July 29, 2025 • 47 mins
When Jesus' disciples wanted to grow, they asked, "Lord, teach us to pray." Guest host Susie Larson talks with entrepreneur Ryan Skoog joins us to share what he learned by studying the prayer lives of trusted ministry leaders. Discover the spiritual habits that shaped their faith—and how those same rhythms can transform your walk with God and your leadership. Don't miss this inspiring conversation—on the next Equipped.
Featured resource:
Lead with Prayer by Ryan Skoog, Peter Greer, and Cameron Doolittle
July thank you gift:
Surrendered Sexuality by Dr. Juli Slattery
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
S1 (00:19):
Well. Hey there friends, welcome to another exciting edition of
equipped with Chris Brooks! I am so thrilled that you've
joined us today. Why don't you do me a favor?
Strap on your seatbelt. We're going to navigate through the
contours of culture, as always, with the lens of the
biblical worldview on. But before we do that, let me
remind you, this is the day that the Lord has made.
He is giving it as a gift so that you
(00:41):
and I can rejoice and be glad in it. So
let's do just that. Let's follow the words of the
Apostle Paul. Let's rejoice in the Lord always. And again
I say, rejoice. I hope you're having a great day.
I'm going to be away from the program today, but
I want you to join me in welcoming Susie Larson
to the hot seat. Now, many of you know Susie.
(01:02):
She's a best selling author, a speaker, radio host. She
loves Jesus, and most of all loves helping people draw
into a deeper life in Christ. She's also a wife,
a mother, and a grandmother as well. Susie, thank you
for hosting this edition of equip.
S2 (01:21):
Thank you Chris, I'm always so honored to serve in
this way and I'm so grateful you tuned in today.
We've got an amazing show for you. And as we
get the conversation started, I got a question for you.
And it's not rhetorical. I actually want you to answer
it if you can. What's the most amazing answer to
prayer you've ever experienced? I'd love to know. If you're
ready to give me a call. Why don't you do that? (877) 548-3675.
(01:43):
The most amazing answer to prayer you've ever experienced. (877) 548-3675.
My son was miraculously healed from a serious back injury.
He took a late hit in football when he was
17 years old. He could barely walk. Doctors said he
would be partially disabled for life and he went months
like that. At one point, one of the doctors said
(02:04):
our 17 year old would lose control of his bowels
because of the nerve compression in his spine. And one
night at youth group, after months and months of crying
out to God, fasting, praying, believing. A young student laid
his hand on my son's back, prayed for him, and
he was miraculously healed. And doctors said it's a medical miracle.
There's no explanation. I'm just saying that to say he's
still a miracle working God. I don't always understand his
(02:26):
ways and his pace, but I know he's good. Well,
my guest today, along with his co-authors, traveled around the world,
conducted over 100 hours of interviews with today's leaders in
the church, from those serving in war zones and refugee
camps to billionaire leaders whose lives are grounded in prayer.
They sat down with leaders like Priscilla shire, Francis Chan,
John Mark comer, John Ortberg, Gary Haugen, John Erickson, Tada,
(02:49):
Mark Batterson and what did they learn? They learned something
powerful about the power of prayer. My friend Ryan Skoog
joins me today to draw from his amazing, amazing book,
lead with Prayer The Spiritual Habits of World Changing Leaders.
Let me tell you about my guest. And I would
say I would echo Chris's words, buckle up, because it's
going to be a powerful show today. Ryan Skoog is
(03:11):
co-founder and president of Venture Org. You got to check
out that ministry. What they're doing is just downright heroic.
It's a nonprofit that works in the toughest places of
the world, serving war refugees, trafficked people, oppressed children, and
the unreached. He's also a serial entrepreneur who co-founded several
travel technology companies and co-authored books, chosen a 30 day
devotional and the one we're talking about today. Lead with prayer.
(03:33):
His beautiful wife, Rachel enjoy adventuring with their two ginger
headed kids. Ryan, welcome to equipped.
S3 (03:39):
Oh, I'm so excited to be here. It's such an honor.
S2 (03:41):
I'm looking forward to the conversation. And let's start here.
Talk about this idea of traveling the world. First of all,
why did you decide to do that? And then what
stunned you the most as you and your co-authors made
the trek around the world?
S3 (03:53):
Yeah, yeah, when I was, uh, I think it was
still a teenager. I got to go to China. We
were smuggling Bibles into China, as one does. And back then,
you still needed to to get smuggled Bibles in, uh,
before phones. And I got to meet a guy named
Brother Moses. And he had been brought up in front
of a prison, put in prison for his faith, and
(04:14):
they brought him in front of the entire prison yard
every night for 100 days straight, and they told him
to renounce his faith in Christ. Whether they'll beat him.
And he just with tears, said, I can't renounce Jesus.
He's done too much for me. And he was beaten
for 100 days straight. And I got to meet this
incredible hero, and he had more joy in his eyes
(04:35):
than anyone I'd ever met. Having gone through all this
persecution and planting all these underground churches. And I was
hooked from that point on. I wanted to serve the
heroes of the global church the rest of my life.
S2 (04:46):
Wow. And so you and your co-authors came up with
this idea to travel the world. How did you start?
Who did you. You know, I mean, did you just
sort of put your resources together, say, let's talk to
this person. Let's talk to that person.
S3 (04:57):
Yeah. So so the next the next step was eventually
I started a whole organization called Venture to Serve the
Global Church. It's venture.org, and we serve in the unsafe,
unreached and under-resourced places of the world. So when I
say unsafe, um, we've had seven of our partners killed
for their faith as martyrs in the past two years.
Another 51 arrested and unreached. We're talking about places that
(05:20):
are so remote that if a woman is having her period,
they kick her out of the village because they think
she's cursed by the gods, or they're still sacrificing animals
to rocks and trees. And then when you're talking about Unresourced,
we're going only go to places where there's less than 1%
of Christian giving going. So if they've never heard of Jesus,
that's really bad. It's war zones, all those things. And
(05:41):
then it's less than 1% of giving. Almost no one's giving.
That's where we want to go. Because Jesus said, find
the least, go for the least. And and the exciting
thing is, is that the kingdom of God is breaking
out in these really unreached, tough places of the world.
And this isn't just my opinion. This is the Gordon
Conwell Theological Seminary Center for Global Christianity. The Missiologist there
(06:05):
are talking about how the movement and the global church
right now towards Christ. The amount of people coming to
Christ is not just the most in our lifetime, it's
the most in the history of the church. Wow. And
it's the global church is literally exploding. And so with venture,
we get to serve these heroes. We've seen, um, almost
(06:26):
it's a 15,000 house churches planted and thousands of girls
rescued from trafficking and tens of millions of meals brought
to refugees. All these things have been happening. And we
started asking a question like, wait a minute, what if
we sat at the feet of the global church and said,
can you teach us how to follow Jesus? There's something
you have. You're exploding. We want to see. And instead
(06:49):
of instead of it being some leadership principle or practice,
what we found was what was fueling this growth was
a prayer life. And it kind of came back from this,
this experience and looked at my shelf full of leadership books.
And I didn't have a single book. I had all
these books on how leaders lead. I didn't have a
(07:09):
single book on how leaders pray and thought, man, if
this is the source, if this is the fuel of
the explosion of the church, we gotta learn how to pray.
And and so we there's a big it's actually a
bigger problem than we realize. There's a huge foundation down
in Tennessee that did it's one of the oldest, largest
(07:30):
Christian foundations in the country. And they paid one of
the biggest firms to do a study on the prayer
lives of Christian leaders. And the results came back. They
were so dismal they never even published the study. And
the head of the foundation said, this is one of
the saddest things I've ever seen. And so there's a
real prayer need in the West, and the global church
is exploding and has so much to teach us about prayer.
(07:53):
And so we decided to go on that quest and say,
can we learn the prayer habits of praying leaders around
the world? And for sure, we got to talk to
incredible people. Like you said, from Tim Mackey to John
Mark Comer and John Erickson Tada and John Ahlberg and
all these fun, incredible leaders. But really the most powerful
was was sitting down with people in war refugee camps
(08:14):
and out in the Himalayas and, and in business leaders
that in, in the middle of Africa, who are shutting
down banks so that they can actually take time to pray.
It's just incredible the way that God is moving and
the and the, the prayer lives of these global leaders.
S2 (08:29):
Yeah. What's so amazing is they don't have a social
media following or a platform or a best selling book.
They are the world's heroes. They're the ones who have
the notices. Hell notices because they're shaking things up. And
it hit me so hard in your book when you
talked about, you know, leaders in the West justify their
prayerlessness by saying, well, I'm delegating that out to the
intercessors because I've got such an important work to do.
(08:52):
And you said nowhere in the Bible is that modeled,
especially with Jesus. That's not a thing, right?
S3 (08:57):
Well, not only is it not a thing. Um, there's
there's a Jeremiah 1025. It has this incredible phrase. It
says the shepherds are stupid. They don't inquire of the Lord.
And it's Jeremiah 1021. And I looked into that. That
word stupid, that Hebrew word. That's the only time it
appears in the entire Hebrew Bible. That one time. And
(09:20):
the real meaning of that word, if you look in
the etymology, is stupid. That's what it means. And so
God reserved the word stupid once in the entire Hebrew Bible.
And that's for a leader that has all the power
of heaven available to him, and never taps into it
through prayer.
S2 (09:35):
Wow. And wouldn't you say that also applies to Christians,
not just leaders? Prayerlessness.
S3 (09:40):
Absolutely.
S2 (09:41):
And the access we have as Christians is there. I mean, yeah,
we dig these muddy puddles and we drink from muddy
water when we have an ocean of grace available to us.
S3 (09:51):
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. There's that old story of a guy
who was in the depression. Was he and his family
were starving, and underneath him was one of the largest
reservoirs of oil in all of America. And they spent
decades living, you know, in starvation until they found it.
It's like that's that's what we have. We're sitting on
top of all the power of heaven, all the grace
of heaven, all the beauty and the strength of the
(10:14):
Holy Spirit, if we can tap into it. And so
that's that's the power of you're saying. Yeah. We started
getting busier and busier. One of the things that came
from the study was that the more experience and the
more higher authority and the more position and education that
somebody had, the less they prayed, not the more they prayed.
And Jesus was exactly the opposite. He actually it says
(10:37):
there's more mentions of him going away to solitary places
and praying as his ministry grew. He he pulled away more.
And Peter Greer, my co-author, he said, so if we
don't pray, are we do we think we're busier than Jesus? Hmm.
