313 | Becoming a Praying Dad, Seeking Friendship First, and Exchanging Wishes with God (Ryan Skoog)
Episode Description
After studying the prayer lives of extraordinary leaders around the world, Ryan Skoogs began to identify patterns. These patterns shifted not only the heart and mind of the leader but also the culture around them—in their home, organization, and beyond. As the leader of your home, you must create a culture of prayer that starts with you. In this episode, Ryan shares the practical steps to do just that.
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Ryan Skoog is an entrepreneur, ministry leader, author, world traveler, and adventure dad. He is co-founder and president of VENTURE, a church-planting and community development nonprofit that works in the toughest places of the world, serving war refugees, trafficked people, oppressed children, and the unreached.
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· Be willing to “waste time” with God.
· To start an intentional prayer life, just walk and talk with the Lord.
· Twenty minutes of prayer to Jesus each day for eight weeks will change your brain chemistry in ways that are visible on a brain scan.
· Where is prayer a line item in your organization’s (or family’s) budget?
· Don’t discount the little opportunities where you can be quick to pray.
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Podcast Intro: [00:00:01] Being a great father takes a massive amount of courage. Instead of being an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. The oldest dad in the world gave you this assignment, which means you must be ready for it. As a dad, I get on my knees and I fight for my kids. Let us be those dads who stop the generational pass down of trauma. I want encounters with God where He teaches me what to do with my kids. I know I'm going to be an awesome dad because I'm gonna give it my all.
Ryan Skoog: [00:00:39] Can you imagine what would happen if thousands of dads became praying dads, and then they pass that on to their kids? The same way that my mom passed a passion for prayer into my heart, probably the greatest gift she ever gave me as a parent. And I would think, as a dad, if you can model and create a culture of prayer in your family, probably the greatest gift you can give you kid.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:01:01] Hey guys, welcome back to Dadawesome. Episode 313, today, I have Ryan Skoog joining. And you guys recognize his voice because his voice has been at the front end of every podcast the last, I think it's been almost two years. He's the guy who says, man, I don't want to be an amazing leader and a decent dad, I want to be an amazing dad and a decent leader. Well, today we're going to talk about leading with prayer, he and two of his coauthors have released, this week, the book, Lead with Prayer. And here's the deal, guys. Dads are leaders. We are leaders. Our kids are watching us. The decisions we make, the way we approach our faith, the way we lead in prayer, lead with prayer for our families matters greatly. And we're going to dive into all aspects of that today with this conversation with Ryan Skoog. So buckle up. We're going to jump right in. There's no intro. We jump right in to, Ryan's going to kind of take things away here. This is episode 313 with Ryan Skoog.
Ryan Skoog: [00:02:16] What does it look like to to be a leader, a praying leader? Not just someone who, you know, occasionally golfs, but, you know, a golfer is different than somebody who occasionally golfs. There's like, there's difference between a leader or a dad who prays occasionally and like a praying dad or a praying leader.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:02:33] And you've spent three, four years, how many years collecting and learning on this, towards this project?
Ryan Skoog: [00:02:40] Probably a three year project now. Yeah, it's absolutely changed my life. Like it's been amazing.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:02:46] So, so we're celebrating today, launch week of this new book that Ryan coauthored. And so grateful to dive in deep. I have, the amount of, the amount of notes to prepare for this conversation. It actually, it was it was 30 plus pages in my computer, and then I translated it to four chicken scratch pages. So, lead with prayer. You gave me an advance copy. Thank you. I got to dive in.
Ryan Skoog: [00:03:10] You got one before me, actually.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:03:12] That's amazing. The advantage of being a podcasters that sometimes I get reached out to you by the publisher saying, here you go. You should you should chat with these guys. So, coauthored with Peter Greer and Cameron Doolittle. Correct?
Ryan Skoog: [00:03:23] Yep.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:03:24] And would you talk about those guys for a moment just so we can kind of, our listeners can know?
Ryan Skoog: [00:03:27] Yeah. So, Peter Greer is an amazing leader who runs Hope International. And they do Christian microfinance. About 1,500 employees all across the world. An incredible nonprofit. And then Cameron Doolittle is behind a lot of incredible ministries, but right now he runs John Mark Comer's, Practice the Way, as well as being a consultant at one of the largest Christian foundations in the, in the world, but also in the country.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:03:53] Incredible.
Ryan Skoog: [00:03:53] Yeah, unbelievable leaders.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:03:55] And the voice represented in the book, Lead with Prayer, are not just the three of your voices, but you've gone out to, roughly how many interviews did you guys do?
Ryan Skoog: [00:04:02] So we did over 100 hours of interviews, covering six leaders in six different continents. And those leaders, their ministry covers over 100 countries around the world.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:04:12] And I'm grateful and kind of like, like a little bit proud to say that about 10 to 20% of those leaders are voices that have been voices to the DadAwesome community.
Ryan Skoog: [00:04:23] Oh, that's so good.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:04:23] Which was so fun for me to discover as I'm reading through, I was like, oh yeah, I love that. And it expanded, like, obviously we've talked about fatherhood on this podcast but to hear their insights into prayer and and leading with prayer. Let's do this though, before we go, and kind of fly through some of the things that jumped off the page into my heart. The, to go a little deeper into being someone who is a praying dad versus a dad who prays now and then, could you take us a little deeper into why, why the, there's a difference there?
