313 | Becoming a Praying Dad, Seeking Friendship First, and Exchanging Wishes with God (Ryan Skoog)

After studying the prayer lives of extraordinary leaders around the world, Ryan Skoogs began to identify patterns. These patterns shifted not only the heart and mind of the leader but also the culture around them—in their home, organization, and beyond. As the leader of your home, you must create a culture of prayer that starts with you. In this episode, Ryan shares the practical steps to do just that. 

• Be willing to “waste time” with God. 
• To start an intentional prayer life, just walk and talk with the Lord. 
• Twenty minutes of prayer to Jesus each day for eight weeks will change your brain chemistry in ways that are visible on a brain scan. 
• Where is prayer a line item in your organization’s (or family’s) budget? 
• Don’t discount the little opportunities where you can be quick to pray.

Ryan Skoog is an entrepreneur, ministry leader, author, world traveler, and adventure dad. He is co-founder and president of VENTURE, a church-planting and community development nonprofit that works in the toughest places of the world, serving war refugees, trafficked people, oppressed children, and the unreached. 

• 30:06 - "20 minutes of prayer a day, for eight weeks, will change your brain neurons and chemistry so much that you can tell on a brain scan. There's an agnostic neuroscientist that started just measuring prayer and it had to be prayer to Jesus. It wasn't just meditation and mindfulness, sand is soft, no, it is God is love. God is gracious, that kind of focus and prayer. It can change your brain scan so it fires all the parts that are amazing."
• 39:26 - "Don't discount the little moments throughout the day of stopping and acknowledging God. A kid has a test, let's stop and pray. We have a phrase around here, we want to be quick to pray. I think in creating a culture in your family, being quick to pray about little things quickly, oh, hey, let's pray about that. And then taking 20 seconds to pray about it and making that normal in your family, making that normal that we just talked to God throughout the day has just been a really, really helpful culture."

• Lead with Prayer: The Spiritual Habits of World-Changing Leaders by Ryan Skoog and others

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