There's a name you used to bring to God all the time. And somewhere along the way — without ever really deciding to — you stopped.

Maybe it's a child who walked away. A sibling who went quiet. A friend on the same loop you've watched for years. Someone who hurt you. You prayed for them, you really did… until somewhere in there you quietly concluded they were never going to change — and the prayer went quiet right along with that thought.

This week, Melissa sits with the prayers we stopped praying for other people — and asks the question underneath the question: Did you stop praying for them… or did you stop believing they'd change? Because sometimes what we call acceptance is really unbelief wearing acceptance's clothes.

Through the story of Samuel — a man rejected by the very people he'd led, who still called quitting on them a sin against God — and the greatest commandment Jesus ever gave, this episode reframes what intercession was always about. You weren't praying to fix them. You were praying to obey a God who told you to love your neighbor — and who has never once given up on you.

You're not praying for them to change. You're praying because you refuse to stop loving them the way God never stopped loving you.

Bring a journal. There's a name waiting to be picked back up.

🎧 Part 4 of the series The Prayers I Stopped Praying.

🔗 Take the next step at myquestionforyou.com — and join the free weekly email, A Quiet Invitation, for a short word of encouragement each week. Or just visit: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1717098/165207819752047949/share

✨ Encouragement for your spirit. Wisdom for your walk.

You ever look at your phone, see who's calling, and just… let it go to voicemail?

Not because you don't love them. You do. But you knew the second you saw the name on the screen — if you pick up, they're going to ask you for something. And you don't have it in you to say yes right now.

A lot of us have been doing the exact same thing with God.

In Episode 3 of The Prayers I Stopped Praying, Melissa asks the question we don't always want to ask out loud: What if you're afraid of what He'll ask?

Together, we'll sit with a man in Mark 10 who ran up to Jesus and asked the boldest question a person can ask. He got an answer. And the answer touched the one thing he wasn't ready to hand over.

This isn't the prayer that didn't get answered. This is the prayer that did. And what we do with that might be the most honest conversation you've had with God in a long time.

🎧 The prayer that scares us most isn't the one God ignores — it's the one He answers.

🔗 Take the next step at myquestionforyou.com — and join the free weekly email, A Quiet Invitation, for a short word of encouragement each week. Or just visit: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1717098/165207819752047949/share

✨ Encouragement for your spirit. Wisdom for your walk.

You ever apply for a job you really wanted?

You spent hours on it. You tailored the resume. You wrote and rewrote the cover letter. You hit submit, and you waited.

A day. A week. Two weeks. Nothing.

And the worst part wasn't getting a no. Because at least a no is an answer. The worst part was the silence.

A lot of us have been praying like that.

In Episode 2 of The Prayers I Stopped Praying, Melissa asks: Did you stop praying because He didn't answer? Together, we'll sit with Mary and Martha — two women who felt completely ignored by Jesus when their brother was dying — and with Jesus Himself in Gethsemane, asking honestly if there's another way.

Because both stories tell us the same thing: the silence on a specific prayer isn't the same as God being absent from the asking. He may not have changed your circumstances. But He has never once left the room.

🎧 Six weeks. Six prayers worth picking back up.

🔗 Take the next step at myquestionforyou.com — and join the free weekly email, A Quiet Invitation, for a short word of encouragement each week. Or just visit: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1717098/165207819752047949/share

✨ Encouragement for your spirit. Wisdom for your walk.

ou didn't decide to stop praying for it. There was no fight with God. No moment where you sat down and said, "I'm done with this one." It just got quieter. And one day you noticed it hadn't been on your lips in a long time.

In the premiere of The Prayers I Stopped Praying — a new six-part series — Melissa opens with a question most of us have never said out loud: When did you stop praying for that?

Together, we'll sit with Hannah from 1 Samuel 1 — a woman who had every reason to stop praying, and didn't. Not because her faith was bigger than ours. But because she refused to let the prayer go quiet.

This isn't a guilt episode. It's an invitation. To notice the prayers that faded without you noticing. To ask honestly what they're telling you. And to start finding your way back to the ones still waiting for you.

🎧 New series. Honest questions. Real conversation.

🔗 Take the next step at myquestionforyou.com — and join the free weekly email, A Quiet Invitation, for a short word of encouragement each week. Or just visit: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1717098/165207819752047949/share

✨ Encouragement for your spirit. Wisdom for your walk.

I've got the rhythm. Here's the description for the finale — Buzzsprout-optimized, season-finale weight, threading the pull-quote, and seeding Series 2 without selling it.

🎙 S3 E7 — Podcast Description

"Is This Ever Going to Change?" (Series Finale)

OPTION 1 — RECOMMENDED (warm, season-finale weight)

There's a prayer you've been praying for a long time.

Maybe it's a healing. A relationship. A door that hasn't opened. A version of your life you've been hoping God would help you step into. And somewhere along the way — without meaning to — you started softening what you were asking for. Quieting your expectations. Lowering the bar, just a little, so it wouldn't hurt as much if it didn't come through.

If that's where you are, this episode is for you.

