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Exploring 6 Characteristics of Waiting to Prompt Wisdom from God and Gain Invaluable Peace
Throughout our lives, we experience countless periods of waiting. Some moments are mere nuisances—others are daunting seasons filled with intense worry and doubt. We grow impatient by immovable traffic or crave an impending answer to a medical condition. Whatever our current circumstances, our innate response is to take action rather than stay still.
In Waiting Isn't a Waste, author Mark Vroegop calls believers to resist the human urge for control and lean on Christ for comfort while we wait for the uncertainties of life to unfold. Vroegop explores what it means to wait on God through 6 important characteristics—waiting is hard, common, biblical, slow, commanded, and relational. This book not only teaches listeners how to wait on God but inspires them to embrace waiting—for it prompts wisdom from God and brings invaluable peace to the present.
- Written for Christians in Seasons of Waiting: Those struggling with anxiety, discouragement, or weariness as they wait
- Explores 6 Characteristics of Waiting: Waiting is hard, common, biblical, slow, commanded, and relational
- Written by Mark Vroegop: Author of Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy, which was named the ECPA 2020 Christian Book of the Year
When life gets hard, does what we think we believe hold us up, or does it crumble under the weight of doubt? I'm your host, Dr. Lee Warren- I'm a brain surgeon, author, and a person who's seen some stuff and wondered where God is in all this mess. This is The Spiritual Brain Surgery podcast, where we'll take a hard look at what we believe, why we believe it, and the neuroscience behind how our minds and our brains can smash together with faith to help us become healthier, feel better, and be happier so we can find the hope to withstand anything life throws at us. You've got questions, and we're going to do the hard work to find the answers, but you can't change your life until you change your mind, and it's gonna take some spiritual-brain surgery to get it done. So let's get after it.
Good morning, my friend. Dr. Lee Warren here with you, and I'm so excited and
honored to be back with you.
It's Tuesday, and we are doing some spiritual brain surgery today with my friend Mark Vrogop.
Mark is a pastor, and he is the author of one of my favorite books and one of
the most important books I've ever read of all time, Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy,
which was a book that was really helpful in clarifying my thinking around learning
how to communicate the language of lament and learn how to pray and lament after we lost Mitch.
I quoted Mark extensively in my book, Hope is the First Dose,
and he was kind enough to endorse it. He's been on the show two times before.
His son, Hayden, has been on the show. We've got quite a connection with Mark,
and I think you're gonna love getting to know him if you haven't heard him before.
But the reason Mark's back today is he's got a new book, and it's coming out today.
You got a chance to hear all about his new book, which is called Waiting Isn't
Waste. This is a powerful book. I've highlighted more than is not highlighted
in the book already, and you can get it today anywhere books are sold.
In the book, Mark explores six characteristics of waiting to prompt wisdom from
God and gain invaluable peace.
As we go through our lives, we all go through long periods of waiting.
Some of them are kind of irritating, and others are daunting and devastating.
We just don't know what to do. We're filled with worry and doubt,
and we grow impatient. patient and we find ways that our lives just seem like
they're never going to, the thing we're hoping for is never going to come to
pass. So whatever your current circumstance is,
If your innate response has been to take action rather than to stay still,
which is sort of like my core value, it seems some way, then you will find Mark's
book to be immensely helpful.
It's a call to believers to resist the human urge for control and lean on Jesus
for comfort while we wait for the uncertainties of life to unfold.
He gives us six characteristics of waiting. He's going to go through them in
the podcast episode that we're about to hear.
It's written for Christians in seasons of waiting. It's written for anybody
who feels stuck, and it will be really helpful to you.
I'm so excited to be back with my friend, Mark Vrogop, here on Spiritual Brain
Surgery today, and I think it's going to bless you. We do have three copies of the book to give away.
You'll hear instructions as to how to receive one of those three copies later
in the episode, so pay attention for that.
I'll just remind you, if you email me and you don't give me your mailing address
or your zip code, or you don't include the complete mailing address,
you will not be chosen. as one of the winners.
Please, we don't have the ability to reach out to you if you forget to give us the address.
And also, one caveat from the publisher, these books can only be mailed to United
States physical addresses.
They can't be mailed to post office boxes, and unfortunately,
they can't be mailed overseas per instructions from the publisher.
