Hey, everybody, I'm Michael John Cusick. Welcome to another episode of the Restoring the Soul podcast. Today we are talking about the idea of devotions, quiet times, whatever you may call it. But I'm wondering for our listeners and the reason we're having this conversation is if people have ever struggled having a quiet time. Have people ever felt guilty or ashamed that they don't have a regular devotion or that they struggle to do that? Or maybe even wondered, why bother? I go to church, I may listen to podcasts. But is there really any substantive reason to have a devotion or a quiet time? And I want to share some of my story during the episode today and my love hate relationship with devotions, quiet times, et cetera, maybe give some new language and a little bit of a framework as we then launch into a series of different episodes that actually flesh out why have a devotion, why have a quiet time? So let me start with my story. I became a follower of Jesus in 1980, pretty dramatic conversion, if you will, where for the first time in my life, at age 16, through the ministry of young life, I heard that God loved me, that Jesus died on the cross for my sins. And here's what I was given as a brand new disciple. And it was, here's what it means to now be a Christian. To be a Christian is to have a quiet time. And to have a quiet time is to take roughly 30 minutes. And the implication was that less than 30 minutes is less spiritual, more than 30 minutes is more spiritual and that you're to read your Bible, that you're to pray and that that prayer was a formula of Acts, the acronym Acts adoration confession, Thanksgiving, supplication. And I was also encouraged to memorize scripture and things like that, but every day to pray. And I was to pray for others and I was to pray for myself, to grow in my faith and in particular that I was in the confession part meant to bring my sins and struggles before God. And I was very passionate about this. I was committed to this. I've shared in other contexts that I even had a clipboard. I was a pretty disciplined person in high school and I had a clipboard with all of these aspects of spiritual disciplines there. And what happened eventually is that I began to ask the question, why am I doing this? Again, because there were struggles in my life that were sexual struggles, that were lust struggles, that was part of what became an addiction. There was a lot of shame in my life because of unaddressed abuse and trauma. And ultimately what I was doing was trying to have a devotion in order to have God bless me. And I deep inside, although I couldn't articulate it at the time, I had a sense that if I was faithful in having a devotion every day, as I called it then that God would love me, that God would like me, that God would be more accepting, that he would have a smile on his face as opposed to a frown. And that motivation that was really driven by shame and some desire to please God, that motivation began to wane. And as my struggles increased, eventually my disciplines decreased. And as I've been a therapist doing intensive counseling, as I've talked with people all around the country, as I walk with a group of men in my own formation and in my own transformational work and recovery work, I find that people struggle to sustain a spiritual practice. And so I'm going to talk about devotions in terms of this catch all phrase that I was given in a quiet time, in terms of this catch all phrase that was given. But then I want to offer some different language that I think fits culturally today in a way that aligns with people's hearts. But more than that, it gives us a deeper understanding for the why of shaping our life with some kind of rhythm. And for some people, this may be a conversation that they're like, oh, well, I kind of understand why I should be doing this. I have no struggle with this. And I would encourage you to listen anyway, because there may be parts of this conversation that could help you to even go deeper. But for those that are struggling and for those that feel less than or inadequate because they don't have some version of a devotion or a quiet time, I want to say to you that God doesn't love you any. Less. That God is not concerned with your performance. That God is not up in heaven pacing back and forth wringing his hands because you're not faithfully reading the Bible or praying or having a set aside time. This conversation and all the ensuing conversations are really about how you can engage your heart. And I want to start by just reading a passage from The Message, which is The Paraphrase of the Scriptures in Modern English by Eugene Peterson. It's Matthew, chapter eleven, verses 28 through 30. And in the more traditional passages, it's known as are you tired? Are you weary? Come to me, all you who are heavy laden. My yoke is easy, my burden is light. And here's the paraphrase are you tired? Worn out, burned out on religion? Come to me, get away with me, and you'll recover your life. I'll show you how to take a real rest. Walk with me and work with me. Watch how I do it. Learn the unforced rhythms of grace. I won't lay anything heavy or ill fitting on you. Keep company with me and you'll learn to live freely and lightly. What I want to draw attention to there is the second verse where the invitation of Jesus is not okay, you're a follower of mine now, or you've become a Christian or you've prayed some prayer. He doesn't say, have a quiet time every day and pray. He says, come to me, come to me. Get away with me, and you'll recover your life. And the context of this is by him seeing, and we talk a lot about seeing and being seen here on the restoring the soul podcast. This whole passage is all immersed in this context of Jesus saying, I see you. I see you, my children, my beloved. The ones that I look at, I don't look down upon, I don't condescend. I don't wrinkle up my face. I don't judge you. I'm here. I welcome you to come to me in the context of our weariness, our tiredness, our worn outness, and then this curious phrase, our burned outness on religion. This morning, as I was kind of starting my day doing my own spiritual rhythm and practice, I found myself in Isaiah, chapter one, and it was actually in the message. And the paraphrase of that is pretty remarkable. And god is like, I don't need your stinking religious