And and it's just a powerful, powerful question to go,
wait a minute. And I think part of it is
because a lot of people have like on a two
(10:58):
by two, the idea would be like prayers on one
side and activity or productivity is another one. They'll say,
you know, oh, I got so much productivity stuff I
have to do, I can't pray. But the way that
the heaven works is that you have prayer on one
end and activity, and the only productive thing is to
be prayerful as you're as you're doing whatever it is
(11:18):
God's called you to do. So that's a new definition
of productivity as a prayerful activity, not just activity.
S2 (11:25):
Amen. We're going to pause here. When we come back,
Jeff will take your call. I asked the question at
the opening of the show, what is the most amazing
answer to prayer you've experienced, or even maybe seen? Maybe
you've been connected with it. You knew someone who was
in desperate need. You were part of the prayer rally.
And then God moved and intervened. God's ways are higher
than ours, and his ways are mysterious. But it is.
(11:46):
We are called to pray. We're called to converse with God.
I love this conversation. Today. Ryan Skoog is my guest.
His book he co-authored with his friends, lead With prayer.
I'd love to hear from you. Give us a call (877) 548-3675.
Don't go away. We'll be back in just a moment.
S1 (12:31):
The enemy loves to take our sexual struggles and build
strongholds to separate us from God. We start believing lies
like we can't go to church anymore or that God
couldn't possibly love us. Surrender Sexuality by Julie Slattery breaks
down those barriers and shows you the path to freedom
without shame and into the welcoming arms of Jesus. We'll
(12:55):
send you a copy with our thanks when you support
equip this month. simply call 888644 4144 or visit Equip Radio.
S2 (13:14):
This is equipped with Chris Brooks coming to you from
the studios of Moody Radio. I'm Susie Larson filling in
for Chris today. Glad to be here. So how would
you describe your prayer life? What's the most amazing prayer
God's ever answered? What are your prayer practices? Well, today
I'm talking with author, entrepreneur, and kingdom mover and shaker
Ryan Skoog. He's a precious friend and we're drawing from
his amazing book, Lead with Prayer The Spiritual Habits of
(13:36):
World Changing Leaders. So a question for you. What if
you upgraded your prayer life? What if you made more
space in your life for God's influence? I'd love to
hear from you. You've got a question or you can
share a story. (877) 548-3675. We've got Jeff on hold checking
in from Florida. Jeff, thanks for your patience. You're on
the air with Ryan Skoog.
S4 (13:57):
Oh, thank you for this opportunity to to just, uh,
just glean for the Lord that what God has done
is he's so good. Yeah. Our secretary at the church, she, uh,
the the hardest workers. One of the little kid came
up to me one time. She. Karen owns the church, right?
You know, so, of course, she said. But she was
(14:19):
the hardest, sweetest person you could ever meet. It's almost like, uh,
I guess meeting God's mother, but. But anyway, I'm just
kidding about that. But anyway. Anyway, she. She was in
the hospital and half her heart was stopped working and
she was in there. I think they induced her in
a coma. And this is 20 years ago because, uh,
she she, uh. So what happened? We all thought she
(14:42):
was going to die. And the doctors all said, you
better start getting ready for funerals. And because I don't
think Karen's going to pull through. So what happened? We
were that Sunday. We were crying in church. All of us.
And Pastor Ty got up there and he was just
talking and everybody was just crying. And because everybody loves
(15:03):
caring so much and and so the next day went
by and it was Monday and, and Karen woke up
and she says, I'm hungry. And what's this pipe doing
in my mouth? And, you know, and all this stuff.
And she just came back like like, uh, I don't know, man.
Like Richard Petty on the race field or something there.
She just came back and just so vibrant. And she
(15:25):
was a secretary. Still went on. And then, uh, just recently,
she's had some difficulties. She's in her 80s now, so she's, uh,
had to step away for a moment because she's having
some difficulty with her back and stuff. But other than that,
God saved her. It was a miracle. Wow. There's no
doubt about it.
S2 (15:45):
Thank you for that call and that testimony. I think
testimonies just encourage our hearts. Ryan, anything you want to
say before we let Jeff go?
S3 (15:52):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I just love that That you decided.
You know what we're going to this is a big, huge,
crazy thing, but we're going to still pray big, huge, crazy,
bold prayers for God to do great miracles. And he says,
you don't have because you don't ask. And so sometimes
when it's a really big issue, we think, oh man,
this is, this is too much or too big. And
you just joined in praying big, bold prayers. And God
(16:14):
came through in a big way. That's awesome.
S2 (16:16):
Thank you Jeff. We're going to get you a copy
of Ryan's amazing book, Lead With prayer. So hold on. Uh,
get the producer your, uh, address, and we'll get it
in the mail to you. So what did you find out?
I mean, I love that you were talking about in
the book. This is not a once and done thing.
I mean, I love talking about these answers to prayer,
but the prayer practices, making space, creating a rhythm is
really what I think develops a momentum of intimacy with
(16:39):
God and where you get to know his character. What
did you learn, or were there common denominators in these
people that you interviewed?
S3 (16:46):
Yeah. So the biggest eureka moment, when we did 100
hours of interviews with leaders in six different continents from
business and non-profit and pastoral all over the gambit. I
thought their prayer lives would be all over the map.
So different. Instead, we found that their prayer lives were
super similar. It seems as if anytime somebody wants to
(17:07):
really have a dynamic prayer life, the Holy Spirit leads
them to similar practices. That's across the globe. That's across
different ministry, business, nonprofit, uh, old and young. And so
that was what became all the chapters in the book.
Were these commonalities we found amongst these leaders from around
the world. And and there's two things that have absolutely
(17:28):
changed my life. The first one was I thought the
the number one thing about these leaders is they would
just be amazing at calling down heaven on earth, just
praying heaven on earth, and, you know, praying through all
these major issues. And they all did that. But the
foundation of their prayer lives was friendship. And what I
mean by that was it wasn't just getting God to
(17:50):
answer prayer, it was being with Jesus, their friend. And,
you know, one of the first interviews with Rosabel, she
serves Jesus for decades in the middle of a war
zone in Myanmar. She's one of our partners. Adventure. She
took in her first orphan when she was 16, who
was orphaned by war. And now we partner with her
to serve about 5000 orphan war kids orphaned by war.
(18:14):
And and she literally just glows with Jesus. And I said,
Mama Roosevelt, what's your prayer life like? And she said, man,
I just love Jesus. She said, I when I was 18,
I had no money, but I wanted to tithe. And
I figured the only currency I had was my time.
So I started praying 2.5 hours a day. And I've
been doing that the past 30 years. And I was like,
(18:36):
what does that look like? And she said, well, it
starts with just a walk. And I just go out
in the jungle and I just look and I see
the beautiful trees and the light coming through it, and
I'm like, Jesus, can you make your light shine into
my heart like this light shining through the trees. And
she'll just. And this is a war zone. This is two,
you know, mortars are going off two hours away. And
(18:57):
she's just walking through, you know, it's like the Garden
of Eden to her. And then we talked to Francis
Chan and he said, man, I have this international ministry
and it's so much pressure, so I can't do anything
until I first go out and just have a walk
with my friend Jesus and talk to him. And then
we talked to a New York financier, a guy who's
trading he's a PhD from MIT, downtown Manhattan, over billions
(19:18):
of dollars, and he has these huge blocks of time
in his calendar that says, waste time with God. And
he said, I put waste time with God because that's
what friends do. We just spend time without agenda. And
I found that across the board, these leaders that the
foundation of their prayer life was their friendship. You know
how Jesus said, I don't just call you servants, I
(19:39):
call you friends. And he said, if you abide, that
is when the fruit is going to happen. It's through
the abiding. And they just truly learn to love being
with their friend Jesus. And that was a total revolution
in my prayer life. Was that the start, the foundation?
The most important thing is that my soul can connect
with my friend Jesus. And that's just so powerful.
S2 (20:03):
It's so powerful. You know, on one hand, he says,
you know, don't worry about anything. Pray about everything. And
there's so many people who don't pray because of shame
or busyness or distraction, or maybe they don't even believe,
you know, they have a saving theology, but they don't
really have a theology that compels them to come into
his presence and cast their cares. So that's one thing.
But the other thing is, if you do have an
(20:24):
active prayer life, it's easy to default into making him
a means to an end, like it's only always transactional.
I only want you for what you can do for me,
so I love that those who really are seeing God
do great things in and through them. At the core
of it is Psalm 34 seven. They're just delighting in
the Lord. They're like, you know, anything from your hand
is falls short of the knowing your heart is the
(20:47):
best thing.
S3 (20:47):
It's true. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Moses, he had already
seen the greatest miracles through the plagues and the parting
of the Red sea and all these things. The Ten Commandments.
And then he goes, yeah, but I really what I
really want. I want to see your glory. I want
to be close to you, God. And that's just so powerful.
So that was the first one. Is that that this
friendship side. And I just want to encourage people, if
(21:08):
you haven't been praying for a while, sometimes what keeps
you from praying is you feel guilty, like, oh, I
haven't really prayed for a long time. So I feel
weird praying, you know, like almost God's mad at me
or something. And I just want to encourage you every
time you go to pray. He's happy to see you.
S2 (21:24):
Yeah.
S3 (21:25):
It's like if, you know, if your kid have you
haven't seen your kid for a while and you get
to see him, you're not mad. You haven't seen him,
you're excited. They're there. And that is said. You know,
the Bible says as a father loves their child. So
God has been gracious and loves us, his people. So
I just want to encourage I just feel like some
people feel, oh, I haven't prayed for so long. I
feel guilty. And just the minute you get on your knees,
(21:46):
He's happy to see you. He's happy to be there
with you. And, um, then the other that wasn't in
the book, I just felt like I needed to say that. But, um,
the other thing that was just so life changing for
me was these leaders did not have what I call
a quote unquote, prayer time where you work out and
then you have your prayer time, and you check off
that box and check off that box, and you go
(22:07):
on to the next. They found a way to load
up their day with habits, to craft a day with God.
And that's a completely different way to think about prayers.
What does it look like to have morning habits? Like
for me, I roll out of bed onto my knees
every morning and. And then I just recite a psalm and,
you know, Dallas Willard or John Ortberg, they said, make
(22:29):
the first words out of your mouth, Scripture of praise
to God. So I I'll recite a psalm and on
my knees and just surrender my life in the morning.
And many leaders did this and then go take a walk.
You know, just be with Jesus and study Scripture and
then pray Scripture. And, I have these prayer cards that
I go through that kind of help me be able
to do that. And then what are some throughout the
(22:51):
day habits like to practice the presence of Christ, uh,
throughout the day, inviting him into the moments of your day,
whether it's, you know, when, you know, sometimes I'll just
take time just to listen as I'm in my car,
just like, Lord, what? What do you want to speak
to me today? Or another leader, Mark Batterson, he said
at 714 in the morning and 714 in the night.
