Thinking Christian about Prayer: A Conversation with Rachel Wojo

The world is becoming increasingly proficient at telling stories that deny God. As such, we need thinking Christian to become as natural as breathing. Welcome to the Thinking Christian podcast. I'm Dr. James Spencer. Through calm, thoughtful theological discussions, Thinking Christian highlights the ways God is working in the world and questions the underlying social, cultural, and political assumptions that hinder Christians from becoming more like Christ. Now, on to today's episode of Thinking Christian. Hey, everybody. Welcome to this episode of Thinking Christian. I'm Dr. James Spencer, and I'm excited today to welcome Rachel Wojo. Rachel is an inspirational author, speaker, and podcaster, and she takes a biblical and personal approach to life experiences and empowers women to discover strength and hope in their daily situations. She's actually the author of a book that has just recently come out called Desperate Prayers, Embracing the Power of Prayer in Life's Darkest Moments. And so we're going to be talking about the book, about prayer, and just about Rachel's ministry more generally. So welcome, Rachel, to the program. How are you doing? I'm great. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate your podcast and just your unique approach to encouraging us to think as Christians. I love it. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's just dive in. What prompted you to write the book? I always kind of like to ask authors, like, what led them into this subject? There's so many things that you could write on, that you could talk about. You know, why this one? Yeah, it's a great question. So after walking through so many hard circumstances in my life, I've walked through a divorce from a pastor husband. I have walked through having being a single mom, having a special needs child, a special needs child whose diagnosis became terminal, and we knew that there would be a limited life span for her life. I've walked through losing both of my parents, my mom to leukemia, my dad more recently to cancer. And so with all of that hardship, I had to ask myself when I got to the point to where I could write again and felt like I had it in me to write another book, I asked myself, what is the one topic, if this were the only book that I could write, only book I had the opportunity to write, what would I write about? And I knew that it was prayer because there is no way that I could get through all of those situations that I just named without conversations with God. And I just realized how pivotal and how deep that is, and I wanted to share what I had learned with everyone else. What do you find? I've had a couple of conversations with people on prayer on the podcast, and one of the gentlemen I talked to, he talks about almost talking to God as if he's a stranger. You know, God doesn't always answer back and the struggle of having these, I think he called them awkward conversations with God, right? Where you're sort of sharing everything with God, but you're not hearing audible voices back. And so I guess my question is, what do you find formative about prayer? What do you find impactful about prayer, crucial about it? You know, how does that, how does prayer help you to process what's going on in life, connect with God in your life? Talk a little bit about that. I think most of us believe that prayer is a two-way conversation, but we struggle with both sides of that. We struggle with taking our words to God and recognizing that he's okay with all of our words, not just the pretty ones. So many of us who have grown up with a Christian background, a church background, we think our prayers have to look a certain way. They have to be shaped a certain way. We have the prayer patterns and the models. And so it seems like we have gotten so focused on what the prayer should look like and how it should be formed that we've forgotten the purpose of it. So what I've been encouraging people to do through this book is to drop prayer perfectionism. Just forget about having the perfect prayer and the perfect background and all of the details that you think need to be right, and just focus on having conversations with God and just be willing to take anything and everything to him. To look at the other side of that, as you've mentioned, it can feel like they are one-sided conversations initially because we, although we are spiritual beings, we have a spirit, we struggle with things that are spiritual because we can't touch them. We can't see them. We can't necessarily hear them. And so that lack of tangibility causes us in our human form to struggle. But the more we practice talking to God and spending time with him, then I've found that the easier it is to hear him when he speaks. And so I've never heard God audibly. I'll just admit to you, I've never heard God just speak to me out loud, but I hear him through his word, his people. He often uses people to speak to me. And then through his spirit and the Holy Spirit whispering to my