So if you're interested in one of Mark's books, just please listen for the instructions
at the end of the episode, and we will hopefully be able to choose your name
as one of the winners of the three giveaway copies of Waiting Isn't a Waste.
It's time to have an incredible conversation with my friend,
Mark Rogop. Let's get after it.
Welcome to the Spiritual Brain Surgery Podcast. I'm Dr.
Lee Warren, your host, as we examine what we believe, why we believe it,
how we can defend it, live it, and share it with others.
We use faith and science to smash together to release the incredible power of
learning how how we're designed, operate our brains, manage our minds,
communicate with our creator, and help other people find hope.
Music.
Friend, we're back, and I'm so excited to be back with a friend that you've
met a couple of times before on the podcast.
We've got Mark Vrogep with us today. Pastor Mark, welcome back to the show.
Man, Lee, it is so great to be back with you and have great conversations as
always with you. So thanks for having me on.
I'm excited. And I've got to tell you, you're in pretty rare company.
The only other people who have been on this show three times are Philip Yancey,
Max Licato, and Daniel Ammon.
Wow. Whoa, man. Nothing like setting your interviewee up with a lot of pressure. I'm feeling it, man.
I'm so thankful. Yeah. I better say something really profound.
Absolutely. You will. You're going to. Get us off in prayer.
Well, God, we thank you for the grace that's available to us on this day.
And thank you that your gospel unites us.
Even though Lee and I have never met in person, we have so much in common,
both in you and in hardship and in the application of your grace.
And so we pray that our conversation today might be helpful and edifying to
those who are listening.
It might be an encouragement and just help someone take one more step in following
you well today. In Jesus name. Amen.
Amen. Thank you, brother. So Mark is the author of the book that taught me the
most about how to pray when you're hurting.
It came later than I wish it had. We lost our son in 2013, and your book came out in 2020.
But I learned, as I've said to you before, and on this show,
I learned a new language that I had been grappling with for a long time and
how to put the words around it when you taught me about lament.
So Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy continues to be, Mark, one of those books that's
just deeply transformative for me and for which I'm so grateful.
Everybody on this show, everybody that listens to this show has heard me talk
about you a million times. But maybe just give us a 30,000-foot overview of
your life and your work and all that before we get into your new book.
Yeah, sure. So I'm married to my wife, Sarah, now over 30 years.
We have four children, three adult sons that are married, two grandkids from our two oldest.
And we have a daughter who's 18 and launching this summer.
I've been the pastor of College Park Church in Indianapolis for the last 16
years, which means that, you know, if anything's wrong with the church,
it's probably my fault in one way or another.
It's been a great community of people and love, love just bringing the word
each week to folks that I know and love.
And, yeah, started writing in 2014 or 15.
And first foray into that was on the subject of lament, a little bit about our
own journey with the loss of our daughter in 2004.
And yeah, since then, I've tried to apply lament in different spaces and doing
some writing in some other ways.
And I'm happy to be a follower of Jesus on the journey, trying to figure out
how do we make it until he returns.
Amen. Well, you've done that beautifully. And, you know, there's so many lines
from Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy that have resonated with me and that I even quoted
in my last book, which you were so kind to endorse and even had your son on the podcast.
And Mark reached out and had introduced me to his son, Hayden.
We had him on the podcast last year.
And so we've had some connections. And you're right, we've never met in the flesh.
But the DNA of the kingdom family doesn't depend on people being in the same place, does it?
It's awesome. So great. It is awesome. And I would love to say it this way.
I can't wait to hear about your new book because it's about waiting.
So tell us a little bit about how you came to write this incredible new book.
Waiting isn't a waste, Mark.
Well, I wrote it because I stink at waiting.
And I just in the last couple of years, you know, with the pandemic and all
of the layers of complexity that we were living through, both culturally and
within the context of the church.
I found myself in all kinds of gap moments that were really uncomfortable, exhausting.
And I was like, I don't do this well.
And as I began to explore that, began to realize that waiting is a theme that's
all throughout the Bible.
It's something that God invites us to. It's what Christians are doing right now.
And I wanted to get better at learning how to wait on the Lord.
So I decided to do an in-depth study on it, preach a couple sermons on it,
and then eventually now have produced this book to try and help all of us learn
how to live on what we know to be true about God when we don't know what's true about our lives.
And that's the goal of the book, help us to not waste our waiting.
That's a beautiful line. In fact, that's the line I'd highlighted to start this conversation with.