He'll pray. Second Chronicles 714. Or another leader said that
(23:13):
when someone annoys them, they're like, oh, that's a call
to prayer. And he says, I pray all the time
because people annoy me all the time. And you know,
so just, you know, just fun, fun moments of like,
creative ways to start inviting and place these practices. And
I think this is a crazy idea that this came
actually from Pope Sabinian in 604. He decided to have
(23:34):
a church in the middle of every town, and then
a tower and a bell on the top of the
tower and the tower. The bell is supposed to ring
every hour to remind people Jesus is with you, to
remind people Christ has saved you. Remind people God is
God and he's worthy to be praised. And so what
does it look like to have a medic? That's where
Bell Towers came from. And what does it look like
(23:54):
to have a metaphorical bell tower in your day that
keeps ringing throughout the day to remind you that Christ
is with you, that you are not alone, that he
loves you, that he's he's moving in your heart towards him.
And then what are evening habits? You know, like like
Jesus had this beautiful rhythm where he'd go and have
a campfire with the disciples every night and they'd be like, hey,
where did we miss you? Or what'd you mean by that?
(24:15):
Or what was this going on? And what does it
look like to have a like a metaphorical campfire with
Jesus to review your day? They call it the examine
is the old saints would use this practice. And our family,
we end up taking communion every night now to remember
the cross and the resurrection that's crafting a day and
being intentional to have all these little habits you can
(24:35):
put together. And we have a bunch of them for
you at leave with prayer. Com for free to download
to help you start intentionally crafting days with God.
S2 (24:43):
You know, because this we so often make it an
obligation when it's an invitation and when it becomes an
ought to or should do, it becomes legalistic and religious.
But when it becomes a get to an invitation to,
it reminds you it's all about relationship, right?
S3 (24:58):
Yeah. Oh, yeah. One leader said, hey, the people that
have great prayer lives have found a way to like it.
S2 (25:04):
Yeah.
S3 (25:04):
And I thought, that's that's such a great line. And
teach yourself to like it. And of course, there's part
of us that doesn't want to pray. There's even a
study that was done on how, uh, they had people, like,
go into a room with no, uh, sorry, no stimulus.
And they had a button that could push that would
get them out of the room.
S2 (25:21):
I gotta.
S3 (25:22):
Interrupt you. You'll tell the story later.
S2 (25:23):
Yes. That's a good story. I want you to tell
that for sure. My guest today, lead with prayer, is
his book, The Spiritual Habits of World Changing Leaders. And
I see some testimonies coming in as well. So grateful
to be with you, Susie Larson here. Don't go away.
We're going to be back in just a moment. This
(26:18):
is equipped with Chris Brooks coming to you from the
studios of Moody Radio. Suzie Larson here sitting in for Chris.
Talking today with entrepreneur, author, and Kingdom dynamo Ryan Skoog.
He co-authored the book lead with Prayer The Spiritual Habits
of World Changing Leaders. If you've been blessed by this
show and the many guests we have on every day,
we'd love to have you partner with us. You can
become an Equipper by making a monthly donation to support
(26:40):
the program. As an equipper, you receive benefits like bi
weekly encouragement from Chris Brooks, discounts on Moody publishing resources,
access to quarterly webinars. You can also interact with the
show by calling in during the live broadcast or participating
on social media. All that information and more you'll find
on our website. Again, talking to Ryan Skoog today about
the practice of prayer. But even so, I wanted to
(27:02):
just pitch and ask the question. Tell me about the
most amazing answer to prayer. Again, God's not a means
to an end, and we don't just go to him
to get our sensational answers, but he's so good that
he answers in sensational ways. Sometimes I would say for me,
some of the most amazing answers to prayer have come
subtly nuanced little tiny bits inches at a time. And
then I look over my shoulder and find, oh my goodness,
(27:24):
this is a miracle. But it was little by little.
Even so, we pray because there's a God in heaven
who loves us and invites us into his presence. So
with that, said Alfred, calling in from Alaska, he's got
an amazing testimony. Alfred, thanks for holding. You're on the
air with Ryan Skoog.
S5 (27:42):
Well. Thank you. Yeah, this is Alfred, and I live in, um.
Uh seldovia. Alaska.
S3 (27:48):
And I was born in Alaska.
S5 (27:50):
Covid came in.
S2 (27:52):
Did you hear that Alfred Ryan was born in Alaska.
S5 (27:55):
Oh. I'm sorry.
S2 (27:56):
Oh.
S3 (28:00):
I'm a sourdough.
S2 (28:02):
Yeah.
S5 (28:03):
Yeah. Well, I wasn't I was born in California, San Jose.
I'd never seen the lights. Mm. And I was moved
up here when I was three months old. I'm a
I'm an Aleut and. All right. My mother was Aleut.
And anyway, um, remember when that Covid was happening? Really strong. Mhm. Yeah.
And everybody was dying off. Well my son got it.
(28:26):
He has weak kidneys and livers, hereditary from our family.
But anyway he went into a coma when he got
that Covid. And I kept telling him don't Boy. Don't
don't say you have Covid. They said, no, dad. They said,
I got Covid. I said, no, but don't tell yourself
you have Covid. Just tell yourself you have a bad
(28:47):
cold and God will heal it. Just say you have
a bad cold. Tell God you have God. I just
have a bad cold. Nope. He kept saying I have Covid. Well,
he got Covid and he was in a coma for
two two months and the wife would call on her phone,
call his phone and tell the nurses, put his phone
by his ear and she would talk to him for
(29:08):
an hour, maybe two hours. Just talk, read him Scripture. Um,
and he told the doctors, make sure when he's listening
to music, to have Christian music on and put the
music channel on, let him listen to that. And and
one day we were home and my daughter was there
and my granddaughter was there, and my wife and I
were outside and the doctor called and said, um, I
(29:31):
think you need to come up and make preparations for
your son to die peacefully. I said, what, what what
do you mean by that? I said, come up here
and you might consider coming up here and unplugging him
because he's been in a coma for so long with
this Covid that we don't think we can save him.
I said, that ain't happening. I said, as a father,
(29:52):
I can't do that, and I won't do that. I said,
I'm not going to feel my son that way. I said,
we gotta do everything we can to keep him alive. Um,
I said, keep him plugged in, and if he dies
on that machine, then I know we've tried everything we
can to keep my boy alive. He's my only son,
and I don't want him gone. And the doctor said.
(30:14):
And I told my doctor to, um, as a father, I.
I come up there and unplug him, and I will
walk out the door, and I will blow my brains
out right outside the door. I'm a Christian. And I said,
I'm not going to live with the fact that I
failed my son. Um, and right about that time, in
my mind, God said, pray. You told me to tell you.
(30:38):
You told me. You told your son to tell me.
He just has a bad cold. And why aren't you praying?
And I prayed every day. But I probably didn't pray, right.
And so I called everybody here in the state of Alaska,
from Nome to the Bering Sea. I called everybody here
that I knew that with a prayer warrior. Then I
called the Christian Motorcycle Association throughout the whole state of
(31:03):
the lower 48 that I knew that was prayer warriors.
And here in Alaska and my chapter and the wife
and I, my church. And we prayed and we went
to bed that night, and I was still praying when
I fall asleep. And I woke up in the morning
and it was kind of like a really, um, I
don't know, a real peaceful type of morning. It was
(31:24):
unusual what kind of morning? And I woke up and
I looked at my wife and she was just waking up, too.
I looked at her and said, my boy's going to
make it. And she was what? I said my boy's
going to make it. Wow. How do you know? I said,
in my dreams, in my vision I did. I seen
I seen thousands of hands holding him up into the
(31:48):
into the sky, into the presence of God. I said,
I seen that in my mind and I can still
see it. And I said, he's going to make it.
I feel it, I said, I'm my fear in my
body just went. It was like. Like I took off
a coat. I just felt that peace. And two days
(32:09):
he was awake.
S6 (32:12):
Wow. Four days.
S5 (32:14):
He was talking.
S6 (32:15):
Come on.
S5 (32:16):
One week he was up walking around.
S2 (32:19):
Thank you, Lord Alfred.
S6 (32:21):
That's. Praise God.
S2 (32:22):
Amen. Thank you for that story and for being so
tenacious in your prayers. I'm going to get you a
copy of Ryan's book. It'll inspire you to pray all
the more. It's lead with prayer. So hang on and
get your address to our producer and any other comments
you want to make there. Ryan from that story?
S3 (32:37):
Yeah, yeah. First of all, wow. Like wow. The the
hardest thing position to anyone can be in, in my opinion,
is to feel out of control because something's happening to
your kid and you can't do anything about it. Mhm.
And and the, the real the real answer is you can,
you can pray. Yeah. And I've, I've been there praying
(32:59):
for my daughter when she was attacked with horrible nightmares
night after night. And I spent hours on my face
in front of her door praying. And God had a
huge deliverance in her life. But I never I always
felt so like God. I feel so out of control
because it's my kid. I can't, you know, I can't
do anything. And God's like, yes you can. You can
get on your knees and pray. So that's beautiful. And
(33:19):
then the second thing is a word that on prayer,
what you just did, those thousands of hands. Paul in
the Scripture says with prayer and petition, make your request
known to God. Well, what's a petition? People go around
with a clipboard trying to sign up other names saying, hey,
so-and-so wants this to so-and-so wants this too. That's what
a petition is. And so when you call out to
(33:41):
other people to pray with you there. It's petitioning heaven. Wow.
And you had this beautiful vision of thousands of hands
petitioning heaven together. That just. Oh, that hits my heart so,
so deeply. We just had a situation like that with
one of our brothers in in northern Laos. Who is they?
He was arrested for sharing the gospel, and they put
(34:02):
him in stocks like those 1600 torture device. And he
was losing circulation to his feet, and they were going
to have to amputate his feet. And so he rallied
250 people to pray every single day. And within three days,
a total 180. They released him both from the stocks
and released him from prison. It was just an incredible miracle.
But when you petition, it is powerful to rally other
(34:25):
people together in prayer.
S2 (34:27):
I you've given me a whole new perspective on petition.
That's absolutely amazing. And why we need each other. Because, uh,
my friend doctor Rob Reimer talks about privatized religion, where
we just isolate and it's just Jesus and me and
nothing else. And he says, you'll never fulfill the fullness
of your calling, and the body will never fulfill its calling.