spirit. So even though it's not allowed, I know that the thoughts that are from him aren't mine because I would never think of some of those thoughts. I love that. Yeah. I'm glad you mentioned the people aspect. I think this is something I've struggled with personally is I've always been more academic. And so reading theological books or diving into the Bible, like those have felt much more natural to me than prayer. And I think sometimes what I begin to realize is that that is that sort of other side of the conversation where I am hearing from God while I'm doing those things. You know, a really amazing Bible verse that just hits me different than, you know, I've ever read it before or a quote from a theologian that just, you know, strikes you and says, wow, that's sort of the answer I've been grappling for in prayer for a while now. And now all of a sudden someone's saying it, they're vocalizing it in print. Those have been sort of amazing moments where I sit back and having reflected on prayer and actually having read your book, I'm thinking to myself, those are, those are the answers. I just don't recognize them as the answers, you know, this is God sort of pulling in and saying, Hey, this is, you know, that thing you've been thinking about, this is it. So check this out, move in this direction. So it is pretty fascinating the way that God can move through other people. Now in your book, you deal with, I mean, it's these moments of desperation, right? Sort of hearkening to the title, but talk a little bit about that, those moments of desperation, what you're really getting at there. Well, I think most of us are crying out to God sometimes when we're in a crisis, pain is the prompt to prioritize prayer typically for people. And so in those moments of crisis, whether it is a child who has strayed far from the Lord or has left home and no longer wants to have anything to do with his family or her family, all of those moments where we just feel like the circumstances are outside of our control are those moments where God is asking, he's inviting us into a very personal, intimate relationship with him. I'll give you a story of one example that that might help when my daughter was so very sick and her diagnosis, just for the listener's sake, is a complicated diagnosis called mucopolysaccharidosis. The average lifespan for her disease was 10 to 15 years. We were blessed to have 22 years with Taylor. But I remember one specific example where I was sitting by her bed and I was just so angry at God. I was so mad at her suffering. It was this moment of why Lord, why do people suffer? Why do people die? And I was just frustrated. And I remember sitting there being so frustrated and I just prayed, God, you don't know what it's like to watch your child suffer and die. I had intimate conversations with God. I had developed a prayer attitude and that just was what I told him the honest truth of what was on my heart. And I will never forget the response because again, it was what I just shared with you that we cannot possibly put thoughts into our own minds that are not of us. And this was one of those moments. I heard the Holy Spirit speak to my heart. Yes, I do. I watched my son suffer and die for you.

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And it was just such a transitional moment for me. I realized that I had been invited into this intimate space, what Paul calls the fellowship of the suffering. And what that suffering is, is it's an opportunity to understand God on a deeper level and to commune with Him on a deeper level. But we are so often frustrated by the circumstances that we miss the invitation. We forget that our God loves us so much that He gave His Son for us. If He loves us that much, do you think that He's going to waste this suffering? And so, in that moment of hearing God speak that to me in my spirit that He was inviting me into this fellowship of the suffering and that He knew how I was feeling in that moment. He had suffered through the same exact scenario of watching His Son suffer and die and actually having to turn His back on His Son as the sin of the world was on His shoulders. And so I just sat there for a moment and thought, God really does love me. He really must love us all so very much to give us that opportunity for salvation. And so I think a lot of us in our prayer conversations, we miss those intimate moments because our feelings are in the way. We kind of do what I call, a lot of us don't maybe run away from God. We just stiff arm Him. We stiff arm Him so that He's close enough that we can turn to Him if we really need Him, but we're angry and so we keep Him at a distance because we're frustrated. And I hope that that explains your question a little bit and answers it a little bit in that there's no cut and dried, this is the way it works with prayer. It's relationship. And you and I both know that with our relationships, human relationships, they're not really always cut and dried. They are works in progress. They are journeys. They are processes. So hopefully