sacrifices. And he's talking to the Hebrews, and he's basically saying, it's not the stuff that you do, it's your heart that I want. I remember, might be the king James translation, but god actually says, your sacrifices and your religious rituals stink in my nostrils. So the starting point for this whole conversation about why have devotions is that god doesn't want our performance. God doesn't want us to jump through a hoop. He doesn't want our ritual. He doesn't want our sacrifice, the sacrifice of 30 minutes or 60 minutes. God gives us the gift of being able to have rhythms in our life, disciplines and practices to feed ourselves. It's the idea of having to get up and eat a stale power bar and throw down a cold cup of coffee before we hop in the car and go to work versus your favorite breakfast laid out on the table for you, and all you need to do is to sit down. So this conversation around why have devotions is really immersed in this invitation of Jesus to come, to come to Him, to be with Him so that we can recover our life. Of course, Jesus is life, and as we come to him, we experience recovery, we experience restoration. And what that looks like as we talk about that on the restoring the soul podcast, is that we get our heart back. We become who we are meant to be. The bondage, the burdens, the addiction, the trauma, the shame, the lies, all that gets lost as we live in this broken world that can be repaired, that can be restored. As I frequently quote Dallas, willard said that one of the most magnificent things about a human being is that we're capable of restoration because of God's love and because of his work in our life, and a restoration that somehow makes us more magnificent precisely because we've been ruined. That's a mind blowing thought if you think about it. So the very first idea that I want to introduce is that we have devotions. Not to fill our head with more knowledge although there's a place for that. I would argue that it's important to learn the story of God from Genesis to Revelation. I would argue that it's important to know some of the history, the context and the culture when Jesus lived that can inform our soul and our hearts. It's important to know the commandments and the instruction that God has given us to live well and what it means for our hearts to align with Him. But the very first thing is our devotional life. Our spiritual disciplines, our spiritual practices are not to earn anything. It's to posture our hearts in a way so that, as Henry now and said we make space for God the God who's already dwelling within us. We make space for Him and it's our opportunity to come to Him. The second thing I would say in regard to why have devotions? Is not answering the why question but the what first, what does it mean to actually have devotions? It's important for people to know at the very start that we change, we grow and we engage with God in idiosyncratic ways. We are all different people. And one of the problems in that early stage of my faith at age 16 was that the way my brain worked with ADHD, the way that my trauma was in place in my body, so that because of dissociation and numbness, I wasn't feeling anything at all or my brain would be shut down because I couldn't sit still, because I was restless. The traditional quiet time didn't work for me. It initially worked well because I think as a brand new follower of Jesus at the age of 16 I found those quiet times and those devotions as a way to have a space and a place and a time to sit down. It was almost as if as my body began to feel just a little bit safe, and as I began to feel that I was somehow welcome to come to God, it was then that what was buried, what had been suppressed started to come up over time. And the shame started to whisper in my ear. And I really began to believe that there was no effect. The quiet times weren't doing anything, the devotions weren't doing anything and I began to wonder what's the point? And so for those who say I just find it hard to sit still the hope is there's ways for you to come to Jesus. And of course, it's funny that I'm saying that the Come to Jesus moment maybe we could call this podcast What Does It Mean to have a Come to Jesus Moment? But if you're not the kind of person that can sit still and concentrate there's hope and alternatives. You have to ask the question, what is the way that you can connect with your heart and become aware of the presence of God in your life? And maybe for you that's walking. And as you walk, you pray, or as you walk, you have a picture of God in your head or you have an image or word or phrase from scripture with you. Maybe it's just an awareness or a mindfulness of God at a certain time in a certain way. I know people who literally a dear friend who he can't pay attention and remember things that he reads unless he's standing and walking. So in his office or in his living room, he'll stand and he'll just step forward and back, step forward and back, side to side, maybe take a couple of steps and then walk backwards. And it took him a while to learn that that's what he needed to do and it took him a while to have permission to do that. So the third point that I want to make here, if the first is that devotions practices, disciplines, et cetera, have a purpose, it's simply to come to Jesus and to cultivate the oneness and the relationship with Him that he's already given us. The second thing to be aware of is that it's got to be tuned into and considerate of our style, our energy, the way our mind works, the way that we learn, the way that we grow. Some people that are couples, they go out to a sporting event and they need to have a lot of noise and excitement and kind of the drama of the game for them to enjoy time together. Myself and Julianne, at our age, we tend to get overstimulated very quickly in loud spaces. So when we have a date or when we go to spend time together, we'll often do that where it's more quiet or where we just do a walk around the neighborhood. And that's a way to connect. And of course, any human relationship is not exactly parallel to our relationship with God. But the sensibility that we need to think about is if I only relate to my wife by sitting down for 30 minutes every morning and reading a list, that relationship is never going to go very deep. But if I try to say, how would I cultivate a