Waiting is what we know to be true about God when we don't know what's true
about our lives. And it's funny, you and your publicist emailed me a few weeks
ago and said, hey, I've got a new book coming out.
Would you consider helping it out with the launch on the podcast?
And I started reading the book, and it was about, I don't know,
3.15 or 3.30 in the morning.
One morning I was reading your book, and you talk about your name in Dutch,
where the name Vroegep came from, and what does it mean?
Yeah, I mean, it's just kind of a funny reality that I, you know,
everybody, I think, doesn't like to wait, right?
But I think it's uniquely challenging because of my personality,
my drive, and also even my last name.
So the name Vrogop is Dutch, and in the 1800s, Napoleon required Dutch people
to get last names. Previously, they were known like son of, son of.
And so Dutch folks choose fairly practical names.
Like if you make shoes, your name was Schumacher. Or if you are a steward, your name was Meyer.
And the name Vroegop literally means early up.
So in Dutch, I'm Mr. Early Up. And it just cracks me up because think of my
great, great, great, great, great grandfather.
Father he could have chosen any name that he wanted like you
know slow sabbath keeper likes to rest you
know whatever no he he was probably i
think making a statement like hey we get up early like
we're gonna get after it and so from my early age
of as a child uh the idea of getting up early working hard um that was just
part of both my upbringing and a little bit part of kind of my dutch background
so i i don't think waiting is harder for me than anybody else i just think that
but my last name indicates that I'm not going to waste a lot of time,
but I do waste a lot of waiting.
I was reading that it's 3.30 in the morning. I'm reading it, Mark, early up.
And I realized I text messaged you and said, hey, I think we might be brothers.
And then Lisa was like, you shouldn't text people at 3.30 in the morning. I said, I bet he's up.
Yeah, and I actually was. Thankfully, there was a couple hour time difference.
And I was like, whoa, if I'm up at this time, wow, you're crazy early up. So, yeah.
Well, let's talk about waiting. I mean, so the book is called Waiting Isn't
a Waste, The Surprising Comfort of Trusting God and the Uncertainties of Life.
And what are some of the uncertainties we're dealing with right now,
just culturally and in the church and in life?
What are some of the things that are going on that we find ourselves needing to wait through?
I mean, you know, every day there's opportunities in small ways, right?
You wait in traffic. You're waiting for a callback from a doctor.
You're waiting for, you know, adult children to make decisions.
You're waiting on a pregnancy.
You're waiting on a job offer. You're waiting on a college acceptance,
waiting on reconciliation with a loved one, waiting.
Yeah, one of our pastors right now is a family member that's in hospice and
they're waiting for the person to go home.
So humanity involves a ton of waiting.
And the Christian life, by definition, is a life of waiting.
What are we doing right now? We're waiting for Christ to return.
And so there's all kinds of these uncomfortable gap moments that are baked into
our life and into our spiritual formation. and part of the vision of the book
is to help us to realize, hey, this is normal.
It's really hard, but it's also really good.
And is there a way for us to use these moments instead of just either resisting
them at worst or just not being even aware of the opportunity that's in front of us?
How can we actually capitalize our waiting instead of thinking I should just
be minimizing waiting in every area of my life?
That's right. And there's this notion biblically that runs throughout all of
Scripture that when we feel like we're waiting or nothing's happening,
that God's always actively doing something.
We just can't see it. So you've identified sort of six characteristics of what
biblical waiting looks like.
Like kind of maybe just unpack the highlights of those six ideas. he is.
Yeah, those form kind of the chapters of the book where I identify some pretty,
you know, rather obvious things.
Like, I don't think my book is like revelatory. I think it's just putting voice
to what we all experience, that waiting is hard.
I mean, it's not easy. So it's designed to be a compassionate pastoral,
hey, I'm coming alongside you.
Waiting is common, like it's all throughout life.
Waiting is biblical. Like you said, it's all throughout the scriptures. It's It's also slow.
And one of my favorite passages, Psalm 40, I waited patiently for the Lord.
I unpack what does it mean to wait patiently?
Waiting is commanded. It's not something that's optional. We're told to wait
and not just like to view waiting as something that's passive or coming at me
or something that I have to receive.
But no, I'm commanded to wait.
And then also waiting is relational. What does it look like to help each other
as we experience various seasons of waiting?
