Mike: 00:07

Welcome to Speak the Truth, a podcast devoted to giving biblical truth for educating, equipping, and encouraging the individual and local church in counseling and discipleship.

Mike: 00:18

Hello. Hello. Hello. We are still at the biblical counseling coalition candidate conference. I'm joined with Mark Vrokoff.

Mike: 00:25

We're We're gonna be talking his most recent book, Waiting Isn't a Waste, The Surprising Comfort of Trusting God in Uncertainties of Life. Mark, how

Mark: 00:32

we doing? Doing well. Michael, thanks for having me on your program today.

Mike: 00:35

Yeah. I'm glad you're with us. This has been long overdue. Tried to get you at the ABC conference, but you

Mark: 00:40

were you were hard to get a occupied.

Mike: 00:42

Yes. You were. Yes. You were. Man, looking forward to this episode.

Mike: 00:46

Mark, what galvanized your heart to write this book? Yeah.

Mark: 00:49

I wrote on waiting because I stink at it. I'm terrible at it. I have a bias for action. I wanna do things, have a ministry heart to see the kingdom of God advanced. And when we came to 2020 through 2022, like so many pastors, there were seasons where there was nothing that I could do but simply wait in that season, and I found myself to be rather unprepared for that kind of spiritual experience.

Mark: 01:14

And I just was like, I gotta figure out how to do this better, and I gotta learn how to live in this gap world that is important and potentially spiritually informative and helpful. But I found myself just needing some new categories of what it means to learn to wait on the Lord. Thought about how to take the lessons that I've learned over the last couple of years and put them in a book that might be helpful to others and also to deepen my own personal journey on what it means to wait on the Lord.

Mike: 01:39

Yeah. That's really good. It's interesting with this book and then Dark Clouds, Deep Mercy. This is like the offspring of lament, right, and waiting. And what I appreciate about the book, and I'll share this here momentarily as far as my own personal journey is concerned with this, like you just shared.

Mike: 01:56

But, man, for me, this book was really helpful because I think it it brings back to the table the reality of waiting on the Lord and how much I would argue that this is a spiritual discipline. Part of reading the word, part of prayer, part of our spiritual disciplines that we obviously spend a lot of time in labor with our local congregations in. Waiting is one of those things you don't really you don't honestly, you don't hear it. Just like your your same observation with Dark Claws, Deep Mercy is there's not a lot out there on that.

Mark: 02:29

Yeah. There is if you go back another generation. Right? So you got, like, Andrew Murray, classic

Mike: 02:34

Your boy.

Mark: 02:35

Waiting on the lord. Right? And that's part of the thing. It's just the previous, I think, generations of Christians, because of the way in which their society was designed and what their experience was, waiting was a very familiar way to think about their life and even maybe how they thought about their spiritual life. The book of James uses the idea of a farmer as a model for, embracing patience because the farmer plants and then he has to wait.

Mark: 03:06

And James uses that as an encouragement for Christians to think about faithful perseverance. And, essentially, what he argues is if you're a farmer, waiting is a part of your occupation. You plant and then you wait. If you don't like waiting, probably shouldn't be a farmer. And I think what James is driving at, and I think what I learned through the writing of the book, is that waiting isn't incidental to the Christian life.

Mark: 03:27

It's actually central. Like, even now we're waiting for the return of Jesus. So fundamentally, it seems like Christians ought to know how to wait. And I just found in my own life that when I was faced with seasons of extended gaps, I just I didn't have the right orientation about how valuable those seasons could be. So I wanted to normalize what it means to wait and then learn how to do it better.

Mike: 03:50

Yeah. That's really good. And before we hit the record button, I was sharing with Mark just how personally this has been a huge help for me. So outside of just our personal relationships with Christ in the scope and context of suffering, whether it's a job loss and questioning where the finances are gonna come from, but just the perseverance of the daily life, but then also vocationally in ministry. For me, personally, just the transition of our ministry of going from trying to have people support our ministry, brothers and family and friends and others supporting the ministry to to support the work that we were doing in counseling and everything else to transition our model and to not have the funds come in and just trust the lord's process and being patient on that.

Mike: 04:33

So I appreciate your book because it was very timely in the season that I was in last year, which is when it came out. So it was very timely. As a matter of fact, the CCF conference, I had just finished it up. Okay. Yeah.

Mike: 04:46

And so some of your your speaking in your notes, I'm like, yes, sir.

Mark: 04:50

Yeah. This could be helpful in a scary kind of way. So, yeah, my definition in the book is learning to live. I think this could be apropos to your experience. Yes.

Mark: 04:58

Learning to live on what I know to be true about God when I don't know what's true about my life. And that that translates to lots of opportunities. But specifically in in ministry, when you're living in a faith based ministry model or environment, you're literally learning how to live, like live paycheck to paycheck on what you know to be true about God when you don't know what's true about your life. And that's frightening, exhilarating, scary, and awesome all at once because you learn that God is faithful and trustworthy. And in those gap moments, you can learn, I'm gonna live on what I know to be true about God right now and be okay with, I don't know a lot about my life, but you know what?