that's encouraging to someone today that you can embrace a prayer process. You can embrace these conversations in order to grow the relationship. Well, I like the way you're describing it because I think it reorients prayer from what I think I fall into sometimes is just prayer as petition. When I need God, I will go to God and I'll ask Him things. And that's not inappropriate to ask God for things. But I think what you're sort of pointing us for is that prayer is really participation with God. It's participation in all that He is doing. And what we're doing in prayer to some degree is struggling to understand what God is doing and struggling to let go of ourselves and our what we perceive as challenges and sort of allow God to do His work in our lives in a much bolder and bigger way. Right. I really like that orientation. We've had a number of folks on the show who talk about lament. And this is the same sort of perspective that they offer on lament, that lament is us drawing God into our suffering and really letting Him know what is that we are keenly aware of that there is something wrong with the world. Right. And we really have no idea what to do with that wrongness. And so that sort of desperation makes really good sense. And I think you explain that very, very well. So when we think about prayer, so I've been pretty honest on the podcast about this. I've always struggled with prayer. Like I said, I'm a little bit more heady. And so, you know, if you ask me to sit down and read a 500 page book, I'm much more inclined to do that than like pray for 20 minutes. I get antsy and sort of lose track of my own head. And so, but I've had that experience in moments of desperation where it's like, well, I, you know, there's no amount of reading I'm going to do that's going to get me out of this one. I should probably just go to God. Right. But I'm wondering how you think about the cultivation of a more consistent practice of prayer, even in the good times where there isn't a sense of desperation and how you've seen that add to or maybe strengthen the way that you pray in those desperate moments. Sure. So I really believe that that is one of the keys is that we want prayer to be the first pick and not the final straw. Right. And so as someone who has learned from those desperate spaces that it's best to be me before God, right. But it's also better if we have an ongoing relationship rather than just a crisis moment relationship. We all want that person in our lives who we call when there's a crisis, but we don't necessarily have a strong relationship with that person. If all we ever do is call them when we're in a crisis. And so I definitely believe that cultivating a life of prayer is important. What I've found is that there are various seasons to cultivating that relationship. I have journeyed as a Christian. I asked Jesus to come into my heart when I was six years old and I grew up in a Christian home and for many years checked off the boxes of Bible reading and prayer because that was what good people did. That's what good Christians do. But it wasn't until I struggled with suffering that I began to realize that there was so much more that God had for me in those moments of Bible reading and prayer. And I also started to realize that he is available all the time. In the morning, I do have a structured time every day where I go to God in prayer and I spend time with him. But I think something that is more pivotal for me, what has been just, I don't know, an anchor, so to speak, is talking to God throughout the day. So in the morning when I have that structured prayer time, I don't say amen at the end of that prayer. I purposely don't say amen because I don't want to close my prayer until the end of the day. And so I will say to the Lord, whether it's writing in my prayer journal or just talking to him in my spirit, I will say, go with me throughout this day. Guide me. Lead me. I need you. And I most of the time will leave my prayer at I need you. And then carry on the conversation. So what do I mean by that? Well, for me, that looks like then approaching my desk and saying, okay, God, now it's time to work. Guide me. Help me respond to this email. When I address difficult issues, a problem comes up, a new bill needs paid that I wasn't aware of, a new issue, whatever the issue is, most of the time it's relational. I will ask God for wisdom in those moments and prompt myself to remember that I need the Lord and I need his wisdom. I need his guidance. And then interceding for others. I know some people might think it's strange, but when I go to the grocery store, God is always pointing people out to me that need prayer. I will pass someone and immediately know there's something this person is struggling with. I need to pray for them. And I don't know how the Holy Spirit speaks to you. There's no logical explanation for how the Holy Spirit speaks to us. But I do know that I've listened to those prompts enough to where I'm gaining confidence in understanding that that's God's voice speaking to me.

