Restoring the Soul with Michael John Cusick

Michael opens a new series by telling the truth about his own quiet time. At sixteen, newly a follower of Jesus through Young Life, he was given a formula: 30 minutes of Bible reading, ACTS prayer, and scripture memory. He kept a clipboard. Underneath it all, he believed that if he was faithful enough, God would smile instead of frown. As his struggles with lust and unaddressed trauma grew, the discipline faded, and the shame got louder.He talks about what happens when devotions become a way to earn God’s affection, and what Jesus actually says in Matthew 11, in Eugene Peterson’s words: come to me, get away with me, learn the unforced rhythms of grace. He explains why the traditional quiet time never fit a brain with ADHD and a body that goes numb, and he asks a question he often asks in counseling: where do you most naturally connect with God?If you’ve ever felt guilty about not having quiet time, start here. Wait for what his spiritual director said after he told her his answer was a treadmill.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!

This is a classic conversation. Michael traveled to the Ransomed Heart outpost in Colorado Springs and sat down with John Eldredge to talk about restoration: what it is, why the heart is central to it, and what the Christian life is actually supposed to do for a person.John explains why the pace of modern life traumatizes people —and why the graces available to heal the soul are closer than we think. He and Michael discuss the difference between chasing holiness as a moral standard out there versus discovering it as something that flows naturally from a restored being. They read from John’s 365-day devotional, Restoration Year—a passage that asks one question: What is Christianity supposed to do to a person? John answers not with doctrine, but with a vision of wholeness and holiness through love. The episode ends with John’s final word to anyone who suspects God is less good than advertised: he loves more than you think he does, and most of what you’ve been told about him is dead wrong.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!

Many of us have been handed a faith of victory and failure, where the heroic are celebrated, and the weak quietly disappear from the story. Painter and author Makoto Fujimura has found something truer in the darkness. Through Shusaku Endo’s novel Silence and the bronze images of Christ that persecuted Japanese Christians were forced to step on, Mako reflects on a gospel big enough for anyone who doubts they can ever be strong.He and Michael also talk about why beauty matters most when the world feels chaotic, how anyone can care for culture the way a gardener tends soil, and why Mako calls Silence a Holy Saturday book. And he opens up about his own ground zeros, from living blocks from the World Trade Center on 9/11 to his grandfather’s silence after Hiroshima, and the call to seek the sunrise by turning into the dark.Makoto Fujimura is an internationally exhibited artist working in Nihonga, a centuries-old Japanese painting tradition using natural minerals and gold. He served on the National Council on the Arts, and his books include Culture Care, Silence and Beauty, Refractions, and Art and Faith: A Theology of Making.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!

Many of us were taught that faith means believing the right things, and that the rest gets sorted out after we die. Dallas Willard spent decades gently insisting there’s far more available now. In this 2008 conversation, recorded in Los Angeles and one Michael counts among the highlights of his life, Dallas describes salvation as an interactive relationship with God: a life lived with him today, not a ticket held for later.He and Michael talk about why solitude is the most radical of the disciplines, how to actually practice blessing those who curse you (traffic is a good place to start), and why grace isn’t opposed to effort but to earning. Dallas also speaks tenderly to anyone who feels too broken to begin: stop trying, he says, and learn to set the Lord always before you.Dallas Willard (1935–2013) taught philosophy at the University of Southern California for more than four decades. His books, including The Spirit of the Disciplines, Hearing God, The Divine Conspiracy, and Renovation of the Heart, continue to shape how the church understands spiritual formation.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!

Dr. Chuck DeGroat is back for his fourth podcast visit — and this time he brings a question that has followed him through his mid-fifties: why is it taking so long to grow up? His new book, Who You’re Becoming: The Slow and Courageous Work of Cultivating Character in a Narcissistic Age, grew out of that wrestling and a decade of sitting with leaders whose language had outrun their transformation.Michael and Chuck talk about why character change is so slow, and why the answer has less to do with discipline than with a nervous system that’s stuck in chronic storm. They discuss faux vulnerability — the way people can acquire all the right therapeutic language without anything actually shifting underneath. They talk about the difference between chasing a moral standard out there and becoming who you actually are. Chuck tells the story of a pastor who, through tears, looked at his own online presence and said: I don’t know who that guy is. And they end the way you’d hope a conversation like this would end — with an ancient Celtic breath prayer, led by Chuck, that invites the listener into stillness rather than just describing it.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!