Mark: 05:39

I don't know a lot about my life in a way that I probably don't realize very often. And waiting is just a reminder that God's in control, I'm not. And as a follower of Jesus, I need to embrace that.

Mike: 05:50

It's funny you say that. It's like God's in control, I'm not. It's easy for us to say that and at least intellectually agree with that. And then experientially being able to actually come to the table with that waiting and applying what we know to be true intellectually. Absolutely.

Mark: 06:04

Because part of the challenge with our waiting is that we want control, and we want to shorten the gaps. And my goodness, we live in an age in society where those shortening of those gaps is not only normalized, but it's also monetized. So everything within our society is designed

Mike: 06:21

It's incentive.

Mark: 06:22

It is. We are becoming more and more accustomed to not having to wait for virtually everything. And so when we enter a season where we have to wait, it's not only unfamiliar, but we're unpracticed in how this could actually be spiritually valuable. And the result is that we often fall into a couple ditches. I talk about this in the book, the ditch of anger, ditch of anxiety, the ditch of apathy, and all of those are just my subtle way to try and regain control of a gap that I is is outside of my ability to change.

Mike: 06:53

Out of the gate, waiting's hard.

Mark: 06:55

Oh, it's hard. It's really hard. Yeah. Because there's uncertainties, there's delays, there's pain. There's like, life is full of opportunities to wait, and I think I know God designed it to be that way.

Mark: 07:06

Even as designed human beings that we can't make it very long without sleeping. What about a third of our life is spent in a semi conscious state in our beds? I think God designed it that way because he knew that if we got everything we wanted into the time frame which we wanted it, there would be a functional God thing that we would be trying to embrace. So God institutes limitations and puts gaps in our life to remind us regularly, oh, guess what? You're not God.

Mark: 07:35

You're not in control. And that's a good thing if we can embrace it.

Mike: 07:39

And speaking of embracing it, I think that's the next transition in within these chapters is it's frequent. Like, it's common.

Mark: 07:45

Oh, yeah. Every day, there are opportunities for us to wait. And throughout our lives, there's really intense seasons. And depending on how we think about those, we could transform them into opportunities for spiritual growth, or we could just spend wasted energy complaining about it, being frustrated, overthinking. And we all have a we all kinda have a bias as to which direction we might go as it relates to negative response, but there's a lot of opportunities to embrace waiting, and there's also a lot of opportunities to waste our waiting.

Mike: 08:20

Yeah. It's really good. And then the I think the hardest reality to this is that we often forget that it's biblical.

Mark: 08:26

Right. Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, the Bible not only commends waiting, says that it's a good thing. The Bible actually commands waiting.

Mark: 08:33

Wait on the Lord. And so much of my experience with waiting has been reactive. Something happens or isn't happening, so now I'm forced to wait on the Lord. And that's how I walked into the writing of the book trying to figure out how to do that better. But there's another side.

Mark: 08:49

What if we actually built waiting on the Lord into our decision making? Like, we valued it so much. I'm actually going to intentionally wait. I could do something, but I'm not going to because I want to wait on the Lord. That's a whole different way to think about processing decisions.

Mark: 09:05

What if our strategic plans actually, as a part of it, baked waiting on the Lord into it? Or

Mike: 09:11

Yeah. And that's the that's the second part that you get into, like, in the collective part of it is that the strategic part, I think, on God's providential hand and timing is the fact that it is relational because it's he obviously uses it to draw us to himself. Unfortunately, though, and you make that point so many times in the book, which I don't think can be overstated because you show the nuances of how much that's true in our lives. Like, we pray those things away and gods know that that's actually built in to the process. Embrace it.

Mark: 09:45

Right. Yeah. Instead of resisting and wasting our waiting, I argue in the book that we need to see this as not just central to the Christian life, but also really vital for my own spiritual growth. So that when a waiting opportunity comes or a gap moment, that I actually could see it as, oh, great. This is a prime opportunity for me to trust the Lord, rely on his grace, and even embrace the tension that's implicit within the moment.

Mark: 10:11

For so long, I viewed that tension as something that was inherently negative. And one of the Hebrew words, kevah, comes from the idea of a cord that's twisted or hope that is filled with tension. And so it helped me immensely to realize that this tension that I feel with this gap is actually part of the way that God is shaping and forming me into the image and likeness of Jesus to embrace the tension instead of resisting as if as if it's something inherently negative. It would just be like, k. I wanna go for a run, I wanna run-in a race, but I wanna breathe hard.

Mark: 10:48

Like, it was like, the heavy breathing, the rapid heart rate, like, that's part of the dynamic. You can't win a race and not sweat. You can't run a race and not breathe hard. And you you can't do the Christian life without learning how to wait.

Mike: 11:04

Yeah. It's funny, like, you bring up the tension aspect of it. And I think the things that we pray that God wouldn't use in our lives is the very things that he that he faithfully puts in our lives.

