I think the most incumbent thing upon Christian leaders today is to learn how to be still to learn how to turn off your smartphone, to turn off your iPod, your iPad, your computer, to turn off the TV just to learn to be silent. And to be still in that place where as Henry now and said, you come face to face with your irrelevant self. And I'm convinced that that's why so many of us are so busy, whether it's doing ministry and good things for the kingdom, or whether it's because of technology is because we're terrified of the World Within.
Brian Beatty:Now, what would it take to become fully honest with yourself, your struggles, your desires, your hopes? And what would it take for you to get completely honest with God, admit your dependence upon him, and fully surrender. Welcome to restoring the soul, a podcast dedicated to helping you close the gap between what you believe and what you actually experience. I'm your producer Brian Beatty. Thanks so much for listening. And this episode of restoring the soul, we take you back to October of 2017. For a talk, Michael presented to the students of Denver seminary. The message was entitled the four Gospels. And Michael intended to present a message that helped the students bridge the gap between what they believe and what they actually experience. You may have heard that before on this program. And the four gospels presented in this talk are the gospel of performance, experience, activism, and brokenness. So Now without any further delay, here's your host, Michael John Cusack.
MICHAEL CUSICK:The year was 1980. For me when my life changed, I became a Christian in 1980. I was a junior in high school, I had grown up in a Irish Catholic alcoholic home where there was abuse of just about every kind. And through the ministry of young life. I heard about this good news. This this gospel where God loved me and my sins were forgiven, that he wanted to walk with me and use me in his larger story. When it became Christian, it was just literally weeks after that, where I took my stash of hardcore pornography magazines that were hidden under my mattress. And when nobody was home, because I didn't want anybody to know about my quote, shameful habit, and went down into the basement of this 60 year old bungalow home in Cleveland, where I grew up and I lifted up the lid to the incinerator and I put all the magazines in and I lit a match and literally watched them start to go up in smoke, I close the lid, they burned up, and I came back later and saw the pile of ash. And today I'm here to tell you the seven steps for how to overcome lost in pornography because I never struggled again after that, praise God. What's closing prayer. You can imagine what happened next. I it was a sincere moment. For me. It was a moment where I literally wanted that out of my life. I hated what I was doing. Even before I came to Christ. With the Catholic guilt that was there, I felt like something was really wrong with me and that I that I somehow this this fell short of what I was created for. But it wasn't even a matter of weeks, until after that sincere moment of surrender. And that sincere moment of saying, God take this, where I was back in the same habit of trying to search out pornography, which which back then in 1980, you had to work pretty hard for as a 16 year old, there wasn't any instant way to to download it to your smartphone. So I struggled with pornography and masturbation and all kinds of sexual fantasy for a long, long, long time. That was 1980. And I got into ministry, I became a youth minister and I started to memorize large amounts of Scripture and I started to do the the he-man Saturday morning 630 Bible study, you know, where if you're really a committed disciple, you go to that. And all of these things I started to put into my life, legitimate good spiritual disciplines, all with the desire that if I do enough, it's somehow going to help me to get rid of the struggle. The struggle just got worse and worse. Fast forward 10 years 1980 to 1990. And I was in a church service one morning, I was a Presbyterian for many, many years. And so I'm standing in the church service and because it was a Presbyterian Church, my hands were in my pockets that's as high as your hands could go. You weren't able to lift them anymore. But we're singing, we're singing. Lord, you are more precious and silver Lord, you are more costly than golden. And eventually you get to part of the course which says, and nothing I desire compares with you. And I'm standing there and I thought to myself, that's a lie. It seems like there's a whole lot of stuff in my life, including sexual gratification that feels to me like it's a bigger desire and a more compelling desire than you Jesus. And so I got in my car after the service and I rolled down my windows, it was a freezing cold Cleveland day in the church was right on the lakefront of Lake Erie, the winds pouring in, I turned the radio up as loud as I could go. Because I just didn't want to feel anything. I just wanted to be numb. And I found a liquor store that was open on that Sunday afternoon, and I bought a six pack of beer, I still remember what kind it was. And I found a motel room, the cheapest motel I could find, because my credit card at age 22, I think had already been maxed out for about a year, you know, and you pay it down when you buy something, just so I took that little bit of credit that I had, I bought the six pack when checked into the motel, and it just wanted to die. Wasn't suicidal, like, I'm gonna kill myself. I just didn't want to live anymore. Because Christianity just didn't feel real to me. I believed that it was true, but it didn't feel real. It didn't feel like