If you're a part, separate from it, making it just
(34:49):
about you. But when we come together and carry one
another's burdens, we fulfill the law of Christ. So there's
something to be said about praying for each other, praying
for our leaders. We just got a few minutes before
our next break, but say a word about that because,
you know, on one hand, you have people maybe who
don't pray. And again, no shame, no judgment. This is
not condemnation, but it is an invitation. Then you got
those who maybe pray about their stuff all the time,
(35:11):
but maybe not ever think about our brothers and sisters
in stocks or in prison for sharing their faith or
our leaders, you know, um, so talk about that. Moving
into a whole new realm of, of prayer where you're
not only praying for your situation, but for the stories
of others.
S3 (35:26):
Yeah, yeah. So Ephesians three is one of the most
powerful prayers in the scriptures where Paul is. He prays
that we can know how high and wide and long
and deep is the love of Christ. But he says
something right before then he says, together with the saints,
that you can learn how high and wide and long
and deep is the love of Christ. We can't do
it alone. I need you to learn more about the
(35:47):
love of Christ, and you need me to know more
about the love of Christ. And we need each others
stories like this incredible story, to be able to see
a whole new side and facet of the love of
Christ that we've never seen before. And that's why Jesus
is saying, hey, when two or more are gathered together
in prayer, then I'm there in their midst. You know
he's with us. But man, there's something about unity and
prayer and uniting and agreeing in prayer where Jesus said it.
(36:10):
It's a whole nother level of his presence and his grace.
And this is actually science to the. Templeton did a
study on people that prayed for themselves and people that
prayed for others, and they found that when people pray
for others, there's a compound effect on your mental health.
It's like way more powerful for you to pray for
other people and your mental health increases. It's really incredible. So.
(36:32):
And this is this is a science that God built
us to pray for each other.
S2 (36:37):
That is amazing. You nourish yourself when you're kind to others.
That is just beautiful. Just another couple minutes before we
hit our break. But I got to have you talk about,
if you determine just one of your practices is on
on Sundays, you don't ask God for anything. You just
enjoy him. I think that's just beautiful. Say a word
about that.
S3 (36:55):
Yeah, yeah. So I started mapping out each day, kind
of has a prayer focus like Mondays and my family
and and on Tuesdays it's the ministry and all these things.
And Wednesdays I just listen. I'm like, Lord, what's on
your prayer request list? Like, what's your list that I
can pray for? But then I really felt this idea
of friendship is truly being with God. It was from
(37:15):
hearing about Mother Teresa, talking about just spending time with
her friend Jesus, just listening and being with him. I thought, man,
I need to do that. I needed to have a
Sabbath from all the requests, I'll. I'll take Sundays and
pretend he's already answered every prayer request I've ever had.
And that's the question. What? Would you talk to God
if he's already answered all your prayer? And what's that
(37:35):
been like for you? Oh, it's. It was so hard
at first because I'd be like, oh, and then can we.
Oh wait. No I'm not. Oh. And then, oh wait,
I'm not. And so and then it turns out to
be such a delight, like I'm just here to worship you.
I'm just here to listen. I'm just here to let
you know I love you, God. I'm just here to
thank you. I'm just here to be grateful. And I
just come up with lists of things I can thank
(37:57):
him for and come up with. Um, you know, time
after time that he's been in my life, and. And
I'm just so grateful. And just being with him, it's
been the most incredible gift. And it's teaching me, uh,
real in a real time. That prayer is more than
just asking. It's, first of all, first day of the week.
It's being with Jesus.
S2 (38:15):
Amen. Somebody's gotta text me an amen. I guess you
can't do that. But I really love to get an
amen from someone so powerful. What if you just enjoy
Jesus for who he is and what he's done? Well,
you can see more about today's topic and guest if
you find us online at equipped radio.org. Equipped radio.org. Also,
we got great social media presence. Go to Facebook, Instagram
(38:36):
or just look at Equipped Radio. Talking to Ryan Skoog
today about the power and the practice of prayer. Don't
you just love it? It's one of my favorite topics.
Don't go away. We'll be back in a minute. This
(39:23):
is equipped with Chris Brooks coming to you from the
studios of Moody Radio. Susie Larson here, sitting in for Chris.
Talking today to Ryan Skoog, he co-authored the book lead
with Prayer The Spiritual Habits of World Changing Leaders, and
he and his co-authors traveled the world to interview some
of the most effective Christ followers. And their ministries are
exploding with fruit and salvations and miracles, and he found
(39:43):
that their prayer practices were very similar and that God
is not just a means to an end. He's the
beginning and the end. He's worth enjoying walking with and
and not just seeking the gifts from his hands, but
seeking to know his heart. But the thing is, he
still gives good gifts from his hands. It's really quite amazing.
We've got time for one more call. So sorry. Jerry
and Gloria, want to get you a copy of Ryan's book.
(40:04):
We're just running out of time. But, Tim, I'm going
to grab your call from Indianapolis. You're on the air
with Ryan Skoog.
S7 (40:11):
Well, hi, all, and it's blessed. It's a blessed day
to be here on the radio with you. Um, yeah,
I have a testimony, and I just want to cry
out to anybody suffering either minor to very severe mental illness.
We're living in times where it's a crisis.
S6 (40:30):
Yeah. And, uh. Yeah.
S7 (40:32):
You know, Jesus weeps with us, and I just can't
say enough about praying for those, you know, and for
yourself if you're suffering. And my testimony is this I,
one of my daughters, was suffering for for months. Um,
I'm in a men's group, and, uh, you know, it
(40:52):
just came on to the suffering was getting worse. And, uh,
one of our sessions, I just asked. Hey, guys, um,
before we get started, can we just stand up and pray?
And we stood up. 5 or 6 of us held hands,
you know, kind of like a football huddle, right? You know,
those big manly men all holding hands and and getting
(41:14):
their plays together. Well, you know, we can do that
with our spiritual brothers. And, uh, we just. It was good. 20,
30 minutes, just out loud. Prayers around the horn, back around. And, uh,
you know, I can't explain my daughter's healing, but, you know,
(41:37):
within a few days, a week or so, she just said, hey, I,
you know, I wasn't myself, but I'm feeling good again. And, you.
S6 (41:49):
Know, wow.
S7 (41:50):
I can't explain it. I can't explain her healing. I'm
just so grateful. Praise God. And it doesn't mean she
might not struggle in the future. But now it's been
it's also been a number of months since that that
took place. And, you know, there's just this sense of feeling,
the Holy Spirit moving and, uh.
S2 (42:14):
And now you know what to do.
S7 (42:15):
Tim.
S2 (42:16):
Yeah. I mean, if you run into that battle now,
you got a history with God and you know where
to go. You go to him and you get your
brothers together. And I, I love how you said, you know,
how do you take a meat prayer to a wee prayer?
It's like, that's the thing is, when you we're honest
and humble enough. In fact, you write. Ryan, stay with me, Tim,
for just a minute. It takes humility to admit we
need God's presence so desperately that we would spend time
(42:38):
in prayer, seeking rather than planning and laboring. Tim, we're
going to get you a copy of Ryan's book. But, Ryan,
any comment for Tim before he hangs up?
S3 (42:46):
Yeah, yeah, I just as an encouragement to everyone, we
are not powerless to just sit back and and say,
I can't do anything about it. We can hit our
knees and pray. And when the global church says pray
and we say pray, we're almost talking different things. Because
when they say pray, uh, there's a crippled girl that
came to a prayer center in the middle of the
Himalayas in Nepal. And one of the ladies said, I
(43:08):
think we're supposed to pray around the clock until she's healed.
And they had people in there praying 30 hours in
a row. And she started getting up and walked out
of that prayer center. And so I just want to
encourage people to keep persisting in prayer. And you're going
to see incredible miracles happen.
S2 (43:25):
Come on, Tim, thank you for sharing that. And thank
you for being bold enough for interceding for your daughter
with your your men. That's just amazing. Thanks for the
call today. Just got a couple minutes left, Ryan, but
we got to talk about the impact that awe has
on our brains. I mean, true, or where you spend
time in God's Word, you spend time with him and
you really, he deserves our awe. We should be in awe.
But when you come into that place of sincere or
(43:47):
it actually, you know, causes a physiological reaction in your
body and your brain.
S3 (43:52):
Yeah, actually, I just did a talk on the surprising
science of prayer and mental health, and that call just
reminded me there's been a bunch of studies. USC did
a study on awe, and it said that it makes
you more connected to others. Kinder, more humble and patient
increases your mood, and your critical thinking even decreases a
sense of materialism. It's like awe is like a a
(44:15):
son sun and the fruit of the spirit orbit around it.
It's just incredible how important that is. And actually, 20
minutes of prayer a day for eight weeks in a
row will change your brain in those areas. I just
talked about so much that you can see it on
a brain scanner. Andrew Newberg, who's one of the top 20, um,
neuroscientists in the planet, not even a Christian, started studying
(44:38):
the effects of mental health effects of prayer. And it
lowers your blood pressure. It improves your sleep, boosts your
immune system. It gives you a higher self-worth and reduces
stress and sadness. This is all physiologically measurable in our brains.
It's as if we were wired for the presence of God. Amen.
And it changed. It changes us so much. You can
see it on a brain scanner.
S2 (44:59):
Wow. I don't know who said it, but someone once said,
if the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy.
And I think busyness is what keeps us out of awe.
But like your friend Rosabel. Is that her name?
S3 (45:10):
Yeah.
S2 (45:11):
Yeah. She saw, uh, everywhere she went. She saw God's
handiwork everywhere she went. And we're called to stay in
that state of awe because he's worthy of it, isn't he?
S3 (45:21):
Absolutely. And if Roosevelt can find a way to pray
in the middle of a war zone, I just encourage
everyone to find a place to find that awe of
God in the middle of the war zone of your life.
And it's worth it to be able to to stop
all the busyness and just open up space for heaven
to come to earth through your prayers.
S2 (45:41):
Amen. Maybe you need to go for a walk today.
Maybe to slow down, take some deep breaths. Look at
the trees, the sun, the sky, and stay in awe. Ryan,
I just love and appreciate you, and I can't thank
you enough for stewarding the call the way that you have.
Appreciate you. Thanks for your time today.
S3 (45:56):
It's been it's been an honor and so excited. And
anyone can connect with us at venture.org or lead with prayer.
We'd love to connect with you.
S2 (46:04):
Yeah it's an amazing ministry. And Ryan references this quote
that I love from Dallas Willard. And hear this. As
we get ready to wrap, you must arrange your day
so that you're experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in
your everyday life with God. Well, I hope you found
some encouragement here today. If you need more information about
our guests or anything, you can visit us online at. Org. Org.
(46:27):
I'm Susie Larson and from all of us at equip.