In the finale of The Question Behind the Question, we're sitting with the question every other question this season has been quietly circling: Is this ever going to change? And underneath it, the one we've been afraid to ask out loud — Do I believe God's story for me still ends well?

We're going to Lamentations 3, where the prophet Jeremiah writes one of the most beloved declarations of God's faithfulness in all of Scripture — "Great is Your faithfulness" — from the literal ashes of a city that was destroyed. Not from comfort. From rubble. We'll also sit with Paul in Romans 8, who reminds us that "hope that is seen is no hope at all," and we'll close where the whole series has been leading: with the God who is making all things new.

You'll walk away with a different definition of biblical hope, a quiet invitation to write down the prayer you stopped saying out loud, and something I want you to carry into whatever season comes next:

Hope doesn't promise the ending will be easy. Hope promises the ending will be good.

🔗 Take the next step at myquestionforyou.com — and join the free weekly email, A Quiet Invitation, for a short word of encouragement each week. Or just visit: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1717098/165207819752047949/share

📌 Coming soon: our new series, Prayers I Stopped Praying. What do we do with the prayers we buried? How do we find our way back to them — not naively, but honestly? Subscribe so you don't miss it.

✨ Encouragement for your spirit. Wisdom for your walk.

You did it again.

You meant it this time. You prayed about it. You told yourself things were going to be different. And somewhere along the way, you blinked — and you were right back in the same pattern, having the same conversation in your head you've been having for years.

If that's where you are, this episode is for you.

In Episode 6 of The Question Behind the Question, we're sitting with one of the most honest questions a believer can ask: Why can't I change? Underneath it, there's a quieter one — Am I actually changing, or am I just performing change? And both of them deserve a real answer.

We're going to Romans 7, where the apostle Paul — the same Paul whose past God redeemed in episode 5 — admits something most of us are afraid to say out loud: "I do not do the good I want to do, but the evil I do not want to do — this I keep on doing." That's not a struggling new believer. That's the man who wrote half the New Testament. And if Paul could write that and still be Paul, that changes everything about what we've been carrying.

You'll walk away with a different way to measure transformation, a reminder that you are not the broken one in the room, and something I really want you to hold onto:

You don't have to feel transformed to be in the middle of transformation.

📩 Get A Quiet Invitation — weekly encouragement in your inbox that takes each episode a little deeper: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1717098/165207819752047949/share

✨ Encouragement for your spirit. Wisdom for your walk.

Some questions don't announce themselves. They show up late at night, when you're scanning your past for the reason something in your present feels stuck. Did I do something wrong?

In this episode of My Question for You, Melissa sits with the quieter question underneath that one: Am I being punished by God for who I used to be? Anchored in John 9:1-3 and the story of Paul — first in his past (1 Timothy 1) and then in his present (2 Corinthians 12) — this reflection gently dismantles the hidden equation so many faithful people are carrying. The one that says pain must be punishment, that old chapters block new blessings, that God is keeping a tally.

He isn't.

Your past is not your sentence. And the very places you thought disqualified you might be the places His power is preparing to show up most.

For more encouragement, visit myquestionforyou.com and sign up for This Week's Question: A Quiet Invitation — a weekly email that takes each episode a little deeper.

📩 Get A Quiet Invitation — weekly encouragement in your inbox: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1717098/165207819752047949/share

✨ Encouragement for your spirit. Wisdom for your walk.

You've been showing up. For years.

You tithe. You serve. You volunteer. You pray. You choose faithfully, even when it costs you something. And your life still looks... about the same. Maybe even the same as the person next to you who isn't doing any of this. In fact — if you're being honest — his life might actually look a little better.

And in a quiet moment you'd never say out loud in church, a question surfaces:

What's the point?

In this episode, Melissa walks you through two voices in Scripture who asked the same question — Asaph, a worship leader who almost walked away from God after watching the unfaithful prosper, and the older brother in Luke 15, who never strayed, never left, and stood in the field wondering if a lifetime of faithfulness had meant anything at all.

You'll discover:

• Why "what's the point?" is one of the most honest questions a faithful person can ask — and why God isn't threatened by it
• What Asaph found in Psalm 73 that finally silenced the comparison and the doubt
• What the older brother was really asking underneath his anger — and what the father's answer reveals about how God sees your faithfulness
• The invisible ledger most of us are keeping — and why it's quietly exhausting us
• Why the answer to this question is bigger than any blessing you've been waiting for

Whether you've been faithful for months or decades, this episode is for the person who is tired of doing the right things and not seeing the return — and who needs to hear what God is actually saying in the middle of it.

If this episode speaks to you, share it with someone who needs the reminder that their faithfulness is not invisible.

If this episode meets you where you are, share it with someone who needs the reminder that they were made on purpose.

Scripture: Psalm 73, Luke 15:11–32, Galatians 6:9 Series: The Question Behind the Question New episodes weekly.

📩 Get A Quiet Invitation — weekly encouragement in your inbox: https://preview.mailerlite.io/forms/1717098/165207819752047949/share

✨ Encouragement for your spirit. Wisdom for your walk.