on this podcast about what prayer really looks like when grief takes your words away.

Jennie shares what she prayed in those first moments of loss, the seasons when God felt silent, why she and I both had to switch Bible translations just to read Scripture...

Have you ever sat in a prayer circle and thought, her prayers sound so much deeper than mine? Or read somebody's dramatic testimony and wondered if God is even listening to you the same way? Or wished your prayer requests were about the happy problems instead of the hard ones you're actually carrying?

If any of that just landed on you, this episode is for you.

In this episode, Rachel names a kind of comparison almost nobody talks about out loud — the ache of comparing your prayer life to everyone else's. She walks through Jesus' pa...

You're lying in bed, and your brain will not stop. The to-do list. The what-ifs. The thing you said yesterday that you keep replaying. You want to pray, but you can't even get a full sentence out before your mind is somewhere else. If that's you, this episode is for you.

In this episode, Rachel unpacks 2 Corinthians 10:5 and what it actually means to take every thought captive. She shares the real story of a racing mind at 4 am and how handing God the parking garage, the weather, and the drive home became the prayer she didn’t kn...

The angels at the empty tomb asked the women a question that I've been thinking this week: "Why do you look for the living among the dead?"

This Easter, Rachel gets honest about the dead places she's been looking for life — not out in the world, but inside her own heart. The self-talk that tears down instead of builds up. The thoughts that are not true, not honest, not of good report. And what happens when what's living in our hearts starts flowing out of our mouths.

You'll discover:

Sometimes we think God stops working because the battle shifts to unfamiliar ground. He helped us through that one thing, but this? This feels like a different category.

In this Easter episode, Rachel unpacks a surprising story from 1 Kings 20 where Israel's enemies called God a "hill God" — powerful in some places but limited in others. God's response? He won the victory in the exact place they said He couldn't. That's what happened at the cross.

You'll discover:

Elijah called down fire from heaven. And then one threatening message from Jezebel sent him running face-down under a tree, telling God he might as well be dead.

Fear does that. It doesn't matter what God just did for you. Fear has a way of making you forget all of it.

First Kings 19 is the story of what God did next for Elijah and what He's still doing for us today.

You'll discover:

Have you ever felt so broken by grief that even praying felt impossible? Or found yourself angry at God in the middle of your loss and too afraid to admit it?

In this episode, Rachel tackles one of the rawest questions in the prayer life: how do you pray when grief has made you angry at God? She walks through the book of Lamentations and the story of the widow at Zarephath in 1 Kings 17, where a grieving mother's rawest accusation leads to one of the most faith-deepening miracles in Scripture. Rachel also shares personally from the season...

Have you been waiting on God so long you've stopped counting? Maybe you've even had moments where you thought the answer was finally here — only to find the door was still closed.

In this episode, Rachel opens Psalm 27:14 and unpacks what David really meant when he said "be strong and take heart." Guess what? Waiting on God is not passive. It's one of the most active, courageous things we can do in our faith. Rachel also shares a deeply personal story of a 16-year prayer that was finally answered last week — and what the long wait revealed abou...

Feeling stuck in a long, gray season where nothing is necessarily wrong, but nothing feels right either? You're not alone. That heavy, stuck feeling has a name: it's a wilderness season. And it's one of the hardest seasons to pray through.

In this episode, Rachel digs into Psalm 78 and the convicting question the Israelites asked: "Can God really spread a table in the wilderness?" She explores the difference between being stuck IN the wilderness and being led THROUGH it, and shares a friend's powerful testimony of breakthrough after months of feeling unseen.

You'll discover:

Have you ever prayed about your anxiety — and still felt anxious? You're not alone, and this week's guest gets it from the inside out.

I'm joined by Maddie Joy Fisher, author of Rest and Rely: A 60-Day Devotional to Replace Fear, Anxiety, and Worry with God's Truth. Maddie shares her very personal journey with anxiety — including how it reached a breaking point during the writing of her own book — and how prayer transformed from a rigid practice into an ongoing conversation with God.

In this episode you'll discover:

Have you ever felt like God went quiet on you? Like you're showing up, opening your Bible, praying the prayers, but hearing nothing back? That silence can feel louder than any storm.