Ryan Skoog: [00:04:52] Yeah. We picked this one up from the scriptures where it talks about Jesus had said often He would withdraw and pray. And what's interesting is that phrase, you'll find it more, the more His ministry expands. So instead of getting too busy when the crowds got bigger and more miracles and more people come and, it said that He withdrew more and you'll see that phrase even more. So Jesus, the busier He got, the more He withdrawed to pray. And we kind of realized that that's pretty much the opposite of how it operates here in the West, is the more responsibility the more we just sprinkle prayer on things. And and then the way that the Greek is actually done, and then I'm not going to be a Greek geek about everything, but this one is interesting. It actually said, it didn't say Jesus withdraw often to pray, it said He was a withdraw away and prayer. It was His identity. So He did it enough that somehow He crossed a line into that being who He is. And so He, it said, Jesus is a withdraw away and prayer. And and so I thought, you know, there's difference between like someone, like I said, somebody who golfs and a golfer or, or even someone who complains occasionally and somebody who you're like, they're a complainer.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:06:04] It's identity.
Ryan Skoog: [00:06:05] Yeah. Like there's enough, there's some line you cross when you do something enough that it becomes who you are. And and we were like, what does it look like to be not a leader or a dad who prays, but a praying dad, a praying leader.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:06:19] I love going upstream in these conversations about fatherhood, where I look at your parents and I've had a chance to spend time with both of your parents. And you write about your mom and I spent some time, she caught me, I was grazing at the chips and guacamole table at your house. And she, she kind of came and introduced herself, and I found myself just drawn to that conversation with her, and I, she she radiates joy. And God's goodness, like, just spending time with her. But I know that growing up, she brought a, it was who she was. Prayer. Will you talk about her for a little bit?
Ryan Skoog: [00:06:51] Yeah. Oh, my childhood memories of I really learned, this is how I learned to pray, was was my mom would pray late into the night in her prayer room, night after night. And as a kid, I felt drawn to that. And I would put my ear up against the door and listen to my mom, and she would call on heaven to come down on us as kids and her neighborhood and the nations and praying through challenges with friends and praying through Scripture and all these things. And and I think I didn't realize it, but I was learning how to pray by pressing my ear up against that door, listen to her cry out to God night after night. And that's one of the greatest gifts and greatest memories of my childhood.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:07:31] Wow. And I know there was another memory that came with your dad in a moment of prayer. And, let's see if I have my note here. So he actually Isaiah 55:12, you will be led forth in peace. He had a practice of prayer where he went, he paused before making a big decision, saw God for his peace. Would you talk about the significance of that moment in business wise?
Ryan Skoog: [00:07:53] Oh, well, okay, so can I take a step back?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:07:56] Please.
Ryan Skoog: [00:07:56] Yeah. There's a phrase that we kind of gathered from the book, of all the interviews of leaders that we listen to, and they it came out wasting time with God, being willing to say, you know what, it doesn't make sense to pause and pray right now. There's a lot of more busy things that I could be doing, and emails I could be answering, and phone calls, all these things. But I'm going to waste time by just spending time in prayer. And my dad got, early on when he started his business, he got an offer to have an exclusive deal with a fortune 500 company. That's just like, that's every entrepreneur's dream. Like, this is time to write the press release and get out. And the offer came in and his business partner was like, this is what you worked your whole life for. Time to take it. And he went to pray, and the Lord was like, no. Like no peace at all. And he told his partner, his partner's about to pull his hair out. He was so frustrated. But he had to turn down the offer because the Lord took that extended time and he felt no peace from the Lord. And so then that happened was, this is about ten years into his company, but then what happened was about six months later, that fortune 500 company shocked Wall Street, shocked the world, and declared bankruptcy and would have literally taken my dad's company down with him. And and that company. And so the Lord saved my dad when nobody knew and and talked about that wasted hour of prayer, saved about ten years of work. And so it's it's never a waste of time.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:26] And the transferable...
Ryan Skoog: [00:09:27] To spend that time in prayer.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:09:29] Yeah. I mean. that's amazing. The transferable to all of us dads, thought, are even if we've been praying for and praying for for years or decades, and then it feels like the answer to prayer just came. Why don't we still waste a little time and pause and say, maybe I've been praying for and hoping for something that actually isn't good for me? And the aha moment is not a jump into the deep end of the pool and do a cannonball and scream, it's a, still, let's take that moment. You will be led forth in peace and pause.
Ryan Skoog: [00:09:54] Yeah. And it, the thing is, it became one of our family legends. Like, my dad invited us into that. And, and so I just want my kids to have family legends like that of prayer, you know, that, like, oh, dad, sought the Lord and this is what we did. And having those moments. And so I remember we were praying with our kids for the first container for a venture of food, of quarter million meals to get to, to war refugees in Myanmar. And my son looked up at me, and he's maybe six, and he goes, dad, I'm not praying for one. I'm praying for ten. And and in my mind, I'm like doing the math of how much that would cost and how much you have to raise. And I'm like, uhhh. tens a lot. Maybe we'll just pray for the first one. He goes, no, I'm praying for ten. And and then as a family, of course, God's grace came in a beautiful way and I think we're at 65 million meals or something like that now that have been delivered from that first container. But that 10th container, oh, did we party as a family. And it became a legend when God spoke to my son.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:11:01] Love that. [00:11:01][0.3]
Ryan Skoog: [00:11:01] When he heard, when I didn't even, he had more faith than I did, you know. It's one is become like a little child moments.Yeah and so I just encourage people to like, when those legends happen, make a big deal of them, go party, have a dinner and praise God together and make it a memory because it's it's so cool.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:11:21] Well, I know another, that was a story about your son, which is, uh, incredible. There's a story about your daughter that you share in the book. And a story that just happened, I think, three years ago here, where it felt like in all areas, valley like the valley season was fully like your family, it was hitting you from her and her dreams and sleep at night. And then on the business side, that was all like a valley moment.