There's a huge opportunity for the church to step into one another's lives,
realizing that there are a lot of people who are really wrestling with gap moments
in their life. And they just they need some help.
Amen. And our culture really makes this harder right now. For the first time
in history, we literally can know everything.
We can connect with anyone instantaneously. So that makes it harder, doesn't it?
Oh, man. And you know, I think waiting has always been hard.
But I do think in our present context, there's a greater incentivization or
even monetization for reducing waiting.
It even becomes a bit of a status symbol, right?
If there's a long line, you get to skip the line and get in the VIP line or
the select line or the blue ribbon line, whatever that is.
That's pretty awesome. We celebrate fast food restaurants whose drive through
or the vehicle hardly even stops rolling.
And even online, we've got the click of a button and you can have products at
your house in one to two days.
Or if you have a question, you pick up your phone and you just do a search.
We are becoming accustomed to, I think, a very unusual thing historically,
which is we don't have to wait in ways that our ancestors had.
And as a result, I think we're developing a mindset that waiting is abnormal.
It should be resisted. And when it comes to our spiritual lives,
we're often unaccustomed to what it is that God might want to do through this
season that's not turning out like I thought it was going to.
That's right. And I think it's interesting, you know, my last book was about
hope and that spring out of loss.
And you and I have talked about this before, but the biblical model of how hope
is kind of manufactured has to do with waiting through hard times and getting
the strength to do so by remembering that God's done this before.
He's never not working on our behalf and then kind of moving towards what he's
going to do in the future.
So maybe unpack that a little bit. How are waiting and hope tied together scripturally?
Yeah, biblically, they're actually the same thing.
And I just want to repeat that for your listeners. In the Bible,
waiting and hope are the same thing.
Like the translators render the same word for wait as hope.
And even the Hebrew word for hope has waiting in it. So one of the words is kavah.
That's the word for wait. And the word hope is tikavah. And so,
what's fascinating is that in the Bible, to wait means that I'm in this position
and I'm looking with hope.
I'm looking outside of myself, outside of my circumstances.
I'm in this gap land and I'm serving as a watchman.
I'm waiting for the hope that I am longing for to come my direction.
And yet, so for so many of us in our present situation, in our culture,
waiting is not connected to hope.
Our hope is we won't have to wait. Like it's hope and hope and bad hope and annoying.
Sorry, not hope. Wait and annoying. Wait and bad.
Those are words that go together in our culture, but in the Bible, waiting and hope.
And so the way that we waste our waiting is hoping in the wrong thing in our waiting.
We're hoping this gets over quickly. We hope we get an answer and a timeline that we want.
We hope we can regain control of our lives.
And so much of our spiritual formation is linked to the fact that waiting creates
a moment that God calls me to hope in Him.
And that's how we waste it. We're not hoping in Him. We miss the opportunity.
That's right. And it's not a waiting in despair.
It's not this passive, whoa, I hope He shows up. but that word kavah actually
has something to do with like a tension or kind of being bound up and holding
onto a rope or something, right?
There's some sort of metaphor, like hanging on. So it's an added process.
Yeah, it's both active and it involves a lot of tension.
And that was one of the really helpful discoveries of when I'm waiting,
I have this tension that's a part of the experience.
And when I discovered that the root word connected to kavah involves a cord and even a twisted cord.
So that tension is a part, it's part and parcel of what it means to wait.
So if I experience tension, it's like, oh, I'm waiting.
Like tension and hope all are a
part of the the process and so instead of like getting frustrated
that i feel tension or kind of freaked out because i
feel this tension but well yeah i'm waiting and waiting
creates tension and that tension actually can be good if i can see it that way
and embrace it uh from that perspective that's right so is it is it always wrong
to be sort of stressed or frustrated by waiting is that is that the message
that you're not supposed to feel that way no no No,
I think that that tension is built into the part of what it means for us to be human.
Because I think what's going on when we're waiting is we're out of control.
We can't fix the situation that we're in, and that creates tension.
And I think that can be something that then kind of tips us into some unhelpful
or sinful responses. responses, or we could say, wow, I feel this tension.
And this is just a reminder that I'm not as in control of my life as what I
thought I was or what I'd like to be.
And that could become an amazing spiritual platform for some really good work
that God could do if we could see tension as our ally, not as our enemy in this
moment. Like, oh, I feel tense. Well, I'm waiting.