and I need to obey. And so, practicing a life of prayer, I think, as you live throughout the day, whether it's interceding for other people, or sometimes that is more purposeful. When I'm folding my laundry for my family, whoever's piece of clothing I have in my hand is who I pray for. And so I think making small choices, like those things, can really make a huge difference in our prayer lives because then we begin to incorporate God in our conversation all the time throughout the day, and it's a go-to for us. And then that strengthens the relationship. So hopefully that helps a little bit with my approach, as you have asked. Yeah. You know, it strikes me, the way you're talking about it, I could see one of the things we talk about a lot on the show is just making decisions, the discernments, the reactions. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility, and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian-owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide, or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. So we have the things that are going on around us. And maybe I, so correct me if I'm wrong, but I would assume that because you're doing this sort of ongoing daily prayer that you almost have a better-than-average shot of not reacting, you know, and remaining calm and peaceful in those moments where you're actually confronted with something because your first reaction isn't necessarily to respond to that situation. Your first reaction probably is just continue your conversation with God and ask for that guidance. I'm not suggesting you do that perfectly, but is that, does that describe the way, you know, you have you grown in that ability to sort of look at a difficult situation and just sit back and say, first pray, right? Making God that priority in that moment and then thinking through the situation. Yes, I would agree. I'm a little distracted, I'll be honest, James, because the dog that I warned you about is really trying to make her way into our space. So I apologize for that. You're okay. If you want to let her in, that's okay. We welcome animals on the show. I'm hoping that she will decide not to push the door open like she's grown to do. And so I apologize for the distraction. I think you're right. I think that, I also think that sometimes people will say, ask Rachel to pray. My husband will say, ask your mom. She seems to get through more than I do. And so while I don't want to say, oh, I have this special prayer relationship with God and you can have that too. Well, I don't want to say that because I feel like that's kind of assuming on my part. I do know that humility before the Lord is so pivotal for Him. And I think God is looking for a heart like His. He loved David because he was a man after his own heart. And so David, we know, wasn't perfect. He was a murderer. He was an adulterer. He made a lot of mistakes, but he also was a man after God's own heart. And so even like you just mentioned, even at times where it feels like I'm at that pivotal crossing, that choice making, decision making time, it is easier to stay calm because I know that God has a plan and my confidence is not in my control over the situation or my ability to have character and discipline and stay calm. It's in the fact that I trust the Lord. I trust Him. I have seen how He works in situations. And when you've seen God do the things that I've seen Him do, it just is so reassuring. It's just amazing to see how He works. And when you've seen that with your own eyes, which is what I believe the prayer, that talking with Him and that developing the relationship with Him is how we get to that point of being able to see how He works. And my daughter said, Mom, why do these things happen to you? She's mentioned different scenarios where the Lord has just done incredible things for our family in the way of provision, in the way of orchestrating details and timing. And she'll say, Why do these things happen to you? And I just say, Sweetie, they happen to everyone. It's whether or not we're in tune with God enough to understand how He is working and what He is doing. So if you want to see how God is working in your life, you have to develop that ability to understand and hear and see. And as that relationship strengthens, I believe that that's the answer to what you just said. Yeah. But it strikes me, you know, the chapters in your book, one of the things I really liked about it was that you didn't focus every chapter on God solving my problem. Right. Prayer is not a you know, God is not a genie in a lamp and prayer the way we rub that lamp and he comes out and grants our wishes. I mean, a couple of these, you know, chapter two, too bitter to swallow. God, hold me. You're not asking for anything there other than God's comforting presence, recognizing that the situation may not change, but that God is going to come in. You know, you had a few chapters like that. And I think I really appreciate that because I agree with you. I think that God does these things in all of our lives at any given moment. And it's just a question of, do we perceive it that way? Right. I was just teaching through Deuteronomy 8 this morning. And it's the passage where God is warning Israel that when they come into the land and they have all these amazing things that He's going to give them, that they not forget Him. Yeah. That they not say in their hearts, it is by my strength and my power that I've gotten all this wealth. And God says, just remember, I'm