Ryan Skoog: [00:11:42] Yeah, Covid. I tell people that in 2020 was the year that I got used to the smell of my carpet. And and one of the patterns we noticed when we started talking to, you know, great leaders around the world about their prayer life, is that every one of them learned how to really get carpet time when they face tough times. And it was a, it was a skill that they all learned. And so 2020 was my time to learn what the smell of my carpet was like.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:12:08] On your knees.
Ryan Skoog: [00:12:10] Yep. I get on my face night after night crying out to God. And we owned travel companies and so Covid hit and we went from basically like 1,500 sales a day to one a day in three weeks. And then we had to refund six months worth of and so, lose our life savings burned through all of that. We had to layoff scores of employees and then still we're burning through cash. And at the same time, my daughter was having terrible nightmares every single night where she'd even wake up in the middle of the night throwing up because they're so graphic of these, you know, we fight human trafficking in Nepal with Venture. And and so the dreams are about these, like, spirits that were saying, we're going to go towards the girls in Nepal, and you can't stop us and these horrible things. She would wake up morning after morning in tears saying, daddy, make them stop. Can you make them stop? And so I would lay in front of her door, crying out to God after she go to bed night after night saying, God, rescue my daughter. God rescue us. We're, we're down to, you know, down to the wire. And there's something incredible in Psalm 23, where it, I didn't know this my whole life. It switches, it starts with third person and then it switches to first. So it starts off, the Lord is my shepherd and now He leads me beside still waters. He makes me lie down in green pastures. But then it says, when I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, You are with me. Your rod, Your staff, You prepare a table, You anoint my head with oil. And that switch from third person, the Lord, to you happens in the valley and and and person, leader after leader that we talked to has stories of where Jesus was the Lord, but then Jesus became you in those moments. And I had one of those, it was a Monday, all these things built up to this Monday, we show up, don't have payroll for Friday. I'm like, is this it? Is our we have to fold. You know, all my life's work in the company and and then my daughter's crying again saying, daddy, you got to make these stop. And and so I, I lost it. I went away to be with the Lord for an extended time. And I just cried like I've never cried in my adult life. And then it happened. I close my eyes and I saw a picture of Jesus and He was crying. And I heard a voice in my heart say, you never cried alone. Every time you've cried, I've cried with you. And I can't tell you that the love of God that just overwhelmed my heart in that moment was indescribable, and yet so amazing that I, that I'm like, it was worth going through that challenge just to have that experience of the love of Jesus. And and I knew, I had in that moment, I was like, God, the love of God is such that Jesus has cried with everyone who's ever cried, ever, every time. And so that was overwhelming. And that then we had this incredible prayer time with my daughter. We took communion together as a family, and she had no nightmares that next night. And we had taken communion again the next night, no nightmares. And and it was I said, kids, we're Catholic. We're going to take communion every night. And, and and we, I bought one of those like 500 boxes of and you know from Amazon and, and uh, and it was just incredible. But but, God brought some, some rescue. We got a bridge loan financing to carry our company through, and we're here celebrating our best year ever. We were able to hire back and not only hire back, but grow past pre-COVID levels. And God's grace is so incredible. But to know that we serve a God who will literally sit and cry with us. Man, that's just, you know, it marks you for the rest of your life.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:16:13] Ryan, you could probably have guessed this, but I'm taking most of my questions, from the book, Lead with Prayer. I'm contextualizing to dads, Dads are leaders. And by the way, leaders are readers, and, and we need dads to act like and be leaders for their family, but also read on behalf of their family. So this is my strong challenge to the dads, make this, make this the first book. Like, like if, if you're not a dad who's a reader, lead with prayer. And like the dads listening, it is organized in a way that every chapter has actual, you can pray this prayer at the end of the chapter. It's organized with, here's tools, like so it's really I mean, a dad that reads 30% of the book, but just gathers and uses some of those tools at the end of the chapter, it's still high impact. High value. It's going to, again, it helps us as dads bring and lead a culture of, we see God as a family. That example of the communion moments that you have in the evenings, now. And I knew this was true about your family, but I didn't know when it started. When the first night. That's one of many moments that causes your family to be a, a praying family versus a family who, who speckles in a little bit of prayer here and there, sprinkles in. So, what are maybe a couple others for your family, and then we'll actually go look, because the book's filled with stories of leaders from around the world and how they actually put into practice versus their a person of prayer, uh, celebrating broadly, you're actually saying the how.
Ryan Skoog: [00:17:37] Yeah. Oh, yeah. We we literally just asked hundreds of people, what's your daily prayer practices? And we started noticing these patterns that were emerging. And somebody who is a leader in a war zone in the middle of, you know, Myanmar and a, we had talked to a billionaire financier who is just a really prayerful person. And the Holy Spirit led both of them to have very similar prayer lives. And so each chapter in the book is one of the patterns we noticed, that was a global prayer habit of one of the leaders that we got to interview of, of the leaders. And, and it was just unbelievable to watch these, these patterns emerge. But I got to tell ya, the the real challenge, and we got to talk to, you know, John Mark Comer and Francis Chan and Joni Eareckson Tada and John, John Ortberg and, a lot of incredible leaders. But the real meat of the book is the global church. Boy, when we say pray and they say pray, we're talking about different things like it's an incredible, incredible to encounter the global church and how they pray, how intense and passionate they pray, the time they spend in prayer. It's just amazing.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:18:41] So just take us into one of those stories because, Rosebell is so loved by the Venture team, part of that, I'm so grateful to be part of the Venture Team. I love the the way God showed her, she decided as a love offering to God to tithe her time. Would you explain?