So now it's time to transform my waiting from something that could be bad into
something that could be good.
So what are some practical ways? How can we move from this theoretical kind
of head knowledge and understanding that there's supposed to be tension?
How do we move from there to sort of just actually being able to do that?
Because it's not as easy as it sounds, right?
No, it's not. No, it's rugged and it's difficult.
So, you know, Isaiah 40 is one of the signature texts that has kind of informed
how I think about waiting, as is Psalm 25 and 27.
And in both of those texts, we see that waiting is acknowledged as something
that God works and provides strength through.
But prior to that reality, there is a focus on who God is.
So one of the things that I found to be helpful is to shift my focus from what
I don't know to what I do know about God.
And even Isaiah 40, the text that ends with, they who wait for the Lord shall renew their strength.
They'll mount up with wings like eagles." I mean, it's such a beautiful metaphor
of outstretched wings and airflow underneath.
Before that, Isaiah says, have you not known? Have you not heard?
Here's the key. The Lord is the everlasting God.
He is the creator of the ends of the earth. He does not faint or grow weary.
His understanding is unsearchable. He gives power to the faint.
To him who has no might, he increases strength.
So the key, and what I do in those moments is I just have a series of God is
statements that I remind myself.
Like Psalm 27, God is my light and my salvation. Whom shall I fear?
Here, God is the stronghold of my life. Of whom shall I be afraid?
Or here, God is the everlasting God. He is the creator of the earth.
So the key is to shift my focus from, what do I not know? Why is this taking so long?
What about this? And da, da, da. To wait, who's God?
He's the everlasting God. He's the king. He's my shepherd. The Lord's my stronghold.
And just that one step alone, it doesn't solve everything. It's not the silver bullet.
But that one step has proven to be enormously helpful for me in reducing the
amount of waiting that I waste.
I love that. And the book has some really helpful, I think there's four appendices
at the end, and one of them is just that,
like Mark has given us this list of scriptures that you can pray through,
you can count on, you can write out, you can sort of put in front of your eyes,
like all these things the Bible says about what God is, who He is, what He's doing.
Very helpful, and I love that you put that at the end. But another thing you
put at the end that I thought was really powerful was this idea of sort of mapping
previous times when we've had to wait and what we can learn from that.
So give us maybe a little walkthrough of that discipline that might be helpful
to the listener who hasn't read the book yet.
Yeah, I call it mapping God's faithfulness. I borrow that from Eugene Peterson.
And the idea is to trace the hand of God in our history and to remember what
it is that God did in another gap season.
Because part of the problem of our present waiting is we can disconnect it from
the historical works of God.
And so, yeah, in the appendices, I list out, okay, so what if we went back and
thought about what was the situation where I was waiting on the Lord?
As I look back, what was the resolution to that? How did that turn out?
What God is statement was clear in that moment.
And then what lesson could could I take from that historical experience and
pull that into my present reality?
Because the same God who was with me in the past is with me right now.
But the challenge is, is that we have very short spiritual memories and there
are amazing lessons to draw from.
And looking back at our own personal lives is a way, I think,
to help buoy our faith when we're wrestling with, can I really trust God?
Well, let's look back and see his track record.
That's exactly right. That's that memory and movement.
You put some, you put some word in your heart so you can grab onto that when
you're hurting, when you're waiting and you can remember who God is.
And that gives you the juice to be able to, to manage this tension in this time. I love it.
You tell a story towards the end about the Grand Canyon and the sunrise.
I think that'd be a, that'd be a helpful story for somebody who's waiting right now. Yeah.
So I had this dream of first of the year, like the first day of the year to
see the sunrise over the Grand Canyon. We happened to be in Arizona.
And so we traveled to the South Rim and it was crazy.
There was this massive snowfall the night before.
So the canyon was just incredible.
And I had this vision of my whole family huddled in the South Rim as the sun was coming up.
And while all of us share the the same last name, not all of us share an affection for rising early.
And so I had to say, no, look, I paid for the hotel, I paid for the trip.
This is a forced family memory. And so we got them all there with a little,
you know, some had good attitude, some were doing their best.
And we arrived, got our spot, and there was hardly anybody there.
And I was like, this is amazing.
And some is going to come up in about 20 to 30 minutes.
All of a sudden, I heard the sound of the doors of a big coach bus opening,
and all of these tourists poured out. And I was like, oh, no.