this gospel, this good news, connected to what was happening inside of me. So as I'm in the motel, and I'm just trying to get numb, and I'm drinking, I remember I started to get sleepy and I drink all the beer. I masturbated. I fell asleep. And I woke up. And I realized that I was stuck with this. This deep thirst inside of me that all of the beer and all the sex in the world could never satisfy what was thirsty for now we all know the right answer, right? Jesus? You know, the little kid who walked into Sunday school class and the teacher said, What has a bushy tail eats acorns climbs and trees rhymes with girl. And the little kid says Well, I I want to see squirrel, but I know the answer is Jesus. Because in Sunday school, the answer is always Jesus, right? And the answer always is Jesus. You're here at the seminary, whether you're a counseling student, or a divinity student, or a formation student or a leadership student, you're here because you've discovered that the answer is Jesus. The problem is, as one Christian filmmaker said about 20 years ago, as us as he was interviewed in Christianity today about Christian art, and this was before, left behind. And this was before fireproof, and courageous and war room and God is not dead in that whole genre of Christian propaganda, I'm sorry, art. The man was asked the question, what do you think of Christian art? And he said, The problem with Christians who are doing art is that they have the answer, but they've not lived the question. And I believe one of the most hopeful things about the younger generation, if I can put the stereotype on of millennials, and people who know that they're broken, or who at least have experienced brokenness, in a way where they can't deny it, is that they're willing to live the questions. And see in that hotel room that day, is I knew the answer was Jesus, I was asking the wrong questions. And this morning, I want to just share a little bit of my story to walk you through three different gospels that I was living, of course, there's Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, but a gospel is just a story of good news. And in the midst of our brokenness, and in the midst of our suffering, and in the midst of our compulsions, on all the things that like Paul, we might say, Why do I do what I do, we all tell ourselves a story. And we all come up with a story that we believe is good news. And that will lead us to the result that we want. And so the first gospel, if you will, is what I call the gospel of performance. And each of these gospels that I share with you has a question attached to it. I was asking the wrong questions. And I want to tell you the question that I was asking, and maybe you can relate to it. And each of these gospels has a key word. And each of the Gospels has what I call a currency. And I want to share with you what's become an important concept, to me the idea of spiritual currency. This is a $20 bill, and it says that it's legal tender, it's described as currency. And currency is something by which you buy and sell. Currency is something by which you get what you want and need to live. And we all have a currency. If you've been to Thailand, they have bought in Korea. It's one in Mexico and other places, it's pesos, but we all have a currency that we spend and that we use for transactions to get what we think we want or need. So pay attention to the idea of spiritual currency because I'm going to use that in the Gospel of performance, which was the first way that I attempted to bring realness to my life. I believe that Christianity was true. But throughout much of my Christian life, I didn't experience it as real. And so I subscribe to and signed up for the gospel of performance. And the question that I was asking with the gospel of performance is what must I do? What must I do? The key verse for this was Philippians, 212, and 13. I've memorized a lot of Scripture as young believer, and I call this the awesome obedience principle that the passage in Philippians two says, work out your salvation with fear and trembling. This Saturday morning at the discipleship group, God, I'm going to work out my salvation with fear and trembling. I just do that sometimes. I don't know where that comes from. But how many of you have ever read Philippians? 12? And go Yeah, man, that's it. I'm gonna I'm gonna really focus. I'm gonna work my salvation out. I'm going to take this seriously. Or how about Second Corinthians, Second Corinthians, which is a new book that those of you in third year MD program will eventually learn about, written by the same author of second Hezekiah. The counseling students are going is there a is there a book of second Hezekiah? Little equal opportunity. Second Corinthians 16, nine, the eyes of the Lord range throughout the earth, to strengthen those whose hearts are fully committed to Him. I mean, isn't there a kind of spirituality that we sometimes want to do, where the movie guys voice comes in? That's true, you're memorizing Scripture, but me, it was my heart, I want to make my heart be fully committed to God, as if we could do that, for those of you that are married on the count of three, I want you to be more committed to your spouse, 123. I'm sure my wife was blessed by that. She was just feeling the love, right? The performance gospel, the key word for me was effort, I need to put in more effort. So that somehow with that effort, I'm going to turn the key that opens the door, where I can walk into this room of grace and the abundant life. And I can have everything that Jesus promised in my faith will become real. The currency by which you buy and sell the currency by which I bought and sold in the spiritual