Ryan Skoog: [00:18:57] Yeah. So she was the first interview we did, and we sat down with Mama Rosebell and said, you know what's what, your daily prayer habits? And she again, this is decades, she served in a war zone. There's landmines in the jungle, there's bombs being dropped and regular basis, and she's serving thousands of children in the midst of this and just glows, and you know, with Jesus and you're like, wow. And so I said, you know, what's your prayer life like? She goes, well, when I was 18, I had no money, but I wanted to tithe. And I figured the only currency I had was time. So I wanted to give that currency to Lord. So I started praying around 2.5 hours a day. And I've been doing that for the past 35 years. And I went, okay, we've got a lot to learn. And and so the first thing that came out that emerged, and I think this is really, really vital to anybody that wants to be intentional about prayer and become a praying, dad, is that it was friendship first. It wasn't just bringing your list and the things you want to see happen and the things you want to pray through. It was spending time, wasting time with their Savior. And that's what friends do. Friends waste time with each other. They just waste time to be with each other. And Francis Chan, we talked to him and he said, no, it's a walk in the morning and I'm just with my friend, Jesus. In all the emails, all the ministry responsibilities, all the books, everything is away and it's just me and Jesus. And having that friendship first mentality is so inviting into a life of prayer, because then it's not just a discipline, there is discipline to it, but there's also a a delight, a joy that God's inviting us into. And Jesus said, you can do nothing without me. He said, you know, I'm the vine, you're the branches. You know, if you're connected, you're going to bear fruit. If you're not, you're not. And I think, you know, the lack of so many beautiful fruit things happening in and around us can be directly linked to, where's that friendship?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:20:55] And it is friendship. It's not we have to go, like, spend to get the perfect answers to our prayer. And now we can actually go and be fruitful it's just be with. Be with, be connected to. Adam and Eve got to walk with God.
Ryan Skoog: [00:21:09] Yes.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:21:09] Part of the beauty of Eden is they walk with God. They had that and we haven't lost it. We are, we are welcomed to walk with God.
Ryan Skoog: [00:21:18] Yes. Invited, actually. That's the first thing that happened, John, they said, Jesus, you know, where are you staying? Where are you? And He goes, no, walk with me. And He was more interested in walking with them than showing them a particular destination. And we're always like, God, what's this destination? And God's like, walk with me. Because the walk is the most important part.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:21:38] So you inspired and led all summer long. I came and joined on Tuesday's, the venture team. We took walks with God with, with the expressed like desire of enjoying Him. Waste time with Him and I, I found myself staring at the bees as they hopped between flowers. And like there's no practical, like I couldn't take anything away but just enjoyment of, isn't that just amazing? So, would you explain a little more of why walking has been a part of of you connecting with God?
Ryan Skoog: [00:22:03] There's actually all kinds of science of when you walk, you're actually connecting both right and left part of your brain. So, it's a whole present-ness that you can be with the Lord. And then, that Eden Walk is actually something that God, it was broken. And then Jesus was able to restore that connection, to have that Eden walk. And so what is the first thing, one of the first things He does after being resurrected, He walks to the road, Emmaus with his disciples again. I can't imagine Him just going, I've been waiting for this, you know, to have this walk again, you know, and and so, yeah, Rosebell she said, yeah, I'll just walk and look at a spiderweb and see how intricately it's woven and then say, Jesus, can you weave my heart and my life intricately like that with the same care. And, and and then all of these friendship moments happen as you're just walking and talking with the Lord, that there's not a, there's not the agenda, you know, as much as the friendship that just happens as you're walking. And so being able to take a walk just to be with the Lord is one of the most beautiful things that you can do to start an intentional and powerful and dynamic prayer life to become a praying dad and leader.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:23:13] So those are two real practical things. One is a communion with your family, like a moment of pause and celebrate the gift of of Jesus. The second one, walk with God. Like this doesn't take any perfect plan, although you give actually some really some guidelines as a, as a practical in that chapter. What are, before I jump into my notes, maybe 2 or 3 other things that you discovered from these praying leaders that you have put into practice with your family? Any top of mind?
Ryan Skoog: [00:23:40] Yeah. So one of them was, how you start your day really matters. And, and so the practice that I kind of picked up from these leaders is to just literally roll out of bed onto my knees and walk through some type of Psalm to awaken my soul. And, and I have different Psalms that I try to do in different days. But my go to is Psalm 63, which is saying, God, you're my God, and I earnestly seek You, you know. And I started doing that long time ago, and one day I was on my knees and in my bed, and I felt a presence next to me, it wasn't the Lord, it was somebody. And I looked over and it was my son. And he said, dad, I want to, I want to start praying on my knees every morning like you do.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:24:25] He caught, he caught you.