And before I know it, this beautiful moment, now we have all of these people
that we're sharing it with.
And then my daughter started getting cold, and she started shivering.
She was super uncomfortable.
And so my wife was like, look, I got to take her back to the car.
And I was like, what? No, what?
And so she took her back to the car to get warmed up as the sun's coming up.
And I had to make a decision in that moment.
Like I had this idea of what this moment was going to be like.
And it was, you know, didn't involve two busloads of tourists,
didn't involve, you know, kind of even getting boxed out of our position to
see the sun, didn't involve my daughter having cold feet, literally,
didn't involve my wife having to go back with her.
And one of the things that I think we have to wrestle with is,
you know, I almost missed the sunrise because I was so focused on what I thought
was going to be true about that moment. It was so beautiful. It was so gorgeous.
And I wish that my wife and daughter could have been there to see it.
But I almost missed it because of my disappointment.
And I think that's a good way to think about a lot of moments in our lives.
We have these ideas about how life's going to turn out.
And we can miss the moment because of what we thought life was going to be.
And I think we waste our waiting when we grab a hold of those expectations.
And part of, I think, the freedom that one can find is by releasing those expectations
and saying, well, God's in control of even this moment.
And I'm just going to trust that he's got something in store for me and not missing the sunrise.
Exactly right. I want to read you a passage in that section.
I want the listener to hear this.
There's somebody listening to this, Mark, that right now they're waiting.
Is their marriage going to be okay? Is their husband going to come back?
Is the diagnosis going to be okay? Is the tumor gone or not?
There's somebody in that moment right now because that's who listens to this
show, is people who are going through hard things.
And this is going to land on them right. So, friend, listen to Mark's words here.
There are numerous situations that come to mind where I missed a beautiful moment
because I was focused on my desires, expectations, plans, or dreams.
Disappointment or frustration has often stolen my joy. Rising in front of me
is a glorious opportunity, but I'm distracted with what isn't happening or what I don't know.
You can miss a beautiful sunrise because your expectations aren't met.
Life is full of unplanned gap moments, and it's easy to waste them.
Mark, unpack that just a little bit.
Yeah, there's just this expectation thing is a really big deal.
And we have in our heads a vision of how our lives are going to turn out or what our dreams are.
And, I mean, there's nothing wrong with those, right? I mean,
those are even good things.
Like, well, I want a good marriage. I want a child. I want to be married.
I want to be healthy. Like, all those things, they're good. Like, we should want those.
The challenge, though, is that when those things don't come in the timeframe
in which we thought, or maybe they don't come at all, it can be really easy
to so focus on what's missing and neglect what it is that we actually have.
And I think it's important for people to be able to lean into these gap moments
and realize, look, God has built gap moments because there's actually something
more important here than even good things. Even think of.
The idea of manna, you know, Israel was provided manna, and yet God designed
manna to be a daily provision. So that's daily bread.
Or as Betsy Howard says in her book, you can't buy manna in bulk, which I just love that.
You can't buy manna in bulk. What a great thing. You can't buy manna at Costco.
And that's by design because God wants us to regularly be dependent upon him.
And so I think one of the things to grab a hold of is that sometimes our expectations
don't include what God is going to do through difficulty.
And we waste our waiting because we don't see difficult seasons as part and
parcel of God's good plan for us, which it is.
But it's hard to embrace when you're in that moment. That's exactly right.
And Mark, you're a pastor. So give us some pastoral words here,
because a lot of people listening to this are not in that waiting season,
but they love somebody who is.
They're walking through a time like this with somebody who's in that moment.
So maybe help us to see how we can be caregivers to somebody else who is in
that waiting season, even if we're not right now.
That's a really good question, and I think it's a really important thing for
us to consider. because when we're waiting, we often need somebody from whom
we can borrow faith from them.
It's sort of like when you're singing in a congregation, and maybe the words
that are being sung are on the screen. You know they're true,
but they don't feel true.
And then you see somebody else, and that person, you can tell they really believe
in them in a moment, how that just kind of propels you along.
So the ability to borrow faith from one another is really important.
The need to encourage people.
I think of a couple in our church who was walking through a really complicated
foster-to-adopt situation.
And I knew they were going through court case. I mean, it was just really brutal.
And whenever I would see them on Sunday, I'd just give them a fist bump and
be like, Just keep going. You're going to make it. Keep going.
