Dan Allender has spent thirty years doing work most people would rather not look at — and in this first of two conversations, he and Michael go there together. Dan is a psychologist, professor at The Seattle School, and the author of The Wounded Heart, among many others. Michael first encountered his work in 1989, at one of Dan's conferences, in a season when his own double life had just come undone. That history is present in every minute of this conversation.

They talk about why sexual brokenness isn't a category that belongs only to people who've experienced abuse — it belongs to all of us. They explore what lust actually means: not just desire, but desire as relief and as revenge. They discuss the ways women bear the image of God differently than men, and what that has to do with misogyny and the #metoo movement. And Dan talks about shame not as the wound, but as the thing that — when we stop running from it — leads us back toward God.

Part two continues the conversation.

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As part of our Soul Care Summer, we're revisiting a conversation that's stayed with many listeners. Somewhere along the way, many of us picked up the idea that God can only look at us through gritted teeth, or worse, has to look away. Brad Jersak joins Michael to gently dismantle that picture, showing that the ache of feeling far from God was never God's doing.

The conversation moves through a recovering addict's encounter with pure light, Cornelius in the book of Acts, and a fresh reading of Psalm 22, all pointing toward the same conviction, that the cross reveals a Father who stays present even in humanity's deepest cry of abandonment. Brad's higher Christology, it turns out, only widens the reach of Abba's love.

Brad Jersak is an author and teacher based in Abbotsford, British Columbia, and serves as a reader and monastery preacher at All Saints of North America Orthodox Monastery. He previously joined Restoring the Soul in 2017 to discuss A More Christlike God, and returned to discuss In: Incarnation and Inclusion, Abba and Lamb.

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Michael continues his conversation with Dr. Curt Thompson, picking up where last week left off. There's a tender ache running underneath the neuroscience here — the ten-year-old boy on a summer evening, looking for permission to just be a kid, and the mother who couldn't see it. Most of us carry some version of that missed look, and Curt names how the body remembers what the mind can't always explain.

From there, the conversation moves into the architecture behind that ache: the domains of consciousness and body, the difference between sensing and making sense, and why the left and right hemispheres were never meant to compete. Curt weaves in Scripture, his clinical work, and his own story to show how attention, attunement, and embodied presence shape not just our relationships but our capacity to receive love itself.

Dr. Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist, author of Anatomy of the Soul and The Soul of Shame, and a leading voice on the intersection of neuroscience and spiritual formation. This conversation is drawn from his 12-part video series, offered in conjunction with his book, The Soul of Desire, published by InterVarsity Press.

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You were made for beauty and goodness. You feel that, even on the hardest days. What neuroscience is beginning to show us is that this longing isn't incidental. It's written into the architecture of how you were made.

In this conversation, psychiatrist and author Curt Thompson opens up the world of interpersonal neurobiology and what it has to do with the soul, how the mind is not the brain but something that emerges between bodies and relationships, how 80 to 85 percent of a newborn's neural networks can only develop in response to someone paying attention, and what it means that God started with dirt before he breathed in life. Curt also brings his own story, the parts of his inner orchestra that never got developed, and why the gospel doesn't just want the polished instruments.

This is a rebroadcast of one of the most beloved conversations in the show's history.

Dr. Curt Thompson is a psychiatrist and author of Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections Between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships.

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Most people picture narcissism as loud, obvious, and easy to spot. The research says otherwise — and so does the Enneagram.

In this second conversation with Chuck DeGroat, Michael and Chuck work through all nine Enneagram types and the unique way narcissism hides inside each one: the nine's quiet, invisible anger; the two's helpfulness that quietly demands to be needed; the three's stage self that performs even in the counseling room; the seven's flight from anything that feels like limitation. Beneath every number, Chuck argues, the same question is lurking — do you see me, and am I enough? — and the answer we've constructed to cope with that question is where narcissism takes root.

They also talk about what it looks like to hold a narcissistic person without becoming reactive, and why real change — when it happens — is always slow and always looks more like yeast in bread than sudden transformation.

Chuck DeGroat is a professor, counselor, and author of When Narcissism Comes to Church: Healing Your Community from Emotional and Spiritual Abuse.

Click here to listen to Part One of Chuck's conversation with Michael.

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There are at least three wrong ways to write about heaven, and Brian Zahnd spent his new book carefully avoiding all of them — too sentimental, too sensational, too escapist to bother caring about the world right in front of us.