Ryan Skoog: [00:24:26] He caught me. Yeah. And and so now for a couple of years now, he rolls out of bed onto his knees and he starts his day. And it it can be long. It can be short. I try and pray until my soul feels happy in Jesus. So, I don't have to look for happiness anywhere else and and try and get that connection with the Lord. And so, that was one of the powerful habits that's kind of translated into our family. And then another one is scheduling prayer and being intentional about your prayer. So and then having, you know, for me, like, what does a day with God look like? So I'll have, you know, my roll out of bed and onto my knees and then a walk and then there's some Scripture time and then what does it look like to have little bells throughout the day to remind myself to stop and be in the presence of Jesus? And then what does it look like to end the day well with the Lord? Whether it's confession or intercession for what happened, and releasing all that to the Lord or communion, and looking back and gratefulness, but carving out a beautiful day with God. And then being intentional about that and then making that a rhythm and a part, we call it a personal liturgy. Some people call it a rule of life. Other people, one of the leaders we talked to, he was, he managed like billions of dollars for Michael Dell and yet was most praying, like, almost like a monk, like prayer. And he said, he says, I set my rule of life, and then I schedule the rest of my life around my prayer life. And I thought, wow, that's how you set culture.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:25:56] And there is a common, I mean, many of the leaders, it was significant time. It wasn't, it wasn't, again these, now there are short prayers, you kind of guide. Hey, you can have these short prayers and look for moments to pray the short one one sentence, one line prayers. But there was a there was a chunk of time, and I love this quote by Mother Teresa because it just like simplifies it says, if you spend one hour a day in adoration of the Lord and never do anything wrong, you'll be fine.
Ryan Skoog: [00:26:23] Yeah, just don't do anything that you know is wrong and and spend an hour just loving Jesus. And and it's amazing. You can tell when somebody who's spent extended time with the Lord. It's it's unmistakable. It's unfakeable and unmistakable. And there's a fire to their life. I call it the iceberg. Like your private prayer life is extended, then there's a huge part below that iceberg that kind of you can see how that thing moves. And, you know something, there's a lot beneath the surface there.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:26:53] Yeah. And it's, I just feel like the default is life gets busier and busier. And just like business leaders and business owners, it gets busier and busier. So you spend less and less time in prayer because of all the demands. And, dad, life is the same, though. You add more kids, they get older, it's like more and more time. It's choked out. I really appreciate it, so Tim Keller went home to be with Jesus like nine months ago at the time of recording, and he said this quote, prayerlessness will kill you, it won't hurt you. It will kill you. And he said it to leaders, but to dads, we we do like most of us would say, man, if I'm going to actually get taken it out, like I know there's great pain to my marriage, my kids and grandkids, if I get taken out. So we're talking about that kind of like dads are susceptible to be taken out. And here's the key, prayerlessness will set us up to be taken out.
Ryan Skoog: [00:27:44] Yeah.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:27:45] Would you agree with that?
Ryan Skoog: [00:27:45] Absolutely. This is life and death. This, you know, whether you become a praying dad or a praying leader is life and death stakes. It's real. And so this isn't just a nice little, like we said, it's not like a little pepper that you stick on top of them. This is the meat. This is the core. This is the foundation. And what Jesus said, without Me, you can do nothing. What happens to a branch that's disconnected from the vine? It dies. So, so when when Tim Keller saying it'll kill you, he's quoting scripture. And that that's truly what happens over and over and over. We we we, we're able to do, look into a study on praying, actually was done in the West here, it was on leaders of different ministries and their prayer lives and the, the results of the study were so bad they never published it. It was like a six figure study that was done by a reputable group.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:28:39] Of how much time or how leaders prayer? What was it?
Ryan Skoog: [00:28:42] Yeah, yeah. No, they're just trying to find the prayer habits of leaders in America, Christian leaders in America. And there is so little to be spoken of that they they never showed the study. Yeah. And so, that's why we kind of ended up going to the global church to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, we got a crisis here. We need to learn to become people of prayer.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:29:02] Yeah, we need to learn. The the approach that just keeps coming up is we're not trying to get something. We're trying to commune. We're trying to be with. We're trying to enjoy. We're wasting time because of our love for and receiving love from. There was a study that the University of California, Berkeley did about the about about awe, specifically. And I think you framed it like it's the joy of the Lord, like spending time and looking at those bumble bees that I was looking at or looking at the spider web from Rosebell. There's an awe that comes and I'll just list these off quick, and then I'll let you talk about what you took away. But those people who spend more time in awe are more humble, more patient, more connected to others, more kind, more generous. They have increased critical thinking, better moods and decreased sense of materialism. So that list is what I want for my four little girls. That list is what I want to be true of me as their dad. Give you that list and I'm going to be a great dad. So, yeah, connect those two.
Ryan Skoog: [00:30:02] Absolutely. Yeah, yeah, this is, and this is science. This is, you know, literally 20 minutes of prayer a day for eight weeks, will change your brain neurons and chemistry so much that you can tell on a brain scan. And there's an agnostic neuroscientist that started just measuring prayer. And it had to be prayer like to Jesus. It wasn't just like, you know, meditation and mindfulness, like, sand is soft, it is God is love. God is gracious. You know, that kind of focus and prayer. And and it can change your brain scan it like literally fires all the all those parts that are amazing. And so when it talks about the fruit of the Spirit, it's it was way more like material and real than we ever realized is that that that Spirit of God starts taking over our lives in a beautiful way, just Jesus rubbing off on us in those times. And so it's it turns out to be vital for your entire life that you spend time in awe and friendship and in wonder at your Savior. And that's everything else kind of, you know, flows out of that source. It's beautiful that the well, if you will.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:31:08] Yeah. And many of us, do you still default back to prayer time is my prayer list. I'm going to pray through a list and the actual like deeper meaning of of prayer, the exchange of wishes. Where did that, how did you kind of discover that?