life was willpower. God, I'm going to give you my willpower, and you're going to give me back the blessings that I want God, I'm going to memorize more scripture, I'm going to do more Bible study, I'm going to do more evangelism. I'm a young life leader. And I'm going to go to the high school for a fourth or fifth time this week and reach out to kids. And I know that as I do all that, with my best effort, that that's going to be the key to freedom. And key to this Christianity being real. The problem with the gospel of performance is one of two things happens if you're able to do it, which most people can do it for a little bit, but you can't sustain it, if you're able to do it, you feel pride, and you feel smug. And you're not going to be the kind of person that's warm to be around, you're the kind of person that you're about adherence to what God says. And that's what becomes the bottom line. But more often than not people that live according to the gospel of performance, walk around, looking good on the outside, but like me, just beneath the surface, you're filled with shame, and guilt, and anxiety and inadequacy. And if there's a sense of if anybody really knew who I was, I'd be utterly disqualified from relationship from ministry, from anything like that. That's the gospel of performance. And that's where I live for a long, long time. And where I can live today, I had to repent three or four times from the time I got up this morning, you know, I speak at seminaries around the country, and it's kind of easy to show up and be the guy who wrote a book, and people are really excited that you came to their town. But when I used to teach here, there's people here that I know this morning, and I so badly wanted to look cool. I so badly wanted to do a good job. I so badly wanted to be seen as a dynamic communicator, as opposed to a guy who just comes up and shares his heart, which is I said, Jesus just just helped me to show up and share my heart because I think that's what matters. So as I'm talking about all of these, there's a past reality, but there's a present reality that my discipleship, my formation is constantly to become aware of how this is playing out. And then to say no to it. The next gospel is the gospel of experience. And if the question in the Gospel of performance will was, what must I do the gospel of experiences? What will inspire me, if the Hillsong groups, Song oceans was around in 1983 1988, I would have had it on my eight track player, and on my cassette player playing all the time, because I was all about, I've got to find something to inspire me, the next conference, the next big book that comes out, back then there were a whole lot less Christian musicians, but we'd get these little blue cassettes, anybody here, remember the blue cassettes that you buy at a Christian bookstore? This, you know, you put it in and I listen to Christian music all the time, because it would somehow inspire me. Now, don't please don't hear me saying that there's anything wrong with effort, and that there's nothing wrong with being inspired. But if this is the only story that you live in, that what you have to do to make your Christianity and to make your faith more real, is to always be doing something that's what's problematic. In the Gospel of experience, asking the question, What will inspire me, the key verse here for me, was Psalm 119, verse 18, and I memorize this, it says, Lord opened my eyes, that I would see wonderful things in your law. Now, that's a great verse, I actually use that and pray that every morning when I sit, and I have silence and stillness before God, God opened my eyes that I would see wonderful things in your law. But back then it was a sense of, I need something new. God, I need something fresh every morning. Now, again, we need God's fresh revelation, and we need food to nourish our soul. But the key word under the gospel experiences encounter, I've got to encounter something outside of myself, to help my inner world connect with what's true inside of myself as well, the currency, if the currency in the Gospel of performances will power, the currency and the gospel of experiences pursuit, I'm always pursuing the next big thing. There was a group of us in Cleveland that went to this conference called the Institute of basic youth conflicts. And there was a man named Bill Gothard, who at the time was very, very respected. And there was this arena in Cleveland, Ohio, and literally six, seven, I think maybe as many as 10,000, people would flood into this arena from all over multiple state region, and they gave you these red books and the Red Books, told you how to live the Christian life, and they told you how to perform. But it was also this is how you will experience God, do what's in the Red Book. And guess what I did everything in the Red Book religiously. And some of it frankly, wasn't very biblical. And it was highly legalistic, but it was basically pursue God, pursue God, pursue God. And if you pursue God enough, you will overcome the brokenness inside of you, you will overcome those things that you hate those things that you don't want to accept about yourself, you'll overcome your shame, if you pursue God, enough. The problem with that, and this might sound rather, an odd thing to say is that you don't need God to pursue God. I never really had to actually connect with Jesus in the midst of all that it was, the more I do for you, without actually being with you, without actually having to do anything. The problem with the gospel of experience is that you don't need God and I became addicted to encounter and experience. I need to do something outside of myself, when in fact, what I was scared