Thanks for listening today. Don't forget that when you approach
the throne of grace, God is always, always glad to
see you. So approach the throne of grace. Cast your
cares on him. Enjoy his presence, tell him what you
need and thank him for what he's done. You'll be
blown away by the goodness and the kindness of God.
Thanks for listening today. Equipped is a production of Moody Radio.
(46:49):
It's a ministry of Moody Bible Institute, and we will
meet you back here next time.
Well. Hey there friends, welcome to another exciting edition of
equipped with Chris Brooks! I am so thrilled that you've
joined us today. Why don't you do me a favor?
Strap on your seatbelt. We're going to navigate through the
contours of culture, as always, with the lens of the
biblical worldview on. But before we do that, let me
remind you, this is the day that the Lord has made.
He is giving it as a gift so that you
(00:41):
and I can rejoice and be glad in it. So
let's do just that. Let's follow the words of the
Apostle Paul. Let's rejoice in the Lord always. And again
I say, rejoice. I hope you're having a great day.
I'm going to be away from the program today, but
I want you to join me in welcoming Susie Larson
to the hot seat. Now, many of you know Susie.
(01:02):
She's a best selling author, a speaker, radio host. She
loves Jesus, and most of all loves helping people draw
into a deeper life in Christ. She's also a wife,
a mother, and a grandmother as well. Susie, thank you
for hosting this edition of equip.
S2 (01:21):
Thank you Chris, I'm always so honored to serve in
this way and I'm so grateful you tuned in today.
We've got an amazing show for you. And as we
get the conversation started, I got a question for you.
And it's not rhetorical. I actually want you to answer
it if you can. What's the most amazing answer to
prayer you've ever experienced? I'd love to know. If you're
ready to give me a call. Why don't you do that? (877) 548-3675.
(01:43):
The most amazing answer to prayer you've ever experienced. (877) 548-3675.
My son was miraculously healed from a serious back injury.
He took a late hit in football when he was
17 years old. He could barely walk. Doctors said he
would be partially disabled for life and he went months
like that. At one point, one of the doctors said
(02:04):
our 17 year old would lose control of his bowels
because of the nerve compression in his spine. And one
night at youth group, after months and months of crying
out to God, fasting, praying, believing. A young student laid
his hand on my son's back, prayed for him, and
he was miraculously healed. And doctors said it's a medical miracle.
There's no explanation. I'm just saying that to say he's
still a miracle working God. I don't always understand his
(02:26):
ways and his pace, but I know he's good. Well,
my guest today, along with his co-authors, traveled around the world,
conducted over 100 hours of interviews with today's leaders in
the church, from those serving in war zones and refugee
camps to billionaire leaders whose lives are grounded in prayer.
They sat down with leaders like Priscilla shire, Francis Chan,
John Mark comer, John Ortberg, Gary Haugen, John Erickson, Tada,
(02:49):
Mark Batterson and what did they learn? They learned something
powerful about the power of prayer. My friend Ryan Skoog
joins me today to draw from his amazing, amazing book,
lead with Prayer The Spiritual Habits of World Changing Leaders.
Let me tell you about my guest. And I would
say I would echo Chris's words, buckle up, because it's
going to be a powerful show today. Ryan Skoog is
(03:11):
co-founder and president of Venture Org. You got to check
out that ministry. What they're doing is just downright heroic.
It's a nonprofit that works in the toughest places of
the world, serving war refugees, trafficked people, oppressed children, and
the unreached. He's also a serial entrepreneur who co-founded several
travel technology companies and co-authored books, chosen a 30 day
devotional and the one we're talking about today. Lead with prayer.
(03:33):
His beautiful wife, Rachel enjoy adventuring with their two ginger
headed kids. Ryan, welcome to equipped.
S3 (03:39):
Oh, I'm so excited to be here. It's such an honor.
S2 (03:41):
I'm looking forward to the conversation. And let's start here.
Talk about this idea of traveling the world. First of all,
why did you decide to do that? And then what
stunned you the most as you and your co-authors made
the trek around the world?
S3 (03:53):
Yeah, yeah, when I was, uh, I think it was
still a teenager. I got to go to China. We
were smuggling Bibles into China, as one does. And back then,
you still needed to to get smuggled Bibles in, uh,
before phones. And I got to meet a guy named
Brother Moses. And he had been brought up in front
of a prison, put in prison for his faith, and
(04:14):
they brought him in front of the entire prison yard
every night for 100 days straight, and they told him
to renounce his faith in Christ. Whether they'll beat him.
And he just with tears, said, I can't renounce Jesus.
He's done too much for me. And he was beaten
for 100 days straight. And I got to meet this
incredible hero, and he had more joy in his eyes
(04:35):
than anyone I'd ever met. Having gone through all this
persecution and planting all these underground churches. And I was
hooked from that point on. I wanted to serve the
heroes of the global church the rest of my life.
S2 (04:46):
Wow. And so you and your co-authors came up with
this idea to travel the world. How did you start?
Who did you. You know, I mean, did you just
sort of put your resources together, say, let's talk to
this person. Let's talk to that person.
S3 (04:57):
Yeah. So so the next the next step was eventually
I started a whole organization called Venture to Serve the
Global Church. It's venture.org, and we serve in the unsafe,
unreached and under-resourced places of the world. So when I
say unsafe, um, we've had seven of our partners killed
for their faith as martyrs in the past two years.
Another 51 arrested and unreached. We're talking about places that
(05:20):
are so remote that if a woman is having her period,
they kick her out of the village because they think
she's cursed by the gods, or they're still sacrificing animals
to rocks and trees. And then when you're talking about Unresourced,
we're going only go to places where there's less than 1%
of Christian giving going. So if they've never heard of Jesus,
that's really bad. It's war zones, all those things. And
(05:41):
then it's less than 1% of giving. Almost no one's giving.
That's where we want to go. Because Jesus said, find
the least, go for the least. And and the exciting
thing is, is that the kingdom of God is breaking
out in these really unreached, tough places of the world.
And this isn't just my opinion. This is the Gordon
Conwell Theological Seminary Center for Global Christianity. The Missiologist there
(06:05):
are talking about how the movement and the global church
right now towards Christ. The amount of people coming to
Christ is not just the most in our lifetime, it's
the most in the history of the church. Wow. And
it's the global church is literally exploding. And so with venture,
we get to serve these heroes. We've seen, um, almost
(06:26):
it's a 15,000 house churches planted and thousands of girls
rescued from trafficking and tens of millions of meals brought
to refugees. All these things have been happening. And we
started asking a question like, wait a minute, what if
we sat at the feet of the global church and said,
can you teach us how to follow Jesus? There's something
you have. You're exploding. We want to see. And instead
(06:49):
of instead of it being some leadership principle or practice,
what we found was what was fueling this growth was
a prayer life. And it kind of came back from this,
this experience and looked at my shelf full of leadership books.
And I didn't have a single book. I had all
these books on how leaders lead. I didn't have a
(07:09):
single book on how leaders pray and thought, man, if
this is the source, if this is the fuel of
the explosion of the church, we gotta learn how to pray.
And and so we there's a big it's actually a
bigger problem than we realize. There's a huge foundation down
in Tennessee that did it's one of the oldest, largest
(07:30):
Christian foundations in the country. And they paid one of
the biggest firms to do a study on the prayer
lives of Christian leaders. And the results came back. They
were so dismal they never even published the study. And
the head of the foundation said, this is one of
the saddest things I've ever seen. And so there's a
real prayer need in the West, and the global church
is exploding and has so much to teach us about prayer.
(07:53):
And so we decided to go on that quest and say,
can we learn the prayer habits of praying leaders around
the world? And for sure, we got to talk to
incredible people. Like you said, from Tim Mackey to John
Mark Comer and John Erickson Tada and John Ahlberg and
all these fun, incredible leaders. But really the most powerful
was was sitting down with people in war refugee camps
(08:14):
and out in the Himalayas and, and in business leaders
that in, in the middle of Africa, who are shutting
down banks so that they can actually take time to pray.
It's just incredible the way that God is moving and
the and the, the prayer lives of these global leaders.
S2 (08:29):
Yeah. What's so amazing is they don't have a social
media following or a platform or a best selling book.
They are the world's heroes. They're the ones who have
the notices. Hell notices because they're shaking things up. And
it hit me so hard in your book when you
talked about, you know, leaders in the West justify their
prayerlessness by saying, well, I'm delegating that out to the
intercessors because I've got such an important work to do.
(08:52):
And you said nowhere in the Bible is that modeled,
especially with Jesus. That's not a thing, right?
S3 (08:57):
Well, not only is it not a thing. Um, there's
there's a Jeremiah 1025. It has this incredible phrase. It
says the shepherds are stupid. They don't inquire of the Lord.
And it's Jeremiah 1021. And I looked into that. That
word stupid, that Hebrew word. That's the only time it
appears in the entire Hebrew Bible. That one time. And
(09:20):
the real meaning of that word, if you look in
the etymology, is stupid. That's what it means. And so
God reserved the word stupid once in the entire Hebrew Bible.
And that's for a leader that has all the power
of heaven available to him, and never taps into it
through prayer.
S2 (09:35):
Wow. And wouldn't you say that also applies to Christians,
not just leaders? Prayerlessness.
S3 (09:40):
Absolutely.
S2 (09:41):
And the access we have as Christians is there. I mean, yeah,
we dig these muddy puddles and we drink from muddy
water when we have an ocean of grace available to us.
S3 (09:51):
Absolutely. Yeah, yeah. There's that old story of a guy
who was in the depression. Was he and his family
were starving, and underneath him was one of the largest
reservoirs of oil in all of America. And they spent
decades living, you know, in starvation until they found it.
It's like that's that's what we have. We're sitting on
top of all the power of heaven, all the grace
of heaven, all the beauty and the strength of the
(10:14):
Holy Spirit, if we can tap into it. And so
that's that's the power of you're saying. Yeah. We started
getting busier and busier. One of the things that came
from the study was that the more experience and the
more higher authority and the more position and education that
somebody had, the less they prayed, not the more they prayed.
And Jesus was exactly the opposite. He actually it says
(10:37):
there's more mentions of him going away to solitary places
and praying as his ministry grew. He he pulled away more.
And Peter Greer, my co-author, he said, so if we
don't pray, are we do we think we're busier than Jesus? Hmm.
And and it's just a powerful, powerful question to go,
wait a minute. And I think part of it is
because a lot of people have like on a two
(10:58):
by two, the idea would be like prayers on one
side and activity or productivity is another one. They'll say,
you know, oh, I got so much productivity stuff I
have to do, I can't pray. But the way that
the heaven works is that you have prayer on one
end and activity, and the only productive thing is to
be prayerful as you're as you're doing whatever it is
(11:18):
God's called you to do. So that's a new definition
of productivity as a prayerful activity, not just activity.