Ryan Skoog: [00:31:23] Yeah, we were diving into like, where does word prayer come from? The the first is palette is a really cool word because it's, it's a verb tense that means it's something that happens to you. And I never thought of prayer happens to me. But but then you start looking at those brain scans and you start looking at the science or like, oh, prayer happens to you. Like you spend time in prayer. You're not doing something. Something's happening to you. And that's the Hebrew. Then you look in the Greek, the Greek and it's like this exchange of wishes back and forth. And I actually took that seriously. I started taking on Wednesdays, I'll say, God, what's what's your prayer list today? You already know mine. What's on Your heart? And I'll just stop and trying to listen and sometimes a person will come to mind that I hadn't even thought of and start praying for them. And now I'm having this interaction with the Lord over partners together, and seeing heaven on earth and seeing the Kingdom of God come to earth in a beautiful way. And and so that exchange is so vital that it's not a one way, here's all my wishes. It's a, What's on your heart, God? What are your wishes? And all of a sudden you get an insight into the character, into the the love and the passion of Christ. It's beautiful.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:32:33] Yes.
Ryan Skoog: [00:32:33] It's changed my life. Like there's times where sorry to go off, but there's times where I've said, God, what's on Your, what's on Your heart? And He put a country and I started praying for the country and I started just bawling. I didn't know why. I'm praying for this country and we ended up serving thousands of people in that country years later that came all out of a hey, what's in Your heart today?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:32:53] Yeah. A pause, without that pause to listen and hear a different country, who knows where, where like, it was the, it was the seed that led to all this impact. It was not your list. That was the seed.
Ryan Skoog: [00:33:03] No, no. Definitely not.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:33:05] So that that kind of agricultural, C.S. Lewis, quoted, he said, look after the roots and the fruits will look after themselves. And that all the work you're doing is, is roots. We're talking roots here. We're talking, we're not talking the the fruit side of the impact or we're not talking families trying to control what our kids go off and do. It's like if we look after the roots the fruitfulness will come.
Ryan Skoog: [00:33:29] Yeah. Oh, and when it comes to parenting and that's the, the same idea with parenting or leadership. The same, same thing when you have a when you're a praying dad, the Lord will speak to you about your kids. Things you're supposed to be praying for them, or things that they might even be struggling with, you didn't even know. And the Holy Spirit will partner with you as a parent and bring things to you. And I remember there's the thing that's supposed to be praying for my daughter and the Lord's like, I wasn't supposed to be telling her about it. I was just supposed to be praying about it. And and and then it meant that I didn't have to try and change that in her. I could watch the Lord change it in her. And we had a much better relationship because I wasn't trying to change her. I was watching the Lord change her. And and there's a moment where the Lord said, this by the end of the week, you'll have tears of joy when you see your daughter do something. And she ended up leading worship and all these things and I didn't think it was going to be possible. And I just started crying, and it was just this wonderful, you know, like co-parenting with God. And I could sense His joy.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:34:31] You got out of the way, you just talked to God.
Ryan Skoog: [00:34:32] Yeah I did. It's just beautiful.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:34:34] There's three probably spheres of my life, areas of deep passion that that the book, Lead with Prayer, this project really taps into. And one is certainly intentional fatherhood work. I'm so grateful I get to be a part of this and get to be a dad. Prayer is a deep passion of mine. Deep like, like I want to learn more. I want to grow in this area. I want to hear the voice of God. I want to spend time with Him. And then the third is leadership. So I read through your book, thinking through in those three areas, like all kinds of areas this can apply. This can apply here. This can apply there. So there are for sure we have our dads listening. But also many of those dads are business owners, their leaders, their pastors. The whole third section of this book talks about taking this deep passion, this conviction the, the life of the praying dad, the praying leader and actually carrying that into a culture. And I've been asking some questions that say, well, the culture of your home, the culture. But would you talk organizationally and just how that we can build cultures of prayer?
Ryan Skoog: [00:35:33] Yeah, I can hit both. You know, home and leadership. But, so one of the first interviews on this that just really changed my life was an Australian guy. And he said, mate, where is prayer a line item in your budget? I said, huh? He said, you told me prayer is important. Well, if it's important, it makes the budget. It makes it to the PNL, it makes it to the balance sheet. And I thought, oh man. And so we in Venture, we started investing in 24/7 prayer rooms in the different countries that we serve. And then I started asking like, well, what does it look like to invest in prayer in my home, as well? Like, if you're supposed to create cultures of prayer wherever you lead, how do you create a culture of prayer in your own home? And first you got to model it. And that's what we've been talking about. You can't, you can't multiply by zero, right. And so you can't create a culture of prayer anywhere, that you're not becoming a person of prayer, at least trying. And there's no point where you arrive to just be an enthusiast. You don't have to be an expert, just be an enthusiast for it. And you start creating a culture of prayer and, and and so when it comes to your home, what does it look like to invest in, invest time in praying as a family, but also invest like go on some kind of journey where you guys go out in the wilderness and pray together. We try to do that with our kids where we like, teach them to retreat into the woods and to pray and to to get in nature and be alone with God. And then, hey, what happened? You know, or little things like, as a family, we we call it listening time. And we just sit and listen and just the other night, my, my daughter's like I'm supposed to pray for, do you remember this one pastor friend of yours? I mean, she had only met him twice in her whole life, and she said, I'm supposed to pray this for them. And it was very specific. So much so that I texted my pastor friend, and he's like, you have no idea how much I needed to hear that.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:37:25] In that moment.
