Unlock the Season of Preparation God Won’t Waste

If you’re in a hard season as a dad right now — the kind that feels overlooked, uncertain, or like nothing much is happening — here’s something worth holding onto: God won’t waste your season of preparation. That’s not a cliché tacked onto a hard week. It’s the whole arc of one of the most famous stories in the Bible.

📖 BeTheDads Small Group Session 28

✝️ Session Big Idea

📖 Key Scripture

💬 Icebreaker / Welcome (10 minutes)

1. (Fun) Pull up the oldest photo of yourself still saved on your phone. Show the guy next to you and give the group the backstory — the haircut, the outfit, whatever’s happening there.
2. (Light) What was the first “real” job you had — the one you’d rather not put on a resume?
3. (Bridge) Think of a stretch of your life that felt small, overlooked, or like a waiting room — a season you’d honestly rather forget. You don’t have to unpack it yet. Just name it in your head.

📖 Sermon Context

Pastor Josh opened the new series Pasture to the Palace by taking the group back to a pivotal moment in Israel’s history. The nation had God as their king, but they demanded a human king “like all the other nations.” God gave them Saul — tall, impressive, everything a king was supposed to look like on paper. Saul started well, but over time his heart hardened toward God, and the Lord rejected him as king.

So God sends Samuel to Bethlehem, to the family of a man named Jesse, with one job: anoint the next king. When Samuel sees Jesse’s oldest son, Eliab, he assumes that’s the guy — he’s got the height, the look, the presence. But God stops him cold: people judge by outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart. One by one, seven of Jesse’s sons pass in front of Samuel. None of them is the one.

Here’s the detail Pastor Josh lingered on: Jesse didn’t even invite his youngest son, David, to the gathering. David was out tending sheep — at the time, one of the lowest, most overlooked jobs a person could have. Even David’s own father had already decided he wasn’t a candidate. Samuel has to ask, “Is this all the sons you have?” before anyone thinks to send for him.

David is brought in, anointed, and Scripture says the Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. And then — nothing changes. No throne, no palace, no promotion. David goes right back to the same pasture, the same sheep, the same overlooked job. Same circumstances. Different man. Pastor Josh’s challenge to the room: the “pasture” seasons of your life — the ones you’d rather fast-forward through — are exactly where God is shaping the heart He intends to use later. And the anointing was never just a “good luck, go do this” moment. Whatever God calls you to, He also empowers you to do.

🛠 Key Points

1. God Looks at Your Heart, Not Your Highlight Reel

Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:7 (NLT)

Even Samuel — a man who talked to God regularly — looked at Eliab and assumed he was the one because he looked the part. God corrected him immediately: outward appearance was never the scorecard.

Dad Application: It’s easy to grade yourself as a father by things everyone can see — the job title on your business card, how your kids behave in public, whether your marriage looks put-together from the outside, how “together” your house is when people come over. None of that is what God is actually watching. He’s watching whether your heart is oriented toward Him or toward your own agenda — whether you’re the kind of man, husband, or dad whose default posture is “God, what do You want here?” instead of “how does this look?” Whatever your family situation — married, divorced, single, co-parenting — you are not being measured against anyone else’s highlight reel, and neither is your family. God is after your heart, not your resume.

2. Every Season Is a Season of Preparation

Grounded in the narrative of 1 Samuel 16:11

David wasn’t tending sheep by accident. Pastor Josh pointed out that the patience, the attentiveness, the courage David developed watching a flock in obscurity are the exact skills that later let him lead a nation. The pasture wasn’t a delay before David’s real life started — it was his season of preparation.

What a Season of Preparation Produces

A season of preparation rarely feels significant while you’re living through it. More often, it feels repetitive, hidden, or frustrating. Yet the very things David learned in the pasture became the foundation for everything God called him to do later. The same is true for fathers today. God often develops character before He expands influence, and He forms faithfulness in private before He entrusts responsibility in public.

Dad Application: Maybe you’re in a season right now that feels like it has nothing to do with fathering — a stretch of unemployment, a hard chapter at work, a marriage that’s under strain, a custody arrangement that leaves you feeling like a part-time dad. It can feel like your “real” fathering is on hold until things change. But God rarely wastes a season. The patience you’re learning in a hard job, the humility you’re learning in a financial setback, the dependence you’re learning in isolation — all of it can become part of how you show up for your kids later. You don’t need to escape this season to become a better dad. God may be using this exact season to build one.

3. When God Calls You to Father, He Doesn’t Send You Alone

Scripture: 1 Samuel 16:13 (NLT)

The oil Samuel poured on David was symbolic — but what happened next wasn’t symbolic at all. The Spirit of the Lord came powerfully upon him. God never hands someone an assignment and then leaves them to figure it out solo.

Dad Application: Fathering was never designed to run on your own willpower. If you’re white-knuckling your way through parenting — trying to manage your kids’ hearts through sheer effort, trying to hold a marriage or a co-parenting relationship together by force of will, trying to be present for your kids while running on empty — that’s not the design. God doesn’t just call you to be a good dad and then step back to watch how you do. He offers you His Spirit’s actual power for the specific assignment in front of you today. Asking for help isn’t a sign you’re failing as a father. It’s the only way this actually works.