In 1995, Michael sat down with Eugene Peterson for a conversation that was published in the Mars Hill Review and later in Eugene's own book Subversive Spirituality. There were no podcasts then. No one could have imagined that someday a person driving to work or sitting alone at home could put on headphones and hear a conversation recorded decades earlier. Eugene believed words were never merely information — they carried presence, they revealed, they deepened intimacy. So Michael began to wonder: what if this conversation could have a voice? And then a better possibility emerged. What if Eugene's words could be read by his son?The voice you hear speaking Eugene Peterson's words belongs to Eugene's son, Eric Peterson, who recently retired after twenty-nine years of pastoral ministry of his own.In the conversation, Eugene talks about why he's suspicious of Bible studies, what it means to live a life of prayer rather than merely say your prayers, why poets and novelists are the church's most important allies, and what it looks like to stop working from anxiety and start working from grace. At the end, Michael asks what Eugene wants to be remembered for. He laughs at the question, says it isn't a good one, and then answers it.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!

Dr. Alison Cook is a psychologist, host of The Best of You podcast, and the author of The Secure Soul — and the first line she wrote for that book was: a part of me doesn't like God very much. She assumed her editor would cut it. Her editor said it was staying.That moment — a prayer walk in London, an eight-year-old part of her that didn't want to be there — opens a conversation with Michael about what it actually looks like to pay attention to the inner life. Alison and Michael talk about bids for connection: the tiny, persistent movements within us that signal something needs to be seen. They discuss how trust breaks — not just through the big wounds, but through the ordinary absence of presence, the childhood of empty sunlit rooms. They get into the shadow self, the young one, and what the difference between bruised and broken might mean for people who don't see themselves in the language of shattered things. And they talk about what it looks like to train the soul — not through willpower or discipline, but through two movements: recognize and return.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!

Seven spots remain for the October men's weekend — and Michael wanted the men (and women!) who still needed to hear about it to hear it from two men who've been there.Matt found out about the Restoring the Soul podcast from a therapist in 2018, listened for a few months, heard an ad for the men's weekend, and signed up. He showed up to the airport terrified, texted his therapist from the gate, flew to Denver, and left four days later with something he'd never had before: the sense that he was seen without anyone trying to fix him. That experience eventually redirected his career. He's now a licensed therapist who staffs the weekend himself.Brian arrived at 3:59 for a 4:00 start. He came because he was exhausted, running from everything, and carrying more shame than he knew. He was told it would be the safest place he'd ever been. He didn't believe it — until it was.This episode is a conversation between Michael, Matt, and Brian about what 66 hours in Monument, Colorado actually looks like, and what it's still doing in their lives years later. The weekend runs October 1–4. Seven spots remain. restoringthesoulweekend.comSupport the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!

Dr. Jim Wilder has been thinking about the relationship between brain science and spiritual formation since before most people knew the question existed. He trained under one of the inventors of the EEG machine, spent years working alongside Dallas Willard, and has spent decades building what he calls the Life Model — a unified account of what it looks like to grow up into the likeness of Christ, neurologically and spiritually. This conversation is an hour inside that work.Michael and Jim talk about why the right brain runs faster than the conscious mind — and what that means for every Christian who has tried to think their way into a changed life. They talk about why joy isn't a rare gift but the baseline the brain was designed to run on, and what happens when it isn't. They discuss identity, shame, and what it means for the brain to perceive itself only through how other people see us. And Jim tells the story of a professor who looked at a kid who couldn't spell and said, "You might want to consider being a writer." Eighteen books later, that moment still explains everything.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!

Andy Crouch's The Tech-Wise Family isn't about keeping pornography out of your home. It's about building the kind of home where you know what you actually want — and where technology doesn't quietly replace it. In part two of this conversation, Michael and Andy get into the ten commitments at the heart of the book, and they're not what you'd expect.They talk about why the goal is wisdom and courage rather than limits, and how untethered access to technology quietly reinforces the fear of being known. They discuss what Sabbath actually looks like — not collapsing on the couch but feasting, playing, worshipping, and resting — and why Andy thinks it's the most broken commandment. They get into what kids say they actually want help with when it comes to devices, which turns out not to be pornography but sleep. And the episode ends somewhere no one expects: at the bedside of the dying, and what it means to be a family that knows how to show up, put the phone down, and stay.Support the showENGAGE THE RESTORING THE SOUL PODCAST:- Follow us on YouTube - Tweet us at @michaeljcusick and @PodcastRTS- Like us on Facebook- Follow us on Instagram & Twitter- Follow Michael on Twitter- Email us at [email protected] Thanks for listening!