S2 (11:25):
Amen. We're going to pause here. When we come back,
Jeff will take your call. I asked the question at
the opening of the show, what is the most amazing
answer to prayer you've experienced, or even maybe seen? Maybe
you've been connected with it. You knew someone who was
in desperate need. You were part of the prayer rally.
And then God moved and intervened. God's ways are higher
than ours, and his ways are mysterious. But it is.
(11:46):
We are called to pray. We're called to converse with God.
I love this conversation. Today. Ryan Skoog is my guest.
His book he co-authored with his friends, lead With prayer.
I'd love to hear from you. Give us a call (877) 548-3675.
Don't go away. We'll be back in just a moment.
S1 (12:31):
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S2 (13:14):
This is equipped with Chris Brooks coming to you from
the studios of Moody Radio. I'm Susie Larson filling in
for Chris today. Glad to be here. So how would
you describe your prayer life? What's the most amazing prayer
God's ever answered? What are your prayer practices? Well, today
I'm talking with author, entrepreneur, and kingdom mover and shaker
Ryan Skoog. He's a precious friend and we're drawing from
his amazing book, Lead with Prayer The Spiritual Habits of
(13:36):
World Changing Leaders. So a question for you. What if
you upgraded your prayer life? What if you made more
space in your life for God's influence? I'd love to
hear from you. You've got a question or you can
share a story. (877) 548-3675. We've got Jeff on hold checking
in from Florida. Jeff, thanks for your patience. You're on
the air with Ryan Skoog.
S4 (13:57):
Oh, thank you for this opportunity to to just, uh,
just glean for the Lord that what God has done
is he's so good. Yeah. Our secretary at the church, she, uh,
the the hardest workers. One of the little kid came
up to me one time. She. Karen owns the church, right?
You know, so, of course, she said. But she was
(14:19):
the hardest, sweetest person you could ever meet. It's almost like, uh,
I guess meeting God's mother, but. But anyway, I'm just
kidding about that. But anyway. Anyway, she. She was in
the hospital and half her heart was stopped working and
she was in there. I think they induced her in
a coma. And this is 20 years ago because, uh,
she she, uh. So what happened? We all thought she
(14:42):
was going to die. And the doctors all said, you
better start getting ready for funerals. And because I don't
think Karen's going to pull through. So what happened? We
were that Sunday. We were crying in church. All of us.
And Pastor Ty got up there and he was just
talking and everybody was just crying. And because everybody loves
(15:03):
caring so much and and so the next day went
by and it was Monday and, and Karen woke up
and she says, I'm hungry. And what's this pipe doing
in my mouth? And, you know, and all this stuff.
And she just came back like like, uh, I don't know, man.
Like Richard Petty on the race field or something there.
She just came back and just so vibrant. And she
(15:25):
was a secretary. Still went on. And then, uh, just recently,
she's had some difficulties. She's in her 80s now, so she's, uh,
had to step away for a moment because she's having
some difficulty with her back and stuff. But other than that,
God saved her. It was a miracle. Wow. There's no
doubt about it.
S2 (15:45):
Thank you for that call and that testimony. I think
testimonies just encourage our hearts. Ryan, anything you want to
say before we let Jeff go?
S3 (15:52):
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. I just love that That you decided.
You know what we're going to this is a big, huge,
crazy thing, but we're going to still pray big, huge, crazy,
bold prayers for God to do great miracles. And he says,
you don't have because you don't ask. And so sometimes
when it's a really big issue, we think, oh man,
this is, this is too much or too big. And
you just joined in praying big, bold prayers. And God
(16:14):
came through in a big way. That's awesome.
S2 (16:16):
Thank you Jeff. We're going to get you a copy
of Ryan's amazing book, Lead With prayer. So hold on. Uh,
get the producer your, uh, address, and we'll get it
in the mail to you. So what did you find out?
I mean, I love that you were talking about in
the book. This is not a once and done thing.
I mean, I love talking about these answers to prayer,
but the prayer practices, making space, creating a rhythm is
really what I think develops a momentum of intimacy with
(16:39):
God and where you get to know his character. What
did you learn, or were there common denominators in these
people that you interviewed?
S3 (16:46):
Yeah. So the biggest eureka moment, when we did 100
hours of interviews with leaders in six different continents from
business and non-profit and pastoral all over the gambit. I
thought their prayer lives would be all over the map.
So different. Instead, we found that their prayer lives were
super similar. It seems as if anytime somebody wants to
(17:07):
really have a dynamic prayer life, the Holy Spirit leads
them to similar practices. That's across the globe. That's across
different ministry, business, nonprofit, uh, old and young. And so
that was what became all the chapters in the book.
Were these commonalities we found amongst these leaders from around
the world. And and there's two things that have absolutely
(17:28):
changed my life. The first one was I thought the
the number one thing about these leaders is they would
just be amazing at calling down heaven on earth, just
praying heaven on earth, and, you know, praying through all
these major issues. And they all did that. But the
foundation of their prayer lives was friendship. And what I
mean by that was it wasn't just getting God to
(17:50):
answer prayer, it was being with Jesus, their friend. And,
you know, one of the first interviews with Rosabel, she
serves Jesus for decades in the middle of a war
zone in Myanmar. She's one of our partners. Adventure. She
took in her first orphan when she was 16, who
was orphaned by war. And now we partner with her
to serve about 5000 orphan war kids orphaned by war.
(18:14):
And and she literally just glows with Jesus. And I said,
Mama Roosevelt, what's your prayer life like? And she said, man,
I just love Jesus. She said, I when I was 18,
I had no money, but I wanted to tithe. And
I figured the only currency I had was my time.
So I started praying 2.5 hours a day. And I've
been doing that the past 30 years. And I was like,
(18:36):
what does that look like? And she said, well, it
starts with just a walk. And I just go out
in the jungle and I just look and I see
the beautiful trees and the light coming through it, and
I'm like, Jesus, can you make your light shine into
my heart like this light shining through the trees. And
she'll just. And this is a war zone. This is two,
you know, mortars are going off two hours away. And
(18:57):
she's just walking through, you know, it's like the Garden
of Eden to her. And then we talked to Francis
Chan and he said, man, I have this international ministry
and it's so much pressure, so I can't do anything
until I first go out and just have a walk
with my friend Jesus and talk to him. And then
we talked to a New York financier, a guy who's
trading he's a PhD from MIT, downtown Manhattan, over billions
(19:18):
of dollars, and he has these huge blocks of time
in his calendar that says, waste time with God. And
he said, I put waste time with God because that's
what friends do. We just spend time without agenda. And
I found that across the board, these leaders that the
foundation of their prayer life was their friendship. You know
how Jesus said, I don't just call you servants, I
(19:39):
call you friends. And he said, if you abide, that
is when the fruit is going to happen. It's through
the abiding. And they just truly learn to love being
with their friend Jesus. And that was a total revolution
in my prayer life. Was that the start, the foundation?
The most important thing is that my soul can connect
with my friend Jesus. And that's just so powerful.
S2 (20:03):
It's so powerful. You know, on one hand, he says,
you know, don't worry about anything. Pray about everything. And
there's so many people who don't pray because of shame
or busyness or distraction, or maybe they don't even believe,
you know, they have a saving theology, but they don't
really have a theology that compels them to come into
his presence and cast their cares. So that's one thing.
But the other thing is, if you do have an
(20:24):
active prayer life, it's easy to default into making him
a means to an end, like it's only always transactional.
I only want you for what you can do for me,
so I love that those who really are seeing God
do great things in and through them. At the core
of it is Psalm 34 seven. They're just delighting in
the Lord. They're like, you know, anything from your hand
is falls short of the knowing your heart is the
(20:47):
best thing.
S3 (20:47):
It's true. Yeah, yeah. I mean, Moses, he had already
seen the greatest miracles through the plagues and the parting
of the Red sea and all these things. The Ten Commandments.
And then he goes, yeah, but I really what I
really want. I want to see your glory. I want
to be close to you, God. And that's just so powerful.
So that was the first one. Is that that this
friendship side. And I just want to encourage people, if
(21:08):
you haven't been praying for a while, sometimes what keeps
you from praying is you feel guilty, like, oh, I
haven't really prayed for a long time. So I feel
weird praying, you know, like almost God's mad at me
or something. And I just want to encourage you every
time you go to pray. He's happy to see you.
S2 (21:24):
Yeah.
S3 (21:25):
It's like if, you know, if your kid have you
haven't seen your kid for a while and you get
to see him, you're not mad. You haven't seen him,
you're excited. They're there. And that is said. You know,
the Bible says as a father loves their child. So
God has been gracious and loves us, his people. So
I just want to encourage I just feel like some
people feel, oh, I haven't prayed for so long. I
feel guilty. And just the minute you get on your knees,
(21:46):
He's happy to see you. He's happy to be there
with you. And, um, then the other that wasn't in
the book, I just felt like I needed to say that. But, um,
the other thing that was just so life changing for
me was these leaders did not have what I call
a quote unquote, prayer time where you work out and
then you have your prayer time, and you check off
that box and check off that box, and you go
(22:07):
on to the next. They found a way to load
up their day with habits, to craft a day with God.
And that's a completely different way to think about prayers.
What does it look like to have morning habits? Like
for me, I roll out of bed onto my knees
every morning and. And then I just recite a psalm and,
you know, Dallas Willard or John Ortberg, they said, make
(22:29):
the first words out of your mouth, Scripture of praise
to God. So I I'll recite a psalm and on
my knees and just surrender my life in the morning.
And many leaders did this and then go take a walk.
You know, just be with Jesus and study Scripture and
then pray Scripture. And, I have these prayer cards that
I go through that kind of help me be able
to do that. And then what are some throughout the
(22:51):
day habits like to practice the presence of Christ, uh,
throughout the day, inviting him into the moments of your day,
whether it's, you know, when, you know, sometimes I'll just
take time just to listen as I'm in my car,
just like, Lord, what? What do you want to speak
to me today? Or another leader, Mark Batterson, he said
at 714 in the morning and 714 in the night.