In this episode, Rachel dives into the powerful tension between Psalm 34:17 ("The LORD hears") and Psalm 44:23 ("Awake, Lord! Why do you sleep?") and what it means when both feel true at the same time. She shares from her own season of spiritual silence after losing her daughter and how God showed up in whispers when she was waiting for thunder.

You'll discover:

Feeling alone in your marriage? You're not the only one. The loneliness of sitting across from your spouse and feeling like a stranger is one of the hardest kinds of pain to carry.

In this episode, Rachel explores how to pray when your marriage feels distant and shares a personal story about praying for God to change her husband. (Spoiler: She was the one who needed to change.)

You'll discover:

Is it wrong to pray for someone who's asked you to stop?

If you're carrying the weight of praying for a prodigal child, a wayward spouse, or a friend who's walked away from faith, this episode is for you. Rachel tackles one of the hardest prayer questions: how to keep interceding when the person you love doesn't want your prayers.

In this episode, you'll discover:

Do you still feel anxious even after praying about your fears? Many Christians struggle with anxiety that persists despite faithful prayer—and wonder if something is wrong with them or their faith.

In this episode, Rachel tackles one of the most common questions she receives: "Why do I still feel anxious after praying about my fears?" She shares why prayer doesn't always remove fear and what it does instead, along with a powerful story about her daughter Tris's journey of learning to rely on God day by day when healing hasn't come the way they prayed.

...

Feeling unsettled but can't identify what's wrong? You're not alone. When confusion clouds our prayers, God still hears—and He knows exactly what we need.

In this episode, we explore how to pray when you can't put your finger on what's bothering you. Discover how the Holy Spirit intercedes, why God's character anchors us, and practical ways to pray when words fail.

What You'll Discover:

Have you ever set a New Year prayer goal and watched it slip away by February? If you've felt guilty about your inconsistent prayer life, you're not alone.

In this episode, Rachel tackles the honest question so many of us carry: "How do I stop feeling guilty about my inconsistent prayer life?" You'll discover why God isn't keeping a scorecard—He's keeping the door open—and how small, faithful steps matter more than perfect streaks.

In this episode, you'll learn:

What if the most powerful thing you can do heading into 2025 is simply approach God's throne?

In this episode, Rachel shares three prayers for the new year drawn from Hebrews 4:16. Whether you're entering January with anticipation or uncertainty, this episode will anchor your heart in what matters most.

You'll discover:

It's Christmas Eve, and whether you're celebrating, struggling, or somewhere in between, this short episode is for you. Before the manger in Bethlehem, the Christmas story begins with an old priest named Zechariah who had been praying for decades with no answer. Then an angel appeared and said, "Your prayer has been heard."

If you're carrying prayers that feel unheard this Christmas, this 5-minute message will remind you that God is listening, He's working, and His timing is always perfect.

Scripture: Luke 1:13

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Can we be honest? This season that's supposed to be filled with joy often feels more like exhaustion and overwhelm. Maybe you're bone-deep weary, wondering if hope is even real anymore.

In this episode, Rachel explores what to do when hope has crumbled and prayer feels impossible. Drawing from the Christmas story of Simeon and Anna and her own journey through her daughter Taylor's battle with Sanfilippo syndrome, she shares how our most desperate places become the most fitting spaces for the thrill of hope.

You'll discover:

Have you ever prayed so desperately for something that it felt like a spiritual battle?

In this episode, Rachel sits down with Jenny Marrs, co-star of HGTV's Fixer to Fabulous and mom of five, for an honest conversation about what happens when faith requires letting go. Jenny shares the raw story behind her family's adoption of their daughter Sylvie from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, including the night she woke up gripped by fear, unable to breathe, and discovered God was answering her prayers in a way she never expected.

Jenny's new book, Trust G...

Does surrender feel more like defeat than freedom? You're not alone. In this episode, Rachel sits down with author, literary agent, and artist Mary DeMuth to explore why letting go of what we tightly grip actually leads to the peace we're desperately seeking.

Mary shares the personal journey behind her beautiful new illustrated devotional, The Freedom of Surrender, and opens up about her own struggles with control—including surrendering her past, disappointing relationships, and even her stubbornness. Through stunning original artwork and powerful metaphors, she shows us that surrender isn't saying "it's okay that it happened"—it's open...