The WOFOYO Podcast
The WOFOYO Podcast
Your Faith Has A Prep Time, Not Just A Cook Time
When life feels like a promise on paper and a contradiction in practice, you might be exactly where formation happens. We take a surprising path through gardens, canning jars, and the smell of simmering sauce to explore why faith has a prep time that almost always eclipses the cook time. It’s earthy, practical, and grounded in Scripture, showing how hidden work quietly prepares us for visible moments.
We start with the everyday—hot sauce with four simple ingredients and a batch of pickles that live or die in the rinse and soak. Then we map the wilderness through stories of David, Moses, John the Baptist, and Elisha, highlighting how God uses ordinary, unglamorous rhythms to build courage, patience, and integrity. Delay isn’t denial; it’s proofing time. And when circumstances look like the exact opposite of the promise, your character gets tested in the place it will matter most later.
Throughout the conversation, we share simple practices that hold up under pressure: keep a Bible within reach, carry a notebook, write down both the promises and the paradox, and let tension reveal where ego or integrity needs work. You’ll walk away with a fresh lens for your current season, language for what you’re feeling, and a steady hope that formation is never wasted. Ready to reframe your delays as design and your deserts as training grounds?
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Everybody, welcome to another Well Foyo short. This is C Dub. And a lot of more in a lot of our more recent episodes, the theme of the wilderness started popping up again when Bones and I have discussed some things, and I was thinking about what should I be talking about in this next short? Because there's there's about three or four different themes that have been popping up on the regular. And I'll probably do one of the next shorts on leadership items. Because to be a Christian is to be a leader. But the theme of the wilderness has really been popping up. For a lot of you, you don't understand, you might be getting ready to go into a wilderness period. You might be getting ready to go back into a wilderness period. They're highly beneficial, they're rarely pleasant, unless you're like me, where I learned to be a little bit too much at home in the wilderness. So it took some prodding from the Lord to get me out. And why you have this podcast is a similar thing with bones, but I think mine was just a little bit more dramatic. Or maybe I overreacted. Well, one of those. Why the wilderness? Well, I've recently been finishing up some canning, uh, getting the last little bit of vegetables from the garden. Still have peppers or just killing it this year. So in doing that, I go, this is like faith. I'm reading some of the recipes that I use for canning. Just got through making my own hot sauce, which is there's four ingredients to it. Tastes way better than most hot sauces you'll get from the store. Um, anything special about it? No, not really. It just tastes better. The thing is, when you look at a recipe, you're gonna have ingredients, but then it's gonna have two other things, two times. You're gonna have cook time, which everybody oh, it only takes about an hour and a half to cook. Well, if you don't know about prep time, then you can get yourself into mine. You got, well, I have a I have an hour and a half to make this thing. Well, might take 45 minutes to an hour of prep time, depending on how complicated the dish is and what the processes are. If I'm making pickles, had a great batch of pickles this year. The prep time for the pickles is way longer than the time it actually takes to make the brine, put them in, can them, and do all that. When I say it's way more, I'm talking about to actually do the brine, put the pickles in the brine and can them with a hot water bath. It might take you about two hours if you got a big batch. But you wash off the cucumbers, you you make sure you gotta pick them, you wash off the cucumbers, you might cut skin off, you might not. I like mine with skin on. Then you slice them up, whether they're gonna be chips, or they're gonna be spears, whether you're gonna do holes. Then you put them in some water with what's called pickling lime, because if you don't, you're gonna have mushy pickles. And I hate mushy pickles. The pickling lime is something that keeps them crisp, but you don't want to taste lime when you have your pickles, so you got to rinse them off, and you're supposed to rinse them off three different times to make sure you got all that pickling lime off. Then you put them in ice cold water for about an hour, and it's gonna soak up that ice cold water. That is a heck of a lot of prep time. The leaving them in the pickling line, that's overnight, and they recommend anywhere from an hour to three hours in the ice water, and you put that back in the fridge. So you have all that for what might be two hours of making your brine, putting the brine in the in the jars with the pickles and all that. So you can see prep time is important. One of my other dishes that I'm known for, I'm known for my lasagna. You know, there's some prep time to that. There's some prep time in making spaghetti sauce. And you're going, see dub, why are you talking about all this stuff? Well, because your walk with the Lord involves prep time. You think you're ready to go, you think you're ready to cook. You can't just throw tomatoes, cheese, and wheat, meat, into a pan and get lasagna. There's processes that gotta go. There's a process it takes to make the lasagna needle. There's a process it takes to make either the rocta or the cottage cheese, whichever one you use. There's a process they use to make the sausage. There's a process that takes to make the sauce. You know, you gotta blanch the tomatoes, you gotta skin them, then you gotta make your sauce, you've got to cook her down, you gotta add the seasonings to it. All these things are processes. And so our faith, our walk with the Lord involves a lot of processes. If you know what to look for, the Bible is very distinct in pointing out these people had all this prep time before the Lord calls them to step into what they're doing. Samuel's just a great example. Samuel's called as a young boy, but there's some prep time involved before he steps out and really starts doing what he's doing. King David, one of the prime examples of prep time. The whole time he's back there in the back end of the fields, tending the flock, killing a lion, killing a bear, prepares him for Goliath. He's then doing prep time as a soldier and then as someone on the run. So he gets exposed to a very flawed king to find out how not to rule. It exposes your character. Your prep time in the wilderness is really what exposes your character. John the Baptist had prep time. He remained in the desert until his revealing to Israel. Elisha had prep time. He had to spend it with Elijah. Moses had prep time in those forty years in the wilderness before he goes to Egypt and goes back for another 40 years in the wilderness. Be encouraged. When the Lord calls you and he gives you a promise, just realize the process is involved. Nothing wrong with it. Expect it. Ask yourself, what lessons can I learn from this process? And like Bones and I always said, have your Bible always with you, some version of it, whether it's on your phone. We prefer the book itself. I have a Bible in my bed, got a Bible in the living room. You can hit that, but always have your notebook. Find out what God's promised you. Know the general promises of the covenant, but also get very specific in what he has promised you. And then realize it's probably going to look like the exact opposite is going to happen. It's a really good indicator that what he said is going to happen, but that is also part of the process. That's part of your prep time. Let's see if your ego and your integrity can handle being told that God's going to do something in your life, and then it looking like the exact opposite happens. See if you can handle it. Because if you can handle that, that prep time gets a lot shorter. So anyway, be encouraged. If you're going through something, and man, there's a lot of us that are. I have some I have some good friends of mine that are going through some things, and all I can see is you're going through the process. Is that very comforting when you're going through the process? No, it's not. But you gotta realize it's prep time before you cook. And it's pretty neat when you start cooking. Wofoyo. Hey everybody, thanks for listening. We hope this challenges you and causes you to recognize what God's doing in your life. You can always check us out at woefoyo.org or subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or Albo, or even check us out on YouTube. For Bones and Myself, this is C Doug, reminding you that if you're going to grow, you got a Woefo Yo. Get in the word for yourself.