about was the World Within. And I'm so glad that Denver Seminary has not just a spiritual formation program. But in regardless of what program you're in, that you can't graduate from the school without taking a long, hard look at your inner life. Praise God, because the most dangerous Christian leader in the world is a person who's highly equipped and trained, but who has no knowledge of their afterlife. And that was me for a very, very long time. Because I wrote a book about porn and sexual addiction and how I was eventually to find freedom from that. I'll oftentimes ask groups of men and women related to sexual purity, which is a euphemism that I don't like but related to that concept of sexual purity. What's the hardest verse in the Bible? To obey as it relates to that and people will oftentimes throw up verses about you know, don't be sexually immoral or watch where your eyes go and proverbs and I think across the board with any addiction or compulsion, like Paul wrestling in Romans chapter seven of why do I do what I don't want to do? And why am I not doing what I want to do? The hardest command to obey is Psalm 46. 10 I have it here on my bracelet be still, I think the most incumbent thing upon Christian leaders today is to learn how to be still to learn how to turn off your smartphone, to turn off your iPod, your iPad, your computer, to turn off the TV just to learn to be silent. And to be still in that place, where as Henry now and said, you come face to face with your irrelevant self. And I'm convinced that that's why so many of us are so busy, whether it's doing ministry and good things for the kingdom, or whether it's because of technology. It's because we're terrified of the World Within. The third gospel is what I call the gospel of activism. And this was this surrounded everything I did, it wasn't the core of what I did. But the gospel of activism was asking the question, Where can I make a difference? The key verse for this, this this heavy duty using the movie voice again, Philippians. Two, where can I make a difference? Paul saying for I'm already being poured out like a drink offering, this idea of how how strenuous and how amazing and how awesome it is that I'm just giving myself and I'm this empty cup for God. And yet, the currency of service with the gospel of activism, is based on the fact that in our broken world, there is an absolute, endless, infinite amount of need. And whether you are committed to the activism of bringing clean water to Africa, or ending human sex trafficking or anything in between, you can never do enough and ultimately, activism cannot be sustained. And I believe that why so many people are walking away from the church, some people that are kind of high profile and others that just seem to disappear is not because folks don't believe that Christianity is true, but that they don't experience it as real. They get committed to a cause to make a difference. And they they pour themselves out like a drink offering. And then they find themselves as Eugene Peterson said, thin and spiritually impoverished on the inside, or they perform for God, giving everything that there is to give and they say, why doesn't this truth connect to my inner world and the reality of my life. I got very, very weary of living according to the gospel of performance of the gospel of experience in the Gospel of activism. And then I received a gift. And the gift was when I discovered the gospel of brokenness. Fast forward 1980 to 1990, when I was in the motel, in 1994, I was now a married man, and my sexual addiction had ramped up and escalated to the point where I was trying to sleep with anybody I could, where I was paying for sex commercially with women who were who were selling themselves for money. I was going to strip clubs, I was cruising up and down certain parts of town on my lunch hour, I was lying to my employer about when I was working. I was drinking a lot of alcohol, to numb the shame and the inadequacy and the guilt and the anxiety. And one day, married three years I walked in from work, and my wife asked me a question, and I got caught in a lie. In that day, July 10 1994, was the worst day of my life. Because I watched the carnage as my wife began to uncover my double life. I watched her heartbreak as a result of my sin. But that day was also the best day of my life. If you were to ask me, Michael, when did you become a follower of Jesus? When did you become a Christian? I would tell you, either. 1980 when I prayed the senators prayer, or July 10 1994, I'm not really sure. Because for 14 years, I lived as a Christian man and never once trusted the love of God. I was saved, but it was on that day, for the very first time, right came to know the love of God. Richard Rohr says that it's through the holes in our soul, that God breaks in and we break out. And that's what began to happen on that day. And I discovered the gospel of brokenness. The key question with the gospel of brokenness is not what must I do, or what will inspire me Or where can I make a difference? The key question with the gospel of brokenness is, what do I have to offer God? What do I have to offer God? You know what the answer to that question is? Nothing. Now you might go, Well, what that that that makes me feel like a worm. There's one thing actually, that you have that I have to offer God on a day like July 10 1994. And that is your heart, yourself, not your performance, because that's been stripped away, not your activism because that feels absurd, not another experience because you know, it's just going to last like a Flintstones multivitamin for 24 hours, you have to take another one. All God wants from you, Christian