And I didn't even know what had happened that week. I was offering encouragement
that I know God's going to be with them. Or in the book, I talk about my wife
at a pretty dark moment, just telling me, Mark, God's going to help you.
He has to. He's promised.
And man, I needed that word in our sunroom in that early morning because I was
just so tired and didn't know how I was going to make it.
And so I was able to borrow faith from her or even just practical meeting of
needs. I mean, bringing a meal to somebody, or just taking them out for coffee
and checking them in, how you doing?
And not letting their waiting season being the total identity of that person,
but acknowledging, I'm sure this is hard, and I'm here with you,
just to walk with you so that you're not alone as you're waiting.
Because it can feel super lonely and super discouraging. I think this is where
the body of Christ can be enormously helpful.
That's right. And being in a seasonal waiting doesn't mean that God doesn't
love you. It doesn't mean he's turned his back on you. It doesn't mean he's forgotten about you.
Like waiting, as you said, is a normal part of the Christian walk.
It's a typical expected thing. And it's for our benefit, right? Absolutely.
Not only that, it's central to the gospel. I mean, we have Good Friday and then
a gap and then Easter Sunday, right?
So God didn't have to design it that way. Like he could have been,
you know, crucified son of God, a couple hours, and then boom, raise him from the dead.
Could have done that. Or taken him right off the cross, died and then ascension into heaven.
So these disciples are in Jerusalem and they believe we've wasted our lives and we're in danger now.
And they've killed the one who thought was the Messiah. Like everything is collapsing.
And guess what? That was exactly God's plan.
And it just depends on where you are in the story to be reminded that the emotional
perspective of the disciples on Good Friday and Saturday is so different than Sunday.
And so sometimes it's helpful to realize, oh, I'm just in this in-between moment.
And then you think of all the leaders in the Bible, like Abraham and Joseph
and the Apostle Paul and Peter and John the Baptist, Jesus, Jeremiah.
Like, there's always waiting there. And so, who are we to think,
oh, in our generation, we should have the exception for spiritual formation
and human experience to not have to wait?
Wow. This might surprise you. You know, you're a pastor.
You've been around a lot of people. But neurosurgeons are not known for patience.
I'm thankful, right? Yeah, right. We're not known for that.
And we tend to be sort of control freaks. And so we want to put our hands on everything and fix it.
And I was reading your book, and Lisa was sitting in this chair right across the room from me.
And we're drinking a cup of coffee. And I come down to 106, page 106,
and you quote Isaiah 64.4. And you said...
I'm more convinced than ever that God works for those who wait for him.
Like God works for you when you wait on him.
And I was like, okay, okay, I get it. Talk about that. Like,
I mean, that's so important.
Like you're waiting on God and he's working for you. That's so important.
Yeah, it is. And I want to be clear that not everything about the Christian life is waiting.
Like I'm thankful that you have a bent towards control because I'd want a neurosurgeon
who's It's not like, well, whatever, you know, maybe it'll work out.
I mean, I'd want a guy who's like, no, we're going to get after this, right?
And you want a pastor who's looking at a text and wants to get after what does
it mean instead of like, well, I don't know. What do you think it means?
I mean, so it's not like waiting is the sum total.
The Christian life is a blend of waiting and then working and then waiting and
working, waiting and working.
But here's the thing. I have seen God work in ways that have just been profound
when I've given him space to do his work.
So often my bias is, well, I've got to do, I've got to act, I've got to fix,
I've got to solve, I've got to research.
Like it's all up to me.
And look, I need to work. I need to research. I need to do my part.
I need to be a good steward. Like I need to redeem the time because the days are evil 100%.
That's right. But I've also seen God work in someone's heart when I was like,
you know, I need to give the Lord some time to work in this person.
I need to give the Lord time to work in the context of my church.
I need to slow down a bit.
Instead of being in, you know, fifth gear, I need to downshift and go on maybe
the second gear and then reduce the RPMs a little bit so that the Lord has opportunity to work.
I've seen him solve issues, challenges, seen him answer, seen him bring unity
that no matter how hard I would have worked, would never happen.
Bring conviction in somebody or provide an answer in a way or provide a resource
or an opportunity that was perfectly timed that in the moment seemed really weird. Like, what?
This seems, but just go fast forward four or five years.
