DAY 1: MONDAY
BEFORE YOU BUILD, BE STILL
“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10 (KJV)
MY PRAYER FOR YOU
Dear Heavenly Father,
As this woman begins these 90 days, I pray that before she tries to change anything, fix anything, understand everything, or become anything, You teach her how to be still with You.
You know the woman holding these pages. You know the home she came from and the home she is building now. You know what was modeled for her and what was missing.
You know the relationships that shaped her, the responsibilities she has carried, the wounds she has survived, the mistakes she wishes she could undo, and the prayers she is still waiting for You to answer.
You know her as a woman. You know her as Your daughter. And if she is a mother, You know every child You have entrusted to her.
You know how deeply she loves them, the things she wishes she could protect them from, the places where she wonders whether she has done enough, the outcomes she desperately wants to secure for them, and the prayers she has prayed when no one else was listening.
Father, before we go any farther, bring her back to You. Not to another list of things she needs to do better. Not to another standard she has to reach. Not to another burden she has to carry.
Teach her to rest in Your presence long enough to hear Your voice. Teach her to make room for You to lead. Teach her to surrender before she moves. Teach her that she does not have to know what You are doing in order to trust who You are.
And as she learns to walk with You, let that relationship change the atmosphere of her home. Let her children see a mother who does not merely tell them about God, but walks with Him. Let them see her pray, wait, obey, and repent when she is wrong. Let them see her worship when life is good and when life hurts. Let them see what it looks like to trust You when the outcome is still unknown. Through her life, awaken in them a desire to know You for themselves.
Father, we are not asking You to give her a life without troubled waters. We are asking You to make her a woman who knows where to stand when the waters rise. Root her so deeply in Christ that circumstances do not determine her faith.
When she is disappointed, let her remain. When she is afraid, let her remain. When she is misunderstood, let her remain. When obedience costs her something, let her remain. When she cannot see what You are doing, let her remain.
And when everything inside her wants to run ahead and secure the outcome herself, remind her:
You are God.
She is Your daughter.
And she can be still.
In Jesus’ name,
Amen.
DEVOTIONAL
Before we talk about healing, we need to talk about stillness. Before we talk about boundaries, relationships, motherhood, forgiveness, identity, purpose, or the future, we need to begin somewhere much simpler.
Before you build, be still.
That may sound like an easy place to begin. It is not.
Stillness can be incredibly uncomfortable for a woman who has spent much of her life doing. There is always something that needs your attention. Someone needs something.
Something needs cleaned or decided. A message needs answered. A problem needs solved. A child needs help. A relationship needs addressed. A bill needs paid. A schedule needs organized. A future needs figured out.
And even when your body finally stops moving, your mind may keep going. You can sit on the couch while mentally rearranging tomorrow. You can lie in bed while replaying a conversation. You can pray while simultaneously trying to solve the very thing you are supposedly surrendering to God.
Sometimes we become so accustomed to carrying life that we do not even recognize how difficult it has become to simply sit in the presence of God without trying to accomplish something.
Scripture says:
“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10 (KJV)
There are two parts to that invitation.
Be still.
And know.
Stillness makes room for knowing. Not simply knowing facts about God. Knowing Him.
There is a difference.
You can know Scripture and still struggle to trust the God who wrote it. You can know that God is faithful and panic when you cannot see what He is doing. You can know that God provides and still feel responsible for securing every outcome yourself. You can tell your children that God answers prayer while quietly believing everything depends upon you. You can teach them Bible stories while struggling to recognize God moving in your own story.
And that is why these 90 days cannot simply give you more information.
You need more than information.
You need formation.
You need time with God that moves truth from something you know in your mind into something you have learned to stand upon with your life.
Because troubled waters will come.
Jesus never promised otherwise.
There will be seasons when you do everything you know to do and the outcome is still uncertain. There will be prayers that seem unanswered, relationships you cannot fix, and people you cannot change. There will be moments when doing the right thing costs you something. There may be times when you speak truth and are misunderstood for it. There may be times when you establish a necessary boundary and someone becomes angry. There may be moments when you know you obeyed God and yet the immediate result does not look anything like what you hoped obedience would produce.
And if you are a mother, there will eventually be pain you cannot prevent for your children.
That may be one of the hardest truths to accept.
You can build a peaceful home. You can teach Scripture. You can pray over them. You can protect them. You can listen. You can teach them to speak. You can help them recognize right from wrong. You can apologize when you fail them. You can point them toward Jesus every day of their childhood.
And you still cannot guarantee that they will never hurt.
You cannot make every person treat them well. You cannot prevent every disappointment. You cannot make every relationship healthy. You cannot choose their faith for them. You cannot walk every road for them.