relationship with Julianne or a close friend? That's actually important in terms of how we cultivate our relationship with God. So this why have devotion question or the guilt or the shame or the sense of inadequacy or ineptness or I don't measure upness that's oftentimes because we're not asking these questions. We're trying to grasp for something that's not about coming to Jesus. It's. As was the case for me. In this devotion or quiet time I'm going to somehow find a secret key that will turn the lock, that will open the door, that will give me this life with God, that will make my life great, this life. With God that will somehow connect this gap between what I believe and what was promised to me about the Christian life, but what my life is actually like on the other side of the gap. And if that becomes the goal, I'm going to be frustrated. And if that's the goal to try to come to God to fix your life, you're going to be frustrated. And it's not that God doesn't, quote, fix our life or restore or transform or repair, but it happens indirectly as we come for the sake of the relationship. So if you've listened to this podcast, you know that I can be Mr. Macro and think on a very high level and really big. And what I want to do for our listeners is to boil this down to something practical. So the third kind of point or idea here today is to take an assessment. And I often ask a question of people as I'm doing counseling or therapy or spiritual direction that's really simple. And many people tell me, I've never thought of this. And here's the question how do you or where do you most deeply connect with God or feel your spiritual sense of self? Where or how do you feel a connection to your spiritual center to say that a little bit more Christianly? Where or how do you connect with God? And I remember the first time that I was asked this question. It was by a female spiritual director. And I had had a male spiritual director for a period of time and then this was a woman. And it was a profound shift for me because of how I experienced more of the maternal, loving aspect of God's heart. And she said to me, where do you most connect with God? And I immediately answered, I was training for a half marathon at the time. And I immediately answered, well, that's easy. I connect with God on the treadmill. I don't even intend to think about God. But as I'm running and I get into this physical rhythm of left right, left right, which I didn't know at the time, but that was simulating the bilateral stimulation of EMDR and trauma healing. And as my endorphins started going and as I'm looking straight ahead, I just start to pray and I start to feel connected to love, and I start to feel alive. So where do you most connect with God? She said. And I said, that's easy during running, but that doesn't really count. I continued because that's not prayer and that's not spiritual. And I went on for a few minutes to justify why the time on the treadmill wasn't really prayer. And she waited until I was done. And then she paused and she said, where did you ever get the idea that when you're running on the treadmill and you're thinking of God and feeling his presence and you feel alive and awake, that that's not prayer? That that's not spiritual. And so the question is, where do you naturally connect with God? That may be at a place when you're having a really good cup of coffee in a coffee shop with your journal and you're trying to write a novel, or you're writing about an assignment that your therapist gave you. Or it might be when you're sitting on your deck watching the birds and the trees, and it's quote, non spiritual. So where is it that you naturally would connect with God? And then when you try to connect with God, what are the things that have worked for you? And I'm putting work in quotes, like what allows you to center, to relax, to rest? And are there times and places where you've tried to connect with God? And it feels like, well, this ain't working. It almost never works for me if I sit down in a place where there's no light, if I don't have light shining in from outdoors, and it doesn't have to be sunny. In the last month, we've had rain every day here in Denver. But if I'm in a dark room, or if I'm in a room where there's not a lot of windows, there's something in my body, it makes it difficult to settle and to access the spiritual and to be present to the presence of God there. So I'm being a little redundant with this question, but that's the starting point. So I want to encourage you to focus on the idea of devotions before you get into the what or how long or what's right, what's wrong, that this is all about coming to Jesus to recover our life, simply to be with Him. Of course, there's different ways that we can do that. There's different activities and practices that we can do. The second thing is that everybody's different with what works for them, and don't try to fit into the mold of what you were told. Thirdly, to question and to ask, what is the way that I connect with God? I believe in the spiritual disciplines, but for many people, the word discipline is kind of flexing my muscle, and it's so correlated to willpower as opposed to willingness. So this is all about willingness instead of willpower and showing up. I invite you to join me on the journey as we're going to be exploring things like Lectio Devina Centering prayer, a practice that over the last two years, I've learned about, called Via Devina, which is the way of pilgrimage, which can include an hour long hike or an international trip. For pilgrimage, we're going to be talking about prayer and what that means maybe outside of the box of what you were taught, but inside the teaching of Jesus who simply says, come to me, come to me. I'll end with this thought. My friend Philip Yancey, who's a friend of our podcast, and many people know of his writings for the last 40 years about suffering and walking with God and grace. Philip once said in a sermon that I heard that if he were to define the gospel in the simplest way possible, that it would come down to two words. The gospel is simply Jesus saying, come closer. Come closer. So as we explore these different ways of being with God and answering the question, why have devotions? Why bother? It's ultimately about Christ, God in the flesh saying to you and to me, come closer.