The Hidden Season
Morgan Nel | ACSI Assistant Director South Africa
Before the public calling comes the private forming. God prepares his leaders in the shadows before placing them in the spotlight.
Key Verse
“But those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings like eagles, they shall run and not be weary, they shall walk and not faint.” (Isaiah 40:31 (NKJV)
Throughout Scripture, God’s pattern is consistent: those called to lead are first led into hiddenness. The desert, the pit, the wilderness. These are not detours from the calling. They are the classroom for it. Three lives show us this unmistakably.
Moses: forty years in the desert
Moses grew up in Pharaoh’s palace, educated in the most powerful court on earth. By every human measure, he was ready to lead. Yet God did not use him at forty. He used him at eighty. After four decades herding sheep in Midian, far from power, privilege, and prestige.
“When Moses heard this, he fled to Midian, where he settled as a foreigner and had two sons. After forty years had passed, an angel appeared to Moses in the flames of a burning bush in the desert near Mount Sinai.” (Acts 7:29–30 (NIV)
The wilderness stripped Moses of self-reliance. The man who tried to deliver Israel through his own strength became the man who said, “Who am I that I should go?” (Exodus 3:11). That humility was forged in obscurity.
Before – Prince of Egypt – power and position
Hidden season – 40 years as a shepherd in Midian
The encounter – The burning bush – called from obscurity
The fruit – Deliverer and lawgiver of a nation
What the desert formed in Moses, no palace could have taught him. Patience. Dependence. The ability to tend to what seems insignificant. God was preparing a shepherd and shepherds are made in the field, not the throne room.
- The season you feel most forgotten may be the season God is most actively forming you.
- Your résumé impresses people; your character impresses God and character is built in quiet places.
- Moses’s burning bush came after decades of faithfulness in the ordinary. Your encounter is on its way.
Joseph: the pit before the palace
Genesis 37-41 / Psalm 105:17-19
Joseph received his God-given dream at seventeen. But between the dream and its fulfilment lay a pit, a slave caravan, Potiphar’s house, a false accusation, and years forgotten in an Egyptian prison. His hidden season was not just isolation. It was suffering and injustice.
“He sent a man before them – Joseph, sold as a slave. They bruised his feet with shackles, his neck was put in irons, till what he foretold came to pass, till the word of the Lord proved him true.” (Psalm 105:17-19 NIV)
Notice the psalmist’s framing: the iron around Joseph’s neck was the instrument through which God was testing and proving the word spoken over his life. The prison was not a punishment. It was preparation. Joseph needed to learn to govern his own soul before God entrusted him with the soul of a nation.
The dream – A God-given vision at age 17
The descent – Pit, slavery, prison – 13 long years
What was formed – Integrity, forgiveness, wisdom
The elevation – Second only to Pharaoh – age 30
- He is stripping away what you cannot carry into your calling like pride, self-sufficiency, the need for human approval.
- He is building the inner life that will sustain the outer work. Roots grow deepest in the dark, before the tree is ever seen above ground.
- He is teaching you to hear his voice without the noise of a crowd, because leaders who lead well are leaders who listen well.
- He is proving the word he spoke over you, just as he proved it over Joseph. The test is not a contradiction of the promise. It is the making of it.
- If the Son of God needed a hidden season, you and I most certainly do too. It is not a sign of failure. It is the pattern of the Father.
- Jesus was not idle in Nazareth. He was growing in wisdom, stature, and favour. Growth in obscurity is still growth.
- The wilderness confirmed what the Father had already spoken at the baptism: “This is my Son, whom I love” (Matthew 3:17). Your identity is settled before your assignment begins.
- A dream delayed is not a dream denied. God’s timing and your timing are rarely the same. Trust him.
- Faithfulness in the small and hidden (Potiphar’s house, the prison) is the proof of fitness for the larger platform.
- Bitterness would have disqualified Joseph. Your response to injustice in the hidden season shapes your character in the public one.
- The same God who gave you the dream is the God who is with you in the pit. He has not forgotten (Genesis 39:21).Solitude was not just Jesus’s preparation, rather it was his discipline throughout ministry. Power sustained in public requires presence cultivated in private.He is showing you that faithfulness in little is the qualification for much. The “little” is never wasted in his economy.
“You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Genesis 50:20 (NIV)
Jesus: thirty years of hiddenness
Luke 2:51-52 / Luke 4:1-2 / Mark 1:35
If we needed any confirmation that hiddenness is not a sign of God’s absence, we need only look at the Son of God himself. Jesus, the Saviour of the world, the one for whom all of history was waiting, spent thirty years in Nazareth, a town so obscure the disciples would later ask, “Can anything good come from there?” (John 1:46).
“Then he went down to Nazareth with them and was obedient to them. But his mother treasured all these things in her heart. And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favour with God and man.” (Luke 2:51-52 (NIV)
Thirty years of growing. Obeying. Working with his hands. And then, just before his public ministry began, he was led by the Spirit into the wilderness for forty days of fasting and testing. Even after ministry began, he regularly withdrew to lonely places to pray. Hiddenness was not just his preparation. It was his ongoing practice.
Nazareth years – 30 years of quiet obedience and growth
The wilderness – 40 days of fasting and temptation
Ongoing practice – Regular withdrawal to lonely places to pray
The fruit – 3 years that changed all of history
“Jesus returned to Galilee in the power of the Spirit, and news about him spread through the whole countryside.” (Luke 4:14 NIV)
He came out of the wilderness in the power of the Spirit. The testing did not weaken him, but it confirmed him. And the three years that followed changed the entire course of human history. Thirty years hidden. Three years public. The ratio is not a waste. It is a wonder.
What the hidden season is doing in you
Moses, Joseph, and Jesus each experienced obscurity differently, but the same divine purposes were at work in all three. If you are in a hidden season today, take heart. God is not wasting a moment of it.
“Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” (Philippians 1:6 NIV)
Personal response
Lord, I confess that I have sometimes resented the hidden places – the waiting, the silence, the seasons that felt invisible and small. But today I choose to trust that you are at work. You were with Moses in Midian. You were with Joseph in the prison. You yourself walked through thirty years of Nazareth. So you are with me here, in this. Teach me to be faithful in the obscure. Form in me what can only be formed in the quiet. I surrender the timeline to you, and I trust the work of your hand. In Jesus’s name, Amen.
Reflection questions
- What is God possibly stripping away or building in you during this current season?
- How are you stewarding the hidden place? With bitterness, or with faithfulness?
- Is your private life with God deep enough to sustain the public life he is preparing you for?