Ryan Skoog: [00:37:25] And it was my my daughter just, you know, having that family listening time, we just take a minute or two. It doesn't, give God a minute. And, and and so we just took a minute or two try and listen, most nights, nothing. But every now and again we hear something. And one time the Lord gave my son a guidance and it was a it was actually guidance I needed for my business. He was like, hey, I feel like the Lord is saying this and just learning how to hear and listen from God and have that, you know, invest the time, invest some energy, invest some money. If it takes some money, like truly, to work on creating a culture of prayer at home and, and and as a leader.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:38:00] Yeah. The listening prayer. We have learned about that from your family and from others. So our girls are younger than than your kids. And we it's a drawing almost always there's clipboards and there's drawing as a part of that listening time. And often it's, for the last few years, it's been sitting on the floor in the RV for one worship song, so it's not that long. It's practical stuff.
Ryan Skoog: [00:38:19] Oh yeah, super easy.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:38:20] And there's always a squirrely one, one of my four girls is always squirrely that moment. It's kind of like easy to be frustrated.
Ryan Skoog: [00:38:25] I'm the squirrely one in our family.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:38:26] So yeah. But the aha like it's worth like that's just an intangible like all of us dads can do that. Let's just listen and see if there's any any like, thought that we feel like God's given us some thoughts or a nudge or a whisper or an impression or something to draw or a word and yeah, simple. Simple.
Ryan Skoog: [00:38:41] Oh, yeah. And but but investing the time like making time for it and investing also the a little bit of your intentionality to create that moment. You know like think about it, prepare for it. You know, that type of a thing.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:38:56] Yeah. Well, Ryan, thank you for not only taking a moment where God, like, brought a deeper conviction personally, but saying, I'm going to actually go gather the work that you've done with your coauthors. And now we get to release and kind of celebrate today on the podcast of this book being out. I'm so grateful. Was there other, I know we probably just hit a tiny fraction, but was there other topics, just to take a couple more minutes, for the dads that you feel like this was an aha, a discovery that would apply to to us dads?
Ryan Skoog: [00:39:25] Yeah, yeah. Don't discount the little moments throughout the day of stopping and acknowledging God and, you know, like, you know, a kid has a test, well let's stop and pray. We have a phrase around here, we want to be quick to pray. And and that I think in creating a culture in your family, being quick to pray about little things just quickly like, oh, hey, let's pray about that. And then taking 20 seconds to pray about it and making that normal in your family, making that normal that we just talked to God throughout the day is just been a really, really helpful culture. And and so one other thing, a friend of mine does, is and I've been trying to do this more, is to pray the fruit of the Spirit and the armor of God over our kids. And, and make that part of your rhythm of covering. And then we've, you know, in our family, we have our family values that we, things that we, you know, like our, our family values that we're trying to instill in our kids. Well, I pray those values for my kids and I and I actually pray it almost every night to the point that it's like liturgical or, you know, like, you know, a friend of mine told me by the time someone gets bored of it, then they're finally getting it. And so they hear all the time about praying for courage and for compassion and for character and for holiness and humility into our kids lives. And and they hear this over and over, and we, we actually started doing, I'm just riffing now, this isn't even in the book or anything. But, but we actually try and have prayer points that our whole family's praying for. Like, so our whole family is praying for our neighbors to come to Jesus, or our whole family is praying for one of these containers or some new thing that's happening. And and what we decide to do is we we pray into something and then when an answer happens, we celebrate and party. And and it's been kind of a fun rhythm to be able to, like, join our hearts together as a family and see a miracle happen and then celebrate it together.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:41:22] It's so like we, we all of us, again, I mean, we don't have to have our family values stated perfectly. We can take Scripture just like you said. And yeah, it's the spirit. We don't have to have or we know the exact right way to pray. We can just pray for one thing that feels like and make sure we do it collectively as a family, and then turn into a celebration, when we see it happen. It's so fun. These are, they're such easy stepping stones. And I know there are some dads listening that when they heard that comment about an hour of prayer or Rosebell tithing like 2.5 hours of prayer. It's super intimidating, but there are steps and would you encourage us with, hey, this is, these are a couple small first steps to being a praying dad?
Ryan Skoog: [00:41:59] Yeah. So the book has a bunch of tools that are helping, like assuming that you're just starting out on this. And let's take a workout example. If you showed up at a gym and you didn't have a little, little card plan, you just hit a few machines here and there, no rhyme or reason to it, and it's off to the hot tub. You know, like, that's that's kind of how it works. But if you come in and you've got, I'm going do these sets, I'm going to do these reps, I'm going to do, you know, these and you've got a full workout. It's going to really kick your butt and and it's going to be longer and extended and all of that. So we lean into guided prayer, so we created these prayer cards. You can get on a leadwithprayer.com and we also have partnered with the Echo Prayer app. So for free you can download the guided prayer and in the Echo Prayer app and it'll start helping you. And each card just has a handful of scriptures you can read like Lectio Divina or just read real slow over and over and and then on the back has an interactive prayer, and you pull out like seven of these cards and you're praying for half an hour, 35 minutes, and all of a sudden you're like, wow.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:42:58] That's the guide.
Ryan Skoog: [00:42:59] I can do this.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:43:00] Right into it.
Ryan Skoog: [00:43:00] That's your little workout that you can help you really extend it. So, and if you if you don't have any of those things, I would just tell someone, grab Psalm 91, Psalm 63, Psalm 103, Psalm 112, you know, grab some of these Psalms and and it's God's guide on how to pray. You know, you're just kind of learning how to pray on that, as well.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:43:20] Ryan, again, thank you. Thank you for living this. I have been in proximity to you and your family and I've seen you live it before. Now here we are celebrating the release of it and our family, like we, the more time I spend with you, the more I want our family to step into some of these rhythms, some of these protecting times. Some of the joyful walks with God, some of it, like it is contagious, the time I spend with you of wanting to spend more time with God.