Mark: 11:15

He does.

Mike: 11:16

Yep. The suffering and the waiting.

Mark: 11:18

Yep. They're tied. And there is a connection. You mentioned the lament and the waiting. They're they are connected in the sense that Lamentations, the longest lament in the Bible, after saying his mercies are new every morning.

Mark: 11:31

If you look a little later on in Lamentations three, it says it's good for a man to bear the yoke in his youth. It's good for someone to wait on the Lord. And so what in my mind goes like this, Lament is the application to grief. Waiting is the application to gaps. It's a different kind of struggle, an opportunity for us to wait on the Lord when life hasn't quite turned out or isn't turning out how we expected.

Mike: 11:58

Yeah. It's interesting. It reminds me of time. Pronos and Kairos, just like how it's used in one's linear, one's cyclical, and just the dynamics of that and how it's all built into his process, providential reality of sanctification. Just wrapping up here a little bit, Mark, what would you say outside of your own experience with it and pastoral ministry and just things over the years?

Mike: 12:20

How would you encourage counselors, pastors, church leaders to not just read this book, but use it in their day to day lives and trying to encourage others.

Mark: 12:30

For me, one of the most helpful things to think about with waiting is that Psalm 40 has just been super helpful. I waited patiently on the lord. But in the original Hebrew, there's no word for patient. It's just I waited and waited or Eugene Peterson in the message says I waited and waited on the lord. I love that.

Mark: 12:48

So helpful.

Mike: 12:49

Because it's implied in the original language. Right?

Mark: 12:51

Yeah. It's just a it's a repetition of the word that patient is the expression or the explanation of repeating the word kavah, kavah, kavah. So I think one of the helpful conversations to have with a consulee or even with yourself is, what are my expectations? What is it that how is it that I thought my life was going to turn out? Or how did I expect the situation to emerge or materialize?

Mark: 13:16

And a lot of my waiting failures have come about because of unarticulated expectations or unrealistic expectations. So I think the book is useful in one way that it helps people to identify what were you thinking your life was going to be like, and when it isn't like that, what are the spiritual disciplines that you can apply so that you can thrive in this season instead of having it be something entirely negative. And I hope that folks will be able to see that waiting is an opportunity, not just an annoyance, not just something they want to get through, but it's prime territory for us to be able to learn that God can take care of us. A line that I wish I had thought of and written comes from Betsy Childs Howard. She said, you can't buy manna in bulk.

Mark: 14:03

And the idea is

Mike: 14:04

that You did put that in the book. It was

Mark: 14:05

it was. Isn't that great? I wish I had said that. The idea being that God supplies manna, daily bread, or daily grace, It doesn't give us tomorrow's grace, so we need to learn to wait on his ability to prove himself faithful again the next day. And that's the lesson I think we all need to learn.

Mike: 14:22

Yeah. It's really good because you said it quickly there in passing and answering the question, but, you know, that he can help us. The reality is he is. But our hearts and our flesh, we question, then it becomes a canned thing. And I think that's part of the obedience and trusting him.

Mark: 14:38

It is.

Mike: 14:39

So I I appreciate your book in that. It's really helpful on a topic that we don't talk about. And it gives a language and a thought process to something that I think oftentimes we, it's like getting old. We don't want to think about that. And we don't want to think about waiting like you so well articulated in the book of just how much of this not waiting in our life is that we pray away, we get aggravated, we get annoyed.

Mike: 15:03

But in like your hope for the reader is like how you articulated in the book is just being able to try to focus a little bit more on, all right, It's active. Do something with it, and it's relational. And the activity of it is the relationship. I'm putting in my own words a little bit. But that was my takeaway, and I think that was the encouragement that I had.

Mike: 15:23

And that's the encouragement that I hope that our listeners will have. And like I was sharing with you, just the personal stuff. But even in counseling, I think I've referred it to probably two dozen people, counselees and friends of mine and actual other pastors that are going through similar seasons where, again, this is something in their own lives and ministry that they have just they haven't thought about. Yeah. Or they it comes to their mind, but they pray it away.

Mike: 15:48

They don't wanna deal with it. Yeah.

Mark: 15:49

Yeah. Pastoral patience is a very effective strategy, but it's really difficult, especially if you don't like to wait. Waiting is a very effective pastoral strategy if we can just embrace it.

Mike: 16:00

Wait a second. Mark, are you implying that walking in the spirit implies waiting on the Lord? And the flesh says, get that out of my face. Get that coin out of my face.

Mark: 16:09

Yes. I am.

Mike: 16:10

Well, Mark, thank you. I appreciate it, brother. Thank you for writing the book, first and foremost, and then thank you for being available to have this long overdue podcast. Thank you. And, guys, listen.

Mike: 16:21

If anything else you want us to talk about, topics you want us to talk about, please email us at topicsspeakthetruth dot org. Thank you guys for listening. We'll see you guys next time.