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Question 7

Bercot says God often requires his servants to “learn to wait,” using Moses’ forty years and Paul’s ten or eleven quiet years; what does this teach about God’s purposes in hidden seasons, and how would early Christians have interpreted long delays in calling or fruitfulness?

Another way to ask: Bercot says God often makes his servants wait, like Moses’ 40 years and Paul’s quiet years. What might God be doing in those hidden seasons, and how would early Christians understand long delays before seeing results?

Direct Answer The transcript teaches that hidden seasons are often God’s training ground where He “molds and mellows” His servants so they can later carry greater fruit with His full blessing. Early Christians, as Bercot presents it, would interpret delays as normal in God’s timetable rather than as wasted years.

Support from Transcript:

He calls waiting a key lesson: “Another important lesson… is the need to wait on God.”
Patrick’s “twenty-five years” were not wasted: “God needed those twenty-five years to finish the work he had begun in him.”
Moses illustrates God’s pattern: God made him spend “forty years in the wilderness,” seemingly “forgotten,” yet “absolutely essential” for becoming “the meekest man on earth.”
Paul also had a hidden period: “ten or eleven quiet years… in places like Syria and the Arabian wilderness,” when he “seemed to have dropped out of sight,” but God was “molding and mellowing Paul.”
He stresses differing timetables: “God’s timetable is different from ours,” with “a thousand years… only a day.”
The delay is reframed as brief in God’s view: Patrick’s six years felt long, but in God’s timescale “less than nine minutes.”

Discussion Follow-ups What “hidden season” might God be using to reshape you rather than sidelining you? How do you react when your calling feels delayed?

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