He'll pray. Second Chronicles 714. Or another leader said that
(23:13):
when someone annoys them, they're like, oh, that's a call
to prayer. And he says, I pray all the time
because people annoy me all the time. And you know,
so just, you know, just fun, fun moments of like,
creative ways to start inviting and place these practices. And
I think this is a crazy idea that this came
actually from Pope Sabinian in 604. He decided to have
(23:34):
a church in the middle of every town, and then
a tower and a bell on the top of the
tower and the tower. The bell is supposed to ring
every hour to remind people Jesus is with you, to
remind people Christ has saved you. Remind people God is
God and he's worthy to be praised. And so what
does it look like to have a medic? That's where
Bell Towers came from. And what does it look like
(23:54):
to have a metaphorical bell tower in your day that
keeps ringing throughout the day to remind you that Christ
is with you, that you are not alone, that he
loves you, that he's he's moving in your heart towards him.
And then what are evening habits? You know, like like
Jesus had this beautiful rhythm where he'd go and have
a campfire with the disciples every night and they'd be like, hey,
where did we miss you? Or what'd you mean by that?
(24:15):
Or what was this going on? And what does it
look like to have a like a metaphorical campfire with
Jesus to review your day? They call it the examine
is the old saints would use this practice. And our family,
we end up taking communion every night now to remember
the cross and the resurrection that's crafting a day and
being intentional to have all these little habits you can
(24:35):
put together. And we have a bunch of them for
you at leave with prayer. Com for free to download
to help you start intentionally crafting days with God.
S2 (24:43):
You know, because this we so often make it an
obligation when it's an invitation and when it becomes an
ought to or should do, it becomes legalistic and religious.
But when it becomes a get to an invitation to,
it reminds you it's all about relationship, right?
S3 (24:58):
Yeah. Oh, yeah. One leader said, hey, the people that
have great prayer lives have found a way to like it.
S2 (25:04):
Yeah.
S3 (25:04):
And I thought, that's that's such a great line. And
teach yourself to like it. And of course, there's part
of us that doesn't want to pray. There's even a
study that was done on how, uh, they had people, like,
go into a room with no, uh, sorry, no stimulus.
And they had a button that could push that would
get them out of the room.
S2 (25:21):
I gotta.
S3 (25:22):
Interrupt you. You'll tell the story later.
S2 (25:23):
Yes. That's a good story. I want you to tell
that for sure. My guest today, lead with prayer, is
his book, The Spiritual Habits of World Changing Leaders. And
I see some testimonies coming in as well. So grateful
to be with you, Susie Larson here. Don't go away.
We're going to be back in just a moment. This
(26:18):
is equipped with Chris Brooks coming to you from the
studios of Moody Radio. Suzie Larson here sitting in for Chris.
Talking today with entrepreneur, author, and Kingdom dynamo Ryan Skoog.
He co-authored the book lead with Prayer The Spiritual Habits
of World Changing Leaders. If you've been blessed by this
show and the many guests we have on every day,
we'd love to have you partner with us. You can
become an Equipper by making a monthly donation to support
(26:40):
the program. As an equipper, you receive benefits like bi
weekly encouragement from Chris Brooks, discounts on Moody publishing resources,
access to quarterly webinars. You can also interact with the
show by calling in during the live broadcast or participating
on social media. All that information and more you'll find
on our website. Again, talking to Ryan Skoog today about
the practice of prayer. But even so, I wanted to
(27:02):
just pitch and ask the question. Tell me about the
most amazing answer to prayer. Again, God's not a means
to an end, and we don't just go to him
to get our sensational answers, but he's so good that
he answers in sensational ways. Sometimes I would say for me,
some of the most amazing answers to prayer have come
subtly nuanced little tiny bits inches at a time. And
then I look over my shoulder and find, oh my goodness,
(27:24):
this is a miracle. But it was little by little.
Even so, we pray because there's a God in heaven
who loves us and invites us into his presence. So
with that, said Alfred, calling in from Alaska, he's got
an amazing testimony. Alfred, thanks for holding. You're on the
air with Ryan Skoog.
S5 (27:42):
Well. Thank you. Yeah, this is Alfred, and I live in, um.
Uh seldovia. Alaska.
S3 (27:48):
And I was born in Alaska.
S5 (27:50):
Covid came in.
S2 (27:52):
Did you hear that Alfred Ryan was born in Alaska.
S5 (27:55):
Oh. I'm sorry.
S2 (27:56):
Oh.
S3 (28:00):
I'm a sourdough.
S2 (28:02):
Yeah.
S5 (28:03):
Yeah. Well, I wasn't I was born in California, San Jose.
I'd never seen the lights. Mm. And I was moved
up here when I was three months old. I'm a
I'm an Aleut and. All right. My mother was Aleut.
And anyway, um, remember when that Covid was happening? Really strong. Mhm. Yeah.
And everybody was dying off. Well my son got it.
(28:26):
He has weak kidneys and livers, hereditary from our family.
But anyway he went into a coma when he got
that Covid. And I kept telling him don't Boy. Don't
don't say you have Covid. They said, no, dad. They said,
I got Covid. I said, no, but don't tell yourself
you have Covid. Just tell yourself you have a bad
(28:47):
cold and God will heal it. Just say you have
a bad cold. Tell God you have God. I just
have a bad cold. Nope. He kept saying I have Covid. Well,
he got Covid and he was in a coma for
two two months and the wife would call on her phone,
call his phone and tell the nurses, put his phone
by his ear and she would talk to him for
(29:08):
an hour, maybe two hours. Just talk, read him Scripture. Um,
and he told the doctors, make sure when he's listening
to music, to have Christian music on and put the
music channel on, let him listen to that. And and
one day we were home and my daughter was there
and my granddaughter was there, and my wife and I
were outside and the doctor called and said, um, I
(29:31):
think you need to come up and make preparations for
your son to die peacefully. I said, what, what what
do you mean by that? I said, come up here
and you might consider coming up here and unplugging him
because he's been in a coma for so long with
this Covid that we don't think we can save him.
I said, that ain't happening. I said, as a father,
(29:52):
I can't do that, and I won't do that. I said,
I'm not going to feel my son that way. I said,
we gotta do everything we can to keep him alive. Um,
I said, keep him plugged in, and if he dies
on that machine, then I know we've tried everything we
can to keep my boy alive. He's my only son,
and I don't want him gone. And the doctor said.
(30:14):
And I told my doctor to, um, as a father, I.
I come up there and unplug him, and I will
walk out the door, and I will blow my brains
out right outside the door. I'm a Christian. And I said,
I'm not going to live with the fact that I
failed my son. Um, and right about that time, in
my mind, God said, pray. You told me to tell you.
(30:38):
You told me. You told your son to tell me.
He just has a bad cold. And why aren't you praying?
And I prayed every day. But I probably didn't pray, right.
And so I called everybody here in the state of Alaska,
from Nome to the Bering Sea. I called everybody here
that I knew that with a prayer warrior. Then I
called the Christian Motorcycle Association throughout the whole state of
(31:03):
the lower 48 that I knew that was prayer warriors.
And here in Alaska and my chapter and the wife
and I, my church. And we prayed and we went
to bed that night, and I was still praying when
I fall asleep. And I woke up in the morning
and it was kind of like a really, um, I
don't know, a real peaceful type of morning. It was
(31:24):
unusual what kind of morning? And I woke up and
I looked at my wife and she was just waking up, too.
I looked at her and said, my boy's going to
make it. And she was what? I said my boy's
going to make it. Wow. How do you know? I said,
in my dreams, in my vision I did. I seen
I seen thousands of hands holding him up into the
(31:48):
into the sky, into the presence of God. I said,
I seen that in my mind and I can still
see it. And I said, he's going to make it.
I feel it, I said, I'm my fear in my
body just went. It was like. Like I took off
a coat. I just felt that peace. And two days
(32:09):
he was awake.
S6 (32:12):
Wow. Four days.
S5 (32:14):
He was talking.
S6 (32:15):
Come on.
S5 (32:16):
One week he was up walking around.
S2 (32:19):
Thank you, Lord Alfred.
S6 (32:21):
That's. Praise God.
S2 (32:22):
Amen. Thank you for that story and for being so
tenacious in your prayers. I'm going to get you a
copy of Ryan's book. It'll inspire you to pray all
the more. It's lead with prayer. So hang on and
get your address to our producer and any other comments
you want to make there. Ryan from that story?
S3 (32:37):
Yeah, yeah. First of all, wow. Like wow. The the
hardest thing position to anyone can be in, in my opinion,
is to feel out of control because something's happening to
your kid and you can't do anything about it. Mhm.
And and the, the real the real answer is you can,
you can pray. Yeah. And I've, I've been there praying
(32:59):
for my daughter when she was attacked with horrible nightmares
night after night. And I spent hours on my face
in front of her door praying. And God had a
huge deliverance in her life. But I never I always
felt so like God. I feel so out of control
because it's my kid. I can't, you know, I can't
do anything. And God's like, yes you can. You can
get on your knees and pray. So that's beautiful. And
(33:19):
then the second thing is a word that on prayer,
what you just did, those thousands of hands. Paul in
the Scripture says with prayer and petition, make your request
known to God. Well, what's a petition? People go around
with a clipboard trying to sign up other names saying, hey,
so-and-so wants this to so-and-so wants this too. That's what
a petition is. And so when you call out to
(33:41):
other people to pray with you there. It's petitioning heaven. Wow.
And you had this beautiful vision of thousands of hands
petitioning heaven together. That just. Oh, that hits my heart so,
so deeply. We just had a situation like that with
one of our brothers in in northern Laos. Who is they?
He was arrested for sharing the gospel, and they put
(34:02):
him in stocks like those 1600 torture device. And he
was losing circulation to his feet, and they were going
to have to amputate his feet. And so he rallied
250 people to pray every single day. And within three days,
a total 180. They released him both from the stocks
and released him from prison. It was just an incredible miracle.
But when you petition, it is powerful to rally other
(34:25):
people together in prayer.
S2 (34:27):
I you've given me a whole new perspective on petition.
That's absolutely amazing. And why we need each other. Because, uh,
my friend doctor Rob Reimer talks about privatized religion, where
we just isolate and it's just Jesus and me and
nothing else. And he says, you'll never fulfill the fullness
of your calling, and the body will never fulfill its calling.
If you're a part, separate from it, making it just
(34:49):
about you. But when we come together and carry one
another's burdens, we fulfill the law of Christ. So there's
something to be said about praying for each other, praying
for our leaders. We just got a few minutes before
our next break, but say a word about that because,
you know, on one hand, you have people maybe who
don't pray. And again, no shame, no judgment. This is
not condemnation, but it is an invitation. Then you got
those who maybe pray about their stuff all the time,
(35:11):
but maybe not ever think about our brothers and sisters
in stocks or in prison for sharing their faith or
our leaders, you know, um, so talk about that. Moving
into a whole new realm of, of prayer where you're
not only praying for your situation, but for the stories
of others.