💬 Discussion Questions (20–25 minutes)

Opening the Text

1. In 1 Samuel 16:7, God tells Samuel not to judge by appearance. What was Samuel getting wrong when he looked at Eliab
   • Starting Thought: Samuel had good instincts about leadership — he just used the wrong scorecard. It’s worth noticing that even a man close to God can default to outward metrics without realizing it.
2. David wasn’t even invited to the gathering with Samuel (v. 11). What does that detail tell you about how David’s own family saw him?
   • Starting Thought: Sometimes the people closest to us have already decided what we’re capable of — before God has weighed in.
3. After David is anointed, he goes right back to the same sheep, same job (v. 13). What stands out to you about that?
   • Starting Thought: We tend to expect a spiritual breakthrough to come with an immediate upgrade in circumstances. David’s story pushes back on that expectation.

Dad Life Discussion

1. What’s a “pasture season” you’ve walked through as a man — a stretch where you felt overlooked, stuck, or like you were in a holding pattern?
   • Starting Thought: It’s okay to name a season that’s still going on right now, not just one that’s already resolved.
2. Where do you tend to measure yourself — or your fathering — by outward stuff, instead of what’s actually going on in your heart?
   • Starting Thought: This isn’t about shame. It’s about noticing where you’ve let the wrong scorecard run the show for a while.
3. Think about the dad you are right now. What’s one thing from an earlier hard season — a job, a failure, a stretch of waiting — that’s actually shaping how you father today?
   • Starting Thought: God rarely wastes anything. Even a season you’d rather forget can be doing quiet work in you that you don’t recognize until later.
4. Where in your fathering right now do you feel like you’re trying to do it in your own strength instead of leaning on God?
   • Starting Thought: This might show up as exhaustion, control, or trying to manage your kids’ hearts through pressure instead of prayer.
5. If God isn’t asking you to fast-forward out of your current season, but to let Him change you in it — what would that look like practically this week?
   • Starting Thought: Think in terms of a posture shift, not a circumstance shift — prayer, surrender, asking “what are You teaching me” instead of “when will this be over.”

🎯 Key Takeaways

🛠 Practical Applications (15 minutes)

If this really is a season of preparation, these steps are about leaning into it on purpose — not just waiting it out.

1. Name it. This week, put words to your current “pasture season” — write it down or say it out loud to your spouse or a friend, even if it’s just one sentence.
2. With your kids: At dinner or bedtime this week, tell one of your kids about a hard season from your own life and what you learned from it — keep it age-appropriate, but let them see you as someone who’s been through something too.
3. With your wife or co-parent: Ask one honest question this week — “Is there a place where I’m performing instead of being real with you?” — and just listen without defending yourself.
4. Sit with the question. Spend 10 quiet minutes this week asking, “God, what are You trying to teach me in this season?” instead of “God, get me out of this.”
5. Pray specifically. Identify one place you’re fathering in your own strength right now, and pray for the Holy Spirit’s help there each night this week — even just one sentence before bed.

🎯 Dad Challenge of the Week: “Show Them the Old Photo”

What it is: Pull out an old, awkward, or embarrassing photo of yourself and show it to your kids — along with a short, age-appropriate story about a season of your life you’d rather forget, and what you learned or how you grew because of it.

Why it matters: Kids often assume dad has always had it together. This challenge breaks that myth on purpose. When your kids see that you’ve walked through awkward, hard, or overlooked seasons — and that those seasons mattered — it gives them permission to trust God in their own hard seasons instead of just trying to skip past them.

Try something like this:

• Younger kids: “Look at this goofy picture of me! I felt kind of silly back then, but that was actually a season where I learned a lot. God was working on me even when I didn’t know it.”
• Tweens: “Can I show you something a little embarrassing? … I went through a rough stretch around your age. Here’s what I learned from it, and here’s why I’m glad I didn’t skip it.”
• Teens: Share an actual hard season — a failure, a job loss, a friendship that fell apart — and be honest about what it taught you. Teens can handle more of the real story than we usually give them credit for.

🙏 Closing Prayer

🎯 Leader Notes

Key themes to emphasize:

• Heart over image — God’s scorecard for fathering isn’t what other people can see.
• Seasons as formation, not punishment or delay — even hard, overlooked seasons are doing real work.
• Spirit-empowered fathering, not self-effort — asking for help is the design, not a failure.

What to watch for: This session can surface real, current pain — unemployment, feeling overlooked by their own family, isolation, or grief over a season that hasn’t resolved yet. Single and co-parenting dads may feel this material especially sharply if they feel like they’re “in the pasture” alone or under-resourced. Give space for silence after Questions 4 and 7 — don’t rush to fill it. If a dad shares something heavy, resist the urge to fix it in the moment; affirm what it cost him to say it, and follow up with him personally after group.

Timing guide (60–75 minutes):

• Icebreaker: 10 min
• Sermon Context: 5 min
• Key Points + Discussion Questions: 35–40 min
• Key Takeaways + Practical Applications: 15 min
• Dad Challenge + Closing Prayer: 10 min

Optional leader-only illustration: If it’s helpful for your group, you may share your own “pasture season” story as an example before Question 4 — for instance, a season in your career or life that felt like a detour but turned out to be preparation for what came next. Keep it brief and let it open the door rather than set the bar; this isn’t printed in the dad-facing material, it’s a facilitator option only.

Reminder: God doesn’t require perfect dads — He uses faithful ones.