the one who gives you this power. I stand behind you to give you all that you're using to get what you've gotten. And so He doesn't negate their effort, but He also reminds them that even their strength comes from Him. And so He needs to be at root, you know, He needs to be present in all of their doings. So good. Yeah. And I just think we are prone to forget that. I mean, I think there's a reason Deuteronomy is in there. You know, Deuteronomy is in there. Absolutely. Yeah. It just seems to me like you're, you know, the interesting question your daughter asks, it's like, well, why does this always happen to us? And it's just sort of like, well, it's happening to everyone. We just notice. You know, and it's in part because of what you're doing in prayer. How would you... Yes. Oh, go ahead. No, I was just going to say, I absolutely, I believe that prayer is that key. It's that communication opening that allows us that ability to begin to see, hear, and experience God deeper. Yeah. So as you, as you think about that and experiencing God more deeply, And I'm looking again at the chapters in your book and, you know, the, the ones that are sort of like guide me, protect me, reassure me, hold me. These are things that aren't exactly asking God to solve your problem in the traditional sense, at the very least. Right. And so talk a little bit about how you think through some of those kinds of requests for God and the way that they ultimately cultivate this participation with God in prayer. If I can phrase it like that, that I think you've alluded to. Well, I, I think a lot of us have been prone to go to God and ask for answers. We want answers. We want answers. We want answers. And we have forgotten that He is the answer. He wants to give us so much more than just the answer to our prayers. He wants to be the answer to our prayers. And so when we recognize that the gaps that we're always experiencing, the deficits that we have,

the lack of whatever it is. There's a verse in Psalms that says, he will respond to the prayer of the destitute. And I always thought, destitute, that doesn't really apply to me. And I never understood that destitute meant lack. And that lack is whatever you're lacking. Well, most of us, what we're lacking is character. We're lacking faith. We're lacking belief. The New Testament father said to Jesus, I believe, help my unbelief. And so by going to God in prayer, that's exactly what we're saying. Those prayers of God hold me, God reassure me. We're wanting him to be our all in all. And when we begin to pray at the root of our needs, which is we need trust, we need guidance, we need that belief because we're lacking in it. When we pray those things, we are inviting God into being who he wants to be for us. When you think about Adam and Eve, they walked in the cool of the day with God. Imagine what that was like. We can't even wrap our minds around that, walking with God in the cool of the day. And yet I believe that's still what he longs for. That's what we're all longing for is a return to the relationship that was broken, a return to the depth of relationship with God to where we're walking with him in the cool of the day. And so to bridge that gap, we have prayer and we have direct access to the throne of God. We don't have to go through a priest. We don't have to go through any other entity. We get to talk directly with God because Jesus made that available to us. And so for that reason, if we choose to embrace him in the innermost part. Let me ask you a serious question. If something triggered a major market drop in the coming months, would your retirement be ready or exposed? With inflation, market volatility and ongoing global uncertainty, more families are taking a closer look at whether their retirement plan is truly built to hold up. And many are finding that adding a layer of protection makes a lot of sense. Sanctuary Metals is a Christian owned company that helps families strengthen their retirement savings with physical gold and silver through a gold IRA. During uncertain times, many people look to precious metals as a way to add stability when other assets may be under pressure. If you'd like to explore whether a gold IRA is a good fit for your situation, Sanctuary Metals makes it easy to get started. Text GUIDE to 94878 to receive your free Retirement Defense Guide or call 888-958-6579 to speak with one of their knowledgeable team members. Again, text GUIDE to 94878 or call 888-958-6579. The parts of our souls where we have the gaps, where we have the character flaws, the needs, the lacks, then we start to see that he truly is our all in all. He is the one. The Bible says in him, in him, we move and live and have our being. He is our oxygen, our breath. And so when we begin to embrace that instead of thinking that we're human apart from God, we are not human apart from God. We are human with God. He created us to be with him. And we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us to breathe in and through us. So when we begin to bridge the gap between what we know in our heads and attach it to our hearts, like you said, the Israelites, God was saying, remember, remember, we forget that God loves us so much that he longs for us to have those inner deeper conversations. When we begin those conversations, then all of the other tangible things start to take shape in ways that we can't even imagine. We never thought of. God is the most creative God. And I feel one with God the most when I am creating