Ryan Skoog: [00:43:45] Praise God.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:43:45] Yeah. Thanks you so much.
Ryan Skoog: [00:43:45] Where, can you imagine what would happen if thousands of dads became praying dads? And then they pass that on to their kids the same way that that my mom passed it, you know, a passion for prayer into my heart and one of probably the greatest gift she ever gave me as a parent. YAnd I would think as a dad, if you can model and create a culture of prayer in your family, probably the greatest gift you could give your kids.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:44:11] And the visual of that, I've shared this before in the podcast, but a dad that steps under a waterfall just getting soaking wet. How crazy the love the Father's lavished on that we should be called Children of God. Like, that we bring our kids near the waterfall with the dad, the kids get wet. The water just beats off the dad and gets the kids wet. So that with prayer, we will raise up a generation of kids who are praying men and women, if we just step in and do it ourselves. Like we don't even have to have the right way to teach them, just we have to do it. We have to live it.
Ryan Skoog: [00:44:39] And, I don't know if there's a parting thought. Can I give you one more?
Jeff Zaugg: [00:44:42] Please.
Ryan Skoog: [00:44:43] Yeah. So, Mark Batterson was one of our interviews, and he said something that completely changed my life. We actually put it at the very end of the book, and that's, he said he was able to look at his, the prayer journals of his grandfather. And he he just was overwhelmed because he started reading thing after thing in his own life that was answers to his grandfather's prayers, and his grandfather has been with Jesus, you know, ten years ago went to be with Jesus. And he thought prayer is generational. We can pray prayers that will be answered far after we're gone from this life. And a story to illustrate that was a friend of mine went, years ago, went to Russia to they had this amazing mission trip where they were taking stones of a gulag, a Russian prison, and turning them into a church. And as they're digging through the stones, somebody found a canister and they opened the canister and there's a note inside. And so they took it to their host pastor. And the host pastor just started weeping as he read this note. And what the note said was, we are a group of Christians who are being forced by the communists to take the stones of our church and turn it into our own prison. And we pray that one day these same stones will be turned back around into a church. And they never saw the answer to that prayer. But but God answered that prayer. And I think there's a lot of things as a parent, you might be praying for your grandkids or their great grandkids and that you wanted God to answer in your life that are going to be answered generationally. But God never forgets a prayer.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:46:28] Wow. Wow. Powerful.
Ryan Skoog: [00:46:30] Just so powerful.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:46:32] Would you close our time by praying that the seed of this this project, this book, what's what God has shown you and all these leaders would take root in us dads?
Ryan Skoog: [00:46:41] Absolutely. Jesus, Jesus. Thank you. Jesus. We love you. Thank you. Jesus. Thanks for being here this whole time. Help us to be more aware that You're with us right now. Help us to realize we're not alone in being dads. That you're our good Father, God. And You're given us an example, and You've given us Your Holy Spirit and Your power to empower us to be the leaders and the dads that we need to be, but we just have to tap in. The unbelievable wealth and resources of heaven, to be a dad are available to us. Help us, God, learn how to tap into those resources, tap into that wealth of energy and strength and life and joy and supernatural grace and wisdom. And God, I know there's so many dads that are like, wow, God, I need your help right now in this moment. And I pray that You would be an encourager by Your Holy Spirit to every single one of them. Lift their hands, strengthen them, lift them up to be the dads that You have always called them to be. And may we pass on generation to generation, being prayerful dads, praying dads who build cultures of prayer in our family and that may our children be praying parents and build cultures of prayer in their families, generation to generation. In Jesus name, Amen.
Jeff Zaugg: [00:48:15] Thank you so much for joining us for episode 313 with Ryan Skoog. All the conversation notes, the transcript, all the links are going to be at dadawesome.org/podcast. But if you want to skip a step and just get right to all the resources that Ryan and his coauthors have have shared, leadwithprayer.com. Buy the book, listen to it on audible or buy it and flip through page by page. Get the prayer cards downloads. Men, phenomenal resource, the download of all the prayer cards. He's got several other free PDFs on the website and kind of video overviews to this project. But let's be dads who lead with prayer. Let's be dads who get down on our knees, start the day,end the day, praying over our kids. Praying, enjoying Jesus, just wasting time with God. Let's make that something that our kids just know, hey, that's my dad. He loves talking with God. He loves being with God. He he doesn't go to get, he just loves being and spending time with his Heavenly Father. Let's make that true. What our kids know is true about their dads is that we love to pray and we lead our families with prayer. Have a great week, guys.
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· 30:06 - "20 minutes of prayer a day, for eight weeks, will change your brain neurons and chemistry so much that you can tell on a brain scan. There's an agnostic neuroscientist that started just measuring prayer and it had to be prayer to Jesus. It wasn't just meditation and mindfulness, sand is soft, no, it is God is love. God is gracious, that kind of focus and prayer. It can change your brain scan so it fires all the parts that are amazing."
· 39:26 - "Don't discount the little moments throughout the day of stopping and acknowledging God. A kid has a test, let's stop and pray. We have a phrase around here, we want to be quick to pray. I think in creating a culture in your family, being quick to pray about little things quickly, oh, hey, let's pray about that. And then taking 20 seconds to pray about it and making that normal in your family, making that normal that we just talked to God throughout the day has just been a really, really helpful culture."
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