This guide is for one specific situation: you have been handed something you do not feel equipped to do, and you want to learn to depend on God inside it rather than just survive it. It might be a small group you were asked to lead, a class that is over your head, or a family where you are the only believer and every conversation turns into an argument. The guide will not try to talk you into feeling qualified. It will help you practice dependence: naming the fear precisely, reading 1 Chronicles 29 closely, and praying daily for wisdom the way Solomon did.
Use it alone over four sittings across a week or two, or with a group meeting four times. You will need a Bible, a notebook and about ten minutes a day for the practice that begins in Session 3. Nothing here requires you to tell anyone else what you write. In a group, people choose what they share, and “I’d rather keep that one” is always an acceptable answer.
The aim is modest and concrete. By the end, you should be able to say exactly what you are afraid of, point to what the text shows about how God chooses and equips people, and have a week’s record of actually asking God for wisdom before you act.
Session 1: Make the fear specific
Vague dread is hard to pray about. A thought like I’m not cut out for this covers everything and names nothing. So this session starts with your situation, before any Scripture.
Lisa Fields opens her sermon on Solomon with a family card game that everyone is expected to know and nobody wants to teach. When she finally learned a little, she still was not picked for a team, because she had so little experience. She draws the contrast this way: “If you don’t have a lot of experience, you’re not the first one picked. But God is not like humans. He chooses sometimes the inexperienced.”
Notice what her story assumes. Being passed over and lacking experience are two different problems. One is about what you can do. The other is about how people decide who counts. Most fears about an assignment tangle the two together.
The exercise. Write one sentence naming the assignment where you feel most out of your depth. Then write three short lines underneath:
- What I actually do not know how to do yet.
- What I am afraid people will think or discover about me.
- What I am afraid will happen if I fail.
Look at the three lines. Some fears are skill gaps, which can be learned. Some are about reputation. Some are about outcomes you cannot control. Circle the one that has the strongest grip on you. You will come back to this page in Session 4, so date it.
For groups: do not ask people to read their lines aloud. Instead ask which of the three categories turned out to be the heaviest, and why it might be that one. If you are leading, answer first, briefly and honestly, so the question feels safe.
Session 2: Read 1 Chronicles 29 slowly
Read the whole chapter in one sitting before doing anything else. It is David’s farewell: a public speech, a great offering for the temple, a prayer and Solomon’s coronation. Then come back to four verses.
Verse 1: two facts that stand side by side
David tells the assembly, “Solomon my son, whom alone God hath chosen, is yet young and tender, and the work is great: for the palace is not for man, but for the LORD God” (1 Chronicles 29:1). “Tender” is older English for soft or immature; many modern translations render it “inexperienced,” which is the wording Fields read from. “Palace” here refers to the temple.
Write the verse out in your notebook and underline the three claims: God chose him, he is inexperienced, the work is great. David does not resolve the tension. He says all three in public, in front of the people Solomon will lead. Ask yourself which of the three you tend to delete when you think about your own assignment.
Verse 2: someone prepared ahead
David continues, “Now I have prepared with all my might for the house of my God” (1 Chronicles 29:2), and lists gold, silver, bronze, iron, wood and stone. Fields points to this stretch of Chronicles, where David arranges systems and people around his young son, and draws one comparison from it: “David is a good father to Solomon, but God is a better father to us.”
Be careful with what that comparison claims. It does not promise you a particular job or result. It claims that God is not careless with the people he sends. Solomon walked into a work already stocked with materials he did not gather.
Verse 14: even the experienced king depends
This is the verse many readers skip. After the people give generously, David prays, “But who am I, and what is my people, that we should be able to offer so willingly after this sort? for all things come of thee, and of thine own have we given thee” (1 Chronicles 29:14).
David is the seasoned one in this chapter, the warrior king with decades of experience. Yet his prayer sounds just like an inexperienced person’s. Everything he is handing his son came from God first. Dependence is not a beginner’s stage that experience eventually outgrows. It is the posture of the whole chapter.
Verse 19: David prays for what he cannot supply
Finally David prays, “And give unto Solomon my son a perfect heart, to keep thy commandments, thy testimonies, and thy statutes, and to do all these things, and to build the palace, for the which I have made provision” (1 Chronicles 29:19). He can stockpile materials. He cannot stockpile a faithful heart. So he asks.
The exercise. Make two columns. On the left, list what has already been provided for your assignment: people, resources, open doors, past help. On the right, list what no one but God can supply, the way David could not supply Solomon’s heart. Keep the page. The right-hand column is where your prayers in the next session will start.
Discussion questions
- In verse 1, David names Solomon’s inexperience in front of everyone. What would change if the people around you knew exactly where you feel unready? What would it cost, and what might it make possible?
- Verse 14 puts a confession of dependence in the mouth of the most experienced person present. Does that challenge the idea that dependence is only for beginners? Where do you see the opposite assumption in yourself?
Session 3: Learn Solomon’s prayer, then pray it daily
Read 2 Chronicles 1:7-12. God appears to Solomon at night and invites him to ask for anything. His answer: “Give me now wisdom and knowledge, that I may go out and come in before this people: for who can judge this thy people, that is so great?” (2 Chronicles 1:10). To “go out and come in” describes leading and acting competently in public life. The parallel account in 1 Kings 3:7 has Solomon admit he does not know how to do that, calling himself a little child.