whatever that looks like. So I know that he is the one who can not only change circumstances, but he's after more. He wants to change hearts. Yeah, it's interesting. I mean, you took it back to Adam and Eve and walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And what's always struck me about that narrative, especially in the narrative of the fall, is what you see is this decision by humanity that being dependent on God is not good enough. They wanna be like God. They wanna determine their own destiny. And so it just strikes me as you're talking that prayer is a return to that acknowledgement that we are dependent on God, that we need to be with God in that way. And that he is the one that our limitations are a gift because without them, we wouldn't be driven to God. You know, there's something to that that I think is really important and powerful. And I just didn't wanna lose that in the conversation because I do think that that is, to a large extent, maybe why we have trouble with this. We like to be self-sufficient. We like to be self-sufficient. We like, you know, it's at least one of the reasons. I know it's one of the reasons for me. I like to be self-sufficient. And it feels like I shouldn't be bothering God or something like that. But the reality is that if we look back at those early narratives in the Hebrew Bible, what we find is God created us to be dependent upon him. He created us with specific limitations and asked us to lean on him for all that we needed. He didn't create us to be all powerful and limitless. He created us to be in relationship and to need him, to be dependent on him. Yes. And that is what desperation does. Desperation fuels a dependence on God. And once I had been in so many desperate circumstances where I was fueled to be dependent on God, I recognized I don't wanna live any other way. I don't want to live independently from God. I want to be dependent on him. And I want him to know that I am dependent on him because that is when his strength shines the brightest, is when we are at our weakest and we actually admit and know we are at our weakest. You know, back to Adam and Eve for a moment. They were the first parents to lose a child due to sin before the time would normally indicate. Most of us think that there's a natural progression to the order of parents dying and then children dying. And so they were the first parents to experience that difficult reality of their choices of one of their children killing the other because of sin. And it was their sin. They were responsible for those choices. So I think for us today to recognize that God is still wooing us back to him. He's still drawing us back to him. And even in the worst suffering, the worst circumstances, it's a call to embrace who he is as our creator and as the sole reign of the universe. And when we recognize that he is that big, because we try to box him in, when we recognize that that is his throne, that is his dominion and everything is held in his hands, then we have that opportunity to just snuggle up against him and accept him as the father that he is and longs to be for us as children. Yeah. Yeah, that's really good. I hadn't thought through the, you know, Cain and Abel narrative in terms of Adam and Eve losing their first child and then obviously having Seth as a replacement. But I think that's a really important observation. Well, and I think there are so many of us as parents. I mean, I confessed to earlier that I was angry at God and said, you don't know what it's like to watch your child suffer and die. Many times we who are suffering think that we are the only one or we think that no one else can understand. And I do believe that's true. I think that every suffering is unique. The only one who can understand your situation in totality is your heavenly father. He is the only one. But there is empathy to be offered. I mean, I look at Adam and Eve and think, wow, the price of that sin that they paid was so in their face with the death of their son. Yeah. And we can feel the refinement that happens when we go through it. Yeah. And I think that refinement is a process of speaking to God and having God speak back to you in those various ways we've talked about before. Absolutely. So, you know, so I was a personal trainer for five years while I was doing my MDiv. And one of the things that I realized was that

People change when the pain to change becomes less than the pain of staying the same. And so the illustration of that is, you know, I'd have clients come in and say, Oh, I really want to lose some weight, but they really wouldn't work until their pants stop fitting. You know, once their pants stopped fitting, that was like, okay, I don't want a whole new wardrobe. I don't like this feeling. Like we got to do something. This is serious now. And so what I'm wondering is, is there a corollary? Do you think that these moments of desperation offer people opportunities to cultivate a prayer life on a day-to-day sort of prayer life as opposed to, you know, and I'm not saying you can only use the suffering for it, but there is something I think compelling about it as opposed to sort of let me develop a plan to get better at prayer, you know, kind of operating our own kind of thing. Like, what do you, what do you think about that? How would you, maybe the question is, how would you help someone approach the idea of cultivating a stronger prayer life within suffering, but then also apart from suffering? Right. So within suffering, I