S3 (35:26):
Yeah, yeah. So Ephesians three is one of the most
powerful prayers in the scriptures where Paul is. He prays
that we can know how high and wide and long
and deep is the love of Christ. But he says
something right before then he says, together with the saints,
that you can learn how high and wide and long
and deep is the love of Christ. We can't do
it alone. I need you to learn more about the
(35:47):
love of Christ, and you need me to know more
about the love of Christ. And we need each others
stories like this incredible story, to be able to see
a whole new side and facet of the love of
Christ that we've never seen before. And that's why Jesus
is saying, hey, when two or more are gathered together
in prayer, then I'm there in their midst. You know
he's with us. But man, there's something about unity and
prayer and uniting and agreeing in prayer where Jesus said it.
(36:10):
It's a whole nother level of his presence and his grace.
And this is actually science to the. Templeton did a
study on people that prayed for themselves and people that
prayed for others, and they found that when people pray
for others, there's a compound effect on your mental health.
It's like way more powerful for you to pray for
other people and your mental health increases. It's really incredible. So.
(36:32):
And this is this is a science that God built
us to pray for each other.
S2 (36:37):
That is amazing. You nourish yourself when you're kind to others.
That is just beautiful. Just another couple minutes before we
hit our break. But I got to have you talk about,
if you determine just one of your practices is on
on Sundays, you don't ask God for anything. You just
enjoy him. I think that's just beautiful. Say a word
about that.
S3 (36:55):
Yeah, yeah. So I started mapping out each day, kind
of has a prayer focus like Mondays and my family
and and on Tuesdays it's the ministry and all these things.
And Wednesdays I just listen. I'm like, Lord, what's on
your prayer request list? Like, what's your list that I
can pray for? But then I really felt this idea
of friendship is truly being with God. It was from
(37:15):
hearing about Mother Teresa, talking about just spending time with
her friend Jesus, just listening and being with him. I thought, man,
I need to do that. I needed to have a
Sabbath from all the requests, I'll. I'll take Sundays and
pretend he's already answered every prayer request I've ever had.
And that's the question. What? Would you talk to God
if he's already answered all your prayer? And what's that
(37:35):
been like for you? Oh, it's. It was so hard
at first because I'd be like, oh, and then can we.
Oh wait. No I'm not. Oh. And then, oh wait,
I'm not. And so and then it turns out to
be such a delight, like I'm just here to worship you.
I'm just here to listen. I'm just here to let
you know I love you, God. I'm just here to
thank you. I'm just here to be grateful. And I
just come up with lists of things I can thank
(37:57):
him for and come up with. Um, you know, time
after time that he's been in my life, and. And
I'm just so grateful. And just being with him, it's
been the most incredible gift. And it's teaching me, uh,
real in a real time. That prayer is more than
just asking. It's, first of all, first day of the week.
It's being with Jesus.
S2 (38:15):
Amen. Somebody's gotta text me an amen. I guess you
can't do that. But I really love to get an
amen from someone so powerful. What if you just enjoy
Jesus for who he is and what he's done? Well,
you can see more about today's topic and guest if
you find us online at equipped radio.org. Equipped radio.org. Also,
we got great social media presence. Go to Facebook, Instagram
(38:36):
or just look at Equipped Radio. Talking to Ryan Skoog
today about the power and the practice of prayer. Don't
you just love it? It's one of my favorite topics.
Don't go away. We'll be back in a minute. This
(39:23):
is equipped with Chris Brooks coming to you from the
studios of Moody Radio. Susie Larson here, sitting in for Chris.
Talking today to Ryan Skoog, he co-authored the book lead
with Prayer The Spiritual Habits of World Changing Leaders, and
he and his co-authors traveled the world to interview some
of the most effective Christ followers. And their ministries are
exploding with fruit and salvations and miracles, and he found
(39:43):
that their prayer practices were very similar and that God
is not just a means to an end. He's the
beginning and the end. He's worth enjoying walking with and
and not just seeking the gifts from his hands, but
seeking to know his heart. But the thing is, he
still gives good gifts from his hands. It's really quite amazing.
We've got time for one more call. So sorry. Jerry
and Gloria, want to get you a copy of Ryan's book.
(40:04):
We're just running out of time. But, Tim, I'm going
to grab your call from Indianapolis. You're on the air
with Ryan Skoog.
S7 (40:11):
Well, hi, all, and it's blessed. It's a blessed day
to be here on the radio with you. Um, yeah,
I have a testimony, and I just want to cry
out to anybody suffering either minor to very severe mental illness.
We're living in times where it's a crisis.
S6 (40:30):
Yeah. And, uh. Yeah.
S7 (40:32):
You know, Jesus weeps with us, and I just can't
say enough about praying for those, you know, and for
yourself if you're suffering. And my testimony is this I,
one of my daughters, was suffering for for months. Um,
I'm in a men's group, and, uh, you know, it
(40:52):
just came on to the suffering was getting worse. And, uh,
one of our sessions, I just asked. Hey, guys, um,
before we get started, can we just stand up and pray?
And we stood up. 5 or 6 of us held hands,
you know, kind of like a football huddle, right? You know,
those big manly men all holding hands and and getting
(41:14):
their plays together. Well, you know, we can do that
with our spiritual brothers. And, uh, we just. It was good. 20,
30 minutes, just out loud. Prayers around the horn, back around. And, uh,
you know, I can't explain my daughter's healing, but, you know,
(41:37):
within a few days, a week or so, she just said, hey, I,
you know, I wasn't myself, but I'm feeling good again. And, you.
S6 (41:49):
Know, wow.
S7 (41:50):
I can't explain it. I can't explain her healing. I'm
just so grateful. Praise God. And it doesn't mean she
might not struggle in the future. But now it's been
it's also been a number of months since that that
took place. And, you know, there's just this sense of feeling,
the Holy Spirit moving and, uh.
S2 (42:14):
And now you know what to do.
S7 (42:15):
Tim.
S2 (42:16):
Yeah. I mean, if you run into that battle now,
you got a history with God and you know where
to go. You go to him and you get your
brothers together. And I, I love how you said, you know,
how do you take a meat prayer to a wee prayer?
It's like, that's the thing is, when you we're honest
and humble enough. In fact, you write. Ryan, stay with me, Tim,
for just a minute. It takes humility to admit we
need God's presence so desperately that we would spend time
(42:38):
in prayer, seeking rather than planning and laboring. Tim, we're
going to get you a copy of Ryan's book. But, Ryan,
any comment for Tim before he hangs up?
S3 (42:46):
Yeah, yeah, I just as an encouragement to everyone, we
are not powerless to just sit back and and say,
I can't do anything about it. We can hit our
knees and pray. And when the global church says pray
and we say pray, we're almost talking different things. Because
when they say pray, uh, there's a crippled girl that
came to a prayer center in the middle of the
Himalayas in Nepal. And one of the ladies said, I
(43:08):
think we're supposed to pray around the clock until she's healed.
And they had people in there praying 30 hours in
a row. And she started getting up and walked out
of that prayer center. And so I just want to
encourage people to keep persisting in prayer. And you're going
to see incredible miracles happen.
S2 (43:25):
Come on, Tim, thank you for sharing that. And thank
you for being bold enough for interceding for your daughter
with your your men. That's just amazing. Thanks for the
call today. Just got a couple minutes left, Ryan, but
we got to talk about the impact that awe has
on our brains. I mean, true, or where you spend
time in God's Word, you spend time with him and
you really, he deserves our awe. We should be in awe.
But when you come into that place of sincere or
(43:47):
it actually, you know, causes a physiological reaction in your
body and your brain.
S3 (43:52):
Yeah, actually, I just did a talk on the surprising
science of prayer and mental health, and that call just
reminded me there's been a bunch of studies. USC did
a study on awe, and it said that it makes
you more connected to others. Kinder, more humble and patient
increases your mood, and your critical thinking even decreases a
sense of materialism. It's like awe is like a a
(44:15):
son sun and the fruit of the spirit orbit around it.
It's just incredible how important that is. And actually, 20
minutes of prayer a day for eight weeks in a
row will change your brain in those areas. I just
talked about so much that you can see it on
a brain scanner. Andrew Newberg, who's one of the top 20, um,
neuroscientists in the planet, not even a Christian, started studying
(44:38):
the effects of mental health effects of prayer. And it
lowers your blood pressure. It improves your sleep, boosts your
immune system. It gives you a higher self-worth and reduces
stress and sadness. This is all physiologically measurable in our brains.
It's as if we were wired for the presence of God. Amen.
And it changed. It changes us so much. You can
see it on a brain scanner.
S2 (44:59):
Wow. I don't know who said it, but someone once said,
if the devil can't make you bad, he'll make you busy.
And I think busyness is what keeps us out of awe.
But like your friend Rosabel. Is that her name?
S3 (45:10):
Yeah.
S2 (45:11):
Yeah. She saw, uh, everywhere she went. She saw God's
handiwork everywhere she went. And we're called to stay in
that state of awe because he's worthy of it, isn't he?
S3 (45:21):
Absolutely. And if Roosevelt can find a way to pray
in the middle of a war zone, I just encourage
everyone to find a place to find that awe of
God in the middle of the war zone of your life.
And it's worth it to be able to to stop
all the busyness and just open up space for heaven
to come to earth through your prayers.
S2 (45:41):
Amen. Maybe you need to go for a walk today.
Maybe to slow down, take some deep breaths. Look at
the trees, the sun, the sky, and stay in awe. Ryan,
I just love and appreciate you, and I can't thank
you enough for stewarding the call the way that you have.
Appreciate you. Thanks for your time today.
S3 (45:56):
It's been it's been an honor and so excited. And
anyone can connect with us at venture.org or lead with prayer.
We'd love to connect with you.
S2 (46:04):
Yeah it's an amazing ministry. And Ryan references this quote
that I love from Dallas Willard. And hear this. As
we get ready to wrap, you must arrange your day
so that you're experiencing deep contentment, joy, and confidence in
your everyday life with God. Well, I hope you found
some encouragement here today. If you need more information about
our guests or anything, you can visit us online at. Org. Org.
(46:27):
I'm Susie Larson and from all of us at equip.
Thanks for listening today. Don't forget that when you approach
the throne of grace, God is always, always glad to
see you. So approach the throne of grace. Cast your
cares on him. Enjoy his presence, tell him what you
need and thank him for what he's done. You'll be
blown away by the goodness and the kindness of God.
Thanks for listening today. Equipped is a production of Moody Radio.
(46:49):
It's a ministry of Moody Bible Institute, and we will
meet you back here next time.
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