Look at the shape of the prayer. It is specific about the task (leading these people). It is honest about the gap (who can do this?). And it asks for wisdom, not for the fear to go away or for guaranteed success.
Fields tells her listeners that she first heard this story in Sunday school around age five and adds, “I’ve been praying for wisdom since I was five.” She calls this the responsibility of the inexperienced person, and she urges people in over their heads to “ask God for wisdom and he will give you wisdom liberally.” Her examples are ordinary: a relationship, a class, the student who is the only Christian at home. In her words, “I don’t know how to have conversations with my family that don’t even trust you.”
Her word “liberally” comes from James 1:5: “If any of you lack wisdom, let him ask of God, that giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not; and it shall be given him.” “Upbraideth not” means God does not scold the person for asking. The next verse adds, “But let him ask in faith, nothing wavering” (James 1:6). The promise is wisdom, given generously and without reproach, to someone who asks trusting God. It is not a promise that the assignment will go the way you hope.
The daily practice: seven mornings, seven evenings
For the next seven days, do this at the same time each morning, before the day’s part of the assignment starts:
- Name today’s piece of the assignment in one line. Not lead the group but plan Thursday’s discussion or answer my brother’s question without getting defensive.
- Pray it in Solomon’s shape, aloud or written: Give me wisdom for this, so that I can serve these people well, because I do not know how to do it. Use your own words, but keep all three parts: the task, the people, the honest gap.
- Pick one item from the right-hand column of Session 2 and ask for it specifically.
Each evening, write two lines. First: what did I actually ask for this morning? Second: where did I act in a way I would not have chosen alone, or notice something I would have missed? Some days the second line will be blank. Leave it blank. The point is to build the habit of asking first, not to prove the prayer worked by producing a result every night.
For groups: before the next meeting, invite people to bring the one evening entry they found most interesting, whether it surprised them or confused them. Reading the morning prayers aloud is optional and should stay that way.
Discussion question
- Solomon asked for wisdom rather than for the work to be easier. When you pray about your assignment, what do you usually ask for instead? What does that request reveal about what you think the real problem is?
Session 4: Test what inexperience is for
Now the guide turns to the claim at the center of Fields’s sermon, because by this point you have a week of evidence to test it against. She argues: “God puts us in position to be inexperienced so we can be dependent on him. He doesn’t want experts because experts usually aren’t dependent.” She describes the kind of person God is after: “He wants people that are so confused by the call that they’re like, God, I have no other way to do this.”
Read that slowly, and weigh it against Scripture as a whole. Fields herself says God “chooses sometimes the inexperienced,” and the Bible also describes skilled people whom God equips for their work. The firmer claim is about the danger she names: competence tends to make people stop asking. Her own reasoning carries the weight here: “God doesn’t need your experience because he has all the experience.”
Two misreadings are worth naming, especially in a group. One person may hear “God uses the unqualified” as permission to skip preparation or to quit when it gets hard. Another may quietly decide that once they become competent, dependence is no longer needed. Session 2 answers both. Solomon still had to build the temple with real materials and real skill, and David, the expert, still prayed that everything came from God.
Also keep in view that feeling unqualified does not by itself prove God has given you an assignment. Fields is careful on the scope: “Now, he didn’t choose you to be the next king of Israel, but he chose you to be in relationship with him.” Assignments flow from that relationship and vary widely; as she puts it, “Some of us won’t be on the stage, some of us will be behind the scenes.” Whether a particular role is yours is still worth testing with Scripture, prayer and people who know you well.
The exercise. Return to your dated page from Session 1. Reread the fear you circled. Then reread your seven evening entries. Write a short answer to each question:
- Did the circled fear change in size, shape or category over the week?
- Was there a day you skipped asking because you felt you had it handled? What happened that day?
- Which item from your right-hand column do you most need to keep asking for?
Discussion questions
- Fields says experts usually are not dependent. Where in your life has competence quietly replaced prayer? Is that always a problem, or only sometimes?
- Solomon was named Jedidiah, beloved of the Lord, as an infant (2 Samuel 12:24-25), long before the temple; the text says simply, “and the LORD loved him.” Fields concludes, “He’s chosen because he’s loved of God.” If being loved came before the assignment, how should failure in the assignment affect how you see yourself?
- After a week of praying for wisdom, what is one thing you would now say differently to someone who tells you they feel unqualified?
For leaders: someone in the room may be in a real season of failure, not just nervousness. Let them say so without rushing to reassure them. The promise in this guide is that God gives wisdom and does not reproach the one who asks, not that every effort will work out. Hold that line gently.
Carrying it forward
The practice does not need to end after seven days. Keep the morning prayer in Solomon’s shape for the life of the assignment, and add one thing: when something goes well, write down what you asked for beforehand. David’s prayer in 1 Chronicles 29:14 was spoken on a good day, with gold piled up and the people giving freely, and it was still a prayer of dependence.
One question worth carrying out of these sessions: when you finally do feel capable at this, what will you keep asking God for?