Homebrewed Christianity Podcast

Okay, so here's a question that sounds simple until it isn't: why is prayer so hard? Not hard like "I need a better technique" hard — hard like something has gone structurally wrong with the way we even think about it. Wes Ellis, practical theologian, pastor, and author of Abiding in Amen: Prayer in a Secular Age, joins Tripp to diagnose what's actually going on — and it turns out the problem isn't your prayer life, it's the framework you've been handed. In a world shaped by achievement culture, algorithmic distraction, and the modern obsession with controlling outcomes, prayer has been quietly turned into a self-optimization project, something you master, measure, and feel guilty about not doing enough of — and Wes wants to blow that whole thing up. Drawing on Charles Taylor, Hartmut Rosa, Henri Nouwen, and yes, the Big Lebowski, Wes makes the case that prayer is not something you do toward God but something God initiates toward you — and our job is less about clamoring upward and more about learning to abid