think that just being willing to go to God. One of the chapters in my book is specifically the prayer is God fill me. And the reason it's that prayer is because I will just be honest with you. Grief and trauma can take it out of a person. My brain did not function the same way that it did prior to Taylor's death. The suffering was difficult enough to process, but then the death and the loss was so severe as her mother, even though I knew it was coming. I've had people say, well, you knew she had that diagnosis. You knew it was coming. You could prepare for it. And so is anyone ever really prepared for loss of that magnitude? They, they aren't. And so my brain did not work. It was a struggle. And honestly, there are still some times where I, I think, is my brain even working today? I feel so foggy and trauma will do that to you. There has to be a system of restoration, but I think the pivotal moment is that choice where you just go to God and say, I don't have any words. I do not know what to pray. And we have the promise in Romans that tells us that when we don't have the words, the Holy Spirit is interceding on our behalf. He knows what we need. We don't have to worry about whether or not we can articulate it to God. We just go and sit and say, here I am. I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do. I'm just showing up. I just know that I need you because this is too much for me and let the spirit do what the spirit does best. I think making that choice is really pivotal in desperate situations and in crises. And then when you're not in the crises, anticipating that someday you will be in a crisis. And I think until you get there, you don't fully understand how challenging it will be. But just know that you are going to want to know God in a deeper way than you ever have. And so in preparation for that, I think that just being faithful to do what you know to do, meaning spending time with him and then cultivating that ultimate time with him as well is really important. I sort of compare it to our relationships with either our spouses, our family, whatever relationship you you want to look at. You have this opportunity to get to know people, right? And they're at an acquaintance level where all you know is maybe their name or what they like to do or where they work. But then they come over into your home and you sit down and you have a cup of coffee and you start to talk a little bit more and you deepen the conversation by learning more about that person through spending time with them. And then it goes deeper than that casual conversation. You decide to have your families get together. And now there's a bigger dynamic between just you and the person. There's also all of these other people and you're learning more about that person because of their family. That's how we build our conversations with God in prayer the same exact way. You may right now feel like you're only an acquaintance, but as you begin to read the scripture, spend time in prayer, communicate with God, talk to him, listen to him as those exchanges happen, you will deepen the relationship and you'll move from being an acquaintance to being a friend, to being the child that he knows you are, your, his son or daughter, a child of the most high King. So hopefully that summary is a little helpful for someone today. No, it's great. And I think it's a good place for us to wrap up. I know we're getting close to the end here and I know you've got other interviews to do today. So I really appreciate everything you said. I would recommend the book to listeners, Desperate Prayers. Go check it out. Desperateprayers.com or Desperate, yes, Desperateprayers with an S .com. Desperateprayers.com. We'll have that linked in the show description as well. But Rachel, really appreciate you being here. This has been a great conversation and just really appreciate your insights into prayer and, and book. It's fantastic. Well, thank you so much for having me and just know that I, I know that this topic is not one that maybe the thinking Christian would really talk about as far as just it not being very tangible or academic, but it is relational. And I believe that what you said can really encourage your listeners to know that God speaks to us in so many ways through his word, through people, through his spirit. And so if you feel like any one of those three areas is lacking, then communicating that to him, he will open your eyes to where the gaps are. Absolutely. Absolutely. Well, thank you for being here. Thanks for writing this book. Everybody check out the stuff in the episode description. And Rachel, really appreciate it. Thanks for coming on and we will catch you on the next episode of Thinking Christian, everybody. Take care. Just want to take a second to thank the team at Life Audio for their partnership with us on the Thinking Christian podcast. If you go to lifeaudio.com, you'll find dozens of other faith-centered podcasts in their network. They've got shows about prayer, Bible study, parenting, and more. If you're tired of parenting advice and news headlines that are more confusing than assembling IKEA furniture, we've got just the podcast for you. My dear friend, Abby, and I are here to help you navigate the parenting rollercoaster. Should your kids be on social media? What should you tell a friend facing an unplanned pregnancy? These are just some of the many questions we tackle on our podcast. Subscribe to The Real Deal of Parenting wherever you find your podcasts.