leader, counseling students, master of divinity or anywhere in between is your heart. That's what he wanted on the day of your salvation. That's what he wants today. That's what he wants tomorrow. That's what he wants a year from now. And 30 years from now, nothing else. But here's the catch. He wants your heart, not as it should be. But as it is, and see all of us go. But but but God I can't give you my heart as it is because it's it's broken, or it's messed up, or it's compulsive, or it believes lies, or it's too needy. It's too thirsty. And I can't give you my heart. Thomas Merton said that humility, which is precisely what I'm talking about all brokenness takes us to a point of humility. And there's only two ways to experience humility, you can humble yourself or be humbled, and I was humbled profoundly on that day. And in many ways, I've continued to be humbled since then. But Merton said that humility is being precisely who you are, at any given time, before God and at least one other person. And I think in that regard, we don't we don't walk around living in humility. And doesn't the New Testament tell us at least twice that God opposes the proud but gives grace to the humble, I had the blessing of talking with Chancellor Gordon McDonald a week ago today, for my podcast, restoring the soul restoring the soul.com Check that out. And he said, We don't believe in Western Christianity and a gospel of brokenness, we believe in a gospel of best SNESs. See, we want to put our best foot forward, we want to present our best self and God says, I don't want that. I want you I want your heart. One of the cool things about counseling programs at a seminary Is that is that you're learning to put words to the brokenness inside of people and how to point them to Jesus, even if you're working in a secular setting, presenting that hope and how you're sitting and being with them and the light in your eye. You can put words to brokenness. And one of the beautiful things about a theology program divinity training, when you're looking at your inner life is that you can come along and from a pulpit, or in service or leading an organization, for however it is that you're ministering, you can take out a highlighter and highlight the brokenness, in the stories of Scripture, giving people permission and empowering people to be broken people. In the Gospel of brokenness, the key word is broke. You know what brokenness means it means that you're broke. I've got nothing on me and my credit cards maxed out. Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters. You have no money coming by? Do you understand that in the kingdom of God, in this kingdom of the Lord Jesus Christ, that the currency by which we buy and sell by which we receive the good gifts of God, the currency is not our effort, or our willpower, or our pursuit, the currency is brokenness. You get not just something to drink, but the richest of fair wine and milk without cost. See, to get the things of God, you've got to acknowledge that you're broke, and that you can't pay unless the most freeing place to live in the world is in the Gospel of brokenness, the currency, and the gospel of brokenness is poverty. One of my spiritual Heroes is St. Teresa of Lisu, a Catholic saint who died at the age of 24 years old, and she talks about God's little way. And she said that our spiritual poverty alone is our capacity for God. And one of the dangers of coming to a place like a seminary where you learn the word of God and you learn how to execute and you know, Hebrew and Greek and you learn how to sit down and talk with people in therapeutic healing conversations, is you start to think that you've got some currency, you've got some stuff that you can start to spend to make a difference. But really, all we've got to bring is our poverty. So 1994 Forward, God has been doing a work in me, I just celebrated my 25th anniversary to Julianne the same woman that I was married to on that day. And God has done a profound work of redemption. And my spiritual life has been one as a man, where I'm simply learning not to become broken. Because a lot of times people think that brokenness is feeling really remorseful and bad for your sin, but to realize that I am broken, and to simply live in that, I'll close with the story. There's an old story where a student came up to a rabbi, and he said, teacher tell me, why is it that the Holy Torah tells us to place the Word of God upon our heart? Why does it not say to place the Word of God in our heart, and the rabbi responded, he said, My student, the Torah tells us to place the Word of God upon our heart, because one day our hearts will break. And when they do, the words will fall in. My hope and prayer for you is that as you have come to a place where your heart has broken, and it may be through physical suffering and chronic illness, it may be through personal failure, whether moral or otherwise, it may be through the futility of your own willpower, is that when your heart breaks, that the words of truth fall in, and that the gospel becomes real, because it's in that place where our thirsty souls, and our hungry hearts come to experience the very thing that we are created for? Thank you.
Brian Beatty:So we've wrapped up another episode of restoring the soul. We want you to know that restoring the soul is so much more than a podcast. In fact, the heart of what we have done for nearly 20 years is intensive counseling. When you can't wait months or years to get out of the rut you're in our intensive counseling programs in Colorado, allow you to experience deep change and half day blocks over two weeks. To learn more, visit restoring the soul.com That's restoring the soul.com