In this conversation, Brian and Michael talk about why heaven isn't a far-off destination but a realm woven through the space between every atom of this one, and why love and wonder might be the most reliable hints we get of its nearness. Brian shares the mystical moment in Rocky Mountain National Park that reshaped his understanding of the incarnation and makes the case that a faith stripped of transcendence eventually collapses into mere politics — however well-intentioned.

They also talk about pilgrimage, the discipline of praying written prayers, and why so many people are having real spiritual experiences with no idea where it's safe to talk about them.

Brian Zahnd is a pastor of forty-four years and author of Unseen Existences: Of Heaven, Earth, and the Divine Mystery in All Things.

Find Brian Zahnd online here.

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For decades, the church's answer to struggling marriages has been clear: pray more, submit more, give him what he needs. Sheila Wray Gregoire's research asked a different question: What if the advice itself is the problem?

Drawing on a survey of 20,000 women, the largest ever done on Christian women's marital and sexual satisfaction, Sheila lays out what the data actually shows: a stark gap between men's and women's experiences, the quiet damage done by teaching women that sex is only his need, and why so many couples reach intercourse on their wedding night only to wonder if something is broken in her. She makes the case, gently but firmly, that if a teacher consistently produces bad fruit, the teacher's teaching deserves a second look.

This is a rebroadcast of a 2021 conversation that remains one of the most meaningful in the show's history.

Sheila Wray Gregoire is a researcher and author of The Great Sex Rescue.

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We can know we are loved and still not be able to let it in. The gap between believing something and feeling it in the body is not a faith problem — it's a physiological one.

In this second conversation with Aundi Kolber, Michael and Julianne press deeper into what it actually takes to change: why being loved is not just a comfort but a biological prerequisite for growth, why asking someone to change before they feel safe is, in Aundi's word, cruel, and what it means to come home to yourself rather than keep fleeing from what hurts. Aundi also draws a line between the shame that keeps us stuck and the compassion that actually moves us — and why God is calling us home, not calling us out.

This is a rebroadcast of one of the most-listened-to conversations in the show's ten-year history.

Aundi Kolber is a licensed therapist and author of Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us Out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival and Into a Life of Connection and Joy.

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Most of us were taught, somewhere along the way, that the answer to pain is to push through it. Try harder. White-knuckle it. And for a long time, that worked — until it didn't.

Aundi Kolber wrote Try Softer as a love letter to her younger self, and in this conversation with Michael and Julianne Cusick, she unpacks what it actually means to pay compassionate attention to your own experience — not as self-indulgence, but as the very thing Jesus modeled in taking on a body. They explore why our survival strategies stop serving us long after the danger has passed, how embodiment is the missing piece in most approaches to emotional and spiritual growth, and why the command to love your neighbor as yourself may be more demanding than it first appears.

This is a rebroadcast of one of the most-listened-to conversations in the show's ten-year history.

Aundi Kolber is a licensed therapist and author of Try Softer: A Fresh Approach to Move Us Out of Anxiety, Stress, and Survival and Into a Life of Connection and Joy.

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Most people who know the five love languages have tried speaking their partner's language — and wondered why it still isn't working. The problem usually isn't the language. It's something underneath it.

Dr. Gary Chapman returns with new research showing how personality, empathy, and the subtle dialects within each love language determine whether love actually lands. In this conversation, he and Michael explore why speaking someone's love language can backfire if it runs against their personality, what it looks like to confuse encouragement with pressure, and why the most important question in a marriage might be as simple as "How can I make your life easier?"

At 88 years old, Chapman also shares the turning point in his own marriage — a vision of Jesus washing his disciples' feet that changed not his technique, but his posture.

Dr. Gary Chapman is a marriage counselor, pastor, and author of The Five Love Languages, which has sold over 20 million copies worldwide, and his newest book, The Love Language That Matters Most.

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Shame doesn't only live in the dark corners of a broken life. It lives just as quietly in the person everyone else envies — the one who has achieved everything and still wakes up feeling like it isn't enough.

Ken Shigematsu grew up moving between Japan, England, and Canada, carrying the weight of a shame-and-honor culture that most Western theology never addresses. In this conversation, he and Michael explore why deep grace is different from knowing grace is true, what it means to grow our capacity to actually receive love rather than deflect it, and why beauty and joy aren't spiritual extras — they are among the most direct routes out of shame and into the self God made.

Ken also shares the simple daily practice that, over 30 days, can literally rewire the neural networks that make it hard to feel loved by God — even when you believe it.

Ken Shigematsu is a pastor in Vancouver, Canada, and author of Now I Become Myself: How Deep Grace Heals Our Shame and Restores Our True Self.

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