Like, oh, wow. In fact, God saved me from, you know, really bad decisions that
I thought were amazing decisions.
And so waiting on Him, He works, and I love it when God works, so I've got to give Him,
space, kind of get out of the way and realize, no, God's doing things here.
And not just to see it as, well, I can't do anything, so now it's time to wait.
No, like even putting waiting up in the higher priority of, look,
I want to be careful that I build waiting into my decision making and even my work.
So I'm going to work and wait and work and wait. Maybe thinking of myself more like a farmer.
A farmer works hard, he plants, but then he has to wait.
He's got to To allow the natural process of plant growth to happen.
And I think that's a better maybe model for us to think about in how our spiritual
lives might grow and be benefited by that kind of perspective.
That's right. I love at the end, you give these sort of four or five or six,
I think, yeah, five, I think, sort of summaries of what happens when we're waiting.
And I think one of the most important ones that I think we overlook is everybody's
so anxious, everybody's so stressed out right now and in such a hurry.
And you said daily waiting on God helps to tame reactions and embrace peace.
That's how we find peace, learning to submit, learning to wait.
Yeah. You know, one of the things I've done this year is just about every day
I take a 10-minute walk before I start my day.
And I do that to both get my body moving and so that my mind can slow down because
I find that when I'm walking, my mind isn't as intensely engaged.
I just take some deep breaths and I just remind myself that the Lord's in control of my day.
I kind of pray even through my schedule, even saying, Lord, I'm expecting this
conversation to go like this today.
I'm expecting this meeting to be like this. It's just kind of laying out my
expectations and trying to practice what it means to be still before the Lord.
And that daily rhythm has been really, really helpful.
Or even finding breaks during the day just to stop and just wait on the Lord,
even just sitting in silence and just being still before him or just resting
my mind and heart from all the flurry of activity.
I found that to be really helpful. I actually look really forward to those walks
because they're so rejuvenating.
And I especially like it when I'm not doing them reactively,
like when I've had a really difficult day and I'm kind of walking or waiting
on the Lord to sort of detox from a really intense day.
I really like it when I can get ahead of it and actually have a different posture
of, hey, I'm going to believe that those who wait on the Lord are able to renew their strength.
And I'm going to put that into practice right away. That's right.
You bring it home. I mean, it's sort of almost like a benediction at the end.
As a pastorly dismissal of us as your congregation. You say there will come a day.
When our waiting will be over, our faith will be sight, everything will be complete.
Eternal life will replace our temporary sense of time.
Not that everything will be
fast or quick. It's just that there will be no more gaps of vulnerability.
What's more, we'll see our God just as He is. We'll know exactly what's true
about Him because we'll be with Him forever until that day. We're waiting on God.
Mark, beautiful job with the book. You really have given us another tremendous gift.
And we have a gift from your publisher. We have three copies of the book to
give away to our listeners, our lucky listeners today.
If you are interested in a copy of Mark Rogoff's important book,
Waiting Isn't a Waste, it's Lee at DrLeeWarren.com.
Lee at DrLeeWarren.com. I need your name, your mailing address, and your zip code.
We're going to choose three winners in 48 hours after the episode airs for Mark's book.
Can't recommend it highly enough. Mark, tremendous honor to be with you again today, my friend.
Thank you, Lee. Thanks for having me on. Keep up the good work,
man. What a great conversation with one of my favorite writers.
I always tell Lisa all the time, Mark writes things that make me want him to be my pastor.
I want to move to where he lives and have him be my pastor.
He just hits it on the head about what it means to pray, to hurt,
to lament, and now to wait.
And I've learned a lot from him, and I think this book will really help you, friend.
If you feel impatient, if you feel stuck, if you feel like you're in a season
where God's not listening, or it just never seems to come to pass what you're
praying for, this book will help you. It'll encourage you.
It'll, most of all, help you to hold on to hope during those hard times.
Check it out. And don't forget, if you want to be considered for one of the
three free copies of the book, Waiting is in a Waste by Mark Rogop,
please send me an email, lee at drleewarren.com, and include your name, your mailing address,
and your zip code, and hopefully you'll be chosen.
Hey, it's been a pleasure and an honor to be with you today.
I hope you get a chance to read Mark's book and don't forget,
you can't change your life until you change your mind. And the good news is you can start today.
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Hey, thanks for listening. The Dr. Lee Warren Podcast is brought to you by my
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