And you cannot become their Savior.
That belongs to Jesus.
This is where surrender begins.
Not with giving up. Not with becoming passive. Not with saying that nothing matters because God is in control.
Surrender says:
I will faithfully do what God has entrusted to me, and I will refuse to take responsibility for what belongs to Him.
That is the kind of woman we are becoming.
A woman who knows the difference between responsibility and control.
A woman who can work faithfully without believing everything depends upon her.
A woman who can protect without becoming ruled by fear.
A woman who can love deeply without trying to control another person’s heart.
A woman who can speak truth without becoming consumed by another person’s response.
A woman who can pray for an outcome and still say:
Father, Your will, not mine.
That kind of surrender does not happen in one dramatic moment. It is formed one ordinary decision at a time, one prayer at a time, one act of obedience at a time, one surrendered outcome at a time, one moment of choosing to remain with God when everything inside you wants to run ahead.
And if you are raising children, they are watching.
That does not mean you have to perform faith perfectly in front of them. Some of their most important encounters with faith may happen when they see that you do not.
Let them see you say, “I was wrong.”
Let them hear, “I need to pray before I answer that.”
Let them see you open your Bible because you genuinely do not know what to do.
Let them hear you say, “I really want this to work out a certain way, but we are going to trust God with what happens.”
Let them see tears. Let them see questions. Let them see disappointment.
And then let them see you remain.
Because someday your children will face something you cannot fix. On that day, they will need more than the memory of what Mom believed.
They will need their own relationship with God.
They will need to know how to pray when no one is telling them what to say.
They will need to know how to open Scripture when they are confused.
They will need to recognize the difference between fear and wisdom.
They will need to know how to obey when obedience is unpopular.
They will need to know how to speak truth when speaking costs them something.
They will need to know how to forgive without calling wrong right.
They will need to know how to love someone without allowing that person’s sin to control their life.
They will need to know how to stand.
You cannot manufacture that faith for them. But you can lead them toward encounters with God for themselves.
You can stop answering every spiritual question immediately and sometimes say, “Let’s ask God.”
You can pray together and then pay attention together.
You can teach them to recognize His faithfulness.
You can tell the stories of prayers He has answered.
You can talk about the prayers He has not answered the way you hoped and let them see that God is still good in both.
You can invite them to pray their own prayers instead of always praying for them.
You can ask what they believe God is teaching them.
You can help them search Scripture for themselves.
You can give them opportunities to obey.
You can celebrate when you see God growing something in them.
And when they struggle, you can resist the temptation to become the answer to every problem and instead continually lead them toward the One who is.
That is discipleship.
It is not merely passing down knowledge of God.
It is teaching our children how to walk with God.
But before we can lead them there, we have to learn to walk there ourselves.
That is why we begin here.
Stillness.
You do not need to build everything today.
You do not need to become the woman you hope to be by the end of these 90 days. You do not need to fix your home, figure out your children, heal every wound, know what God is preparing, or know how the story ends.
Today, you need to begin learning how to sit with your Father.
Because eventually the waters will rise.
And when they do, you do not want your peace to depend upon calm water.
You want your peace anchored to Christ.
The goal is not to become a woman who cannot feel fear. It is to become a woman whose fear does not decide where she stands.
Not a woman who never hurts, but a woman who knows where to take her hurt.
Not a woman whose children never suffer, but a woman who knows how to lead them to Christ when they do.
Not a woman who controls her home perfectly, but a woman who continually invites God to rule it.
Not a woman who always knows what to do, but a woman who knows what to do when she does not know what to do.
She becomes still. She seeks God. She listens. She obeys what He makes clear. And she trusts Him with everything she cannot see.
That is where we begin.
Before you build the home.
Before you lead the children.
Before you face the troubled waters.
Before you walk toward whatever promise God may have ahead of you.
Be still.
Know your God.
Everything else will be built from there.
For a woman who has learned to keep life moving, stillness can expose more than busyness.
It can expose the belief that if you stop anticipating, remembering, arranging, and carrying, something important will fall apart.
That belief may have helped you survive seasons when too much really did depend on you.
But survival skills are not meant to become permanent leadership over your life.
Formation does not ask you to become passive.
It teaches you to become responsive to God instead of reactive to fear.
A formed woman can notice what needs attention without assuming she must carry all of it.
She can discern, receive, respond, and multiply what God gives her without making herself responsible for being the source.
TAKE A MOMENT
Before you write anything, stop.
Set your phone down if you can. Close your eyes. Take a slow breath.
You do not need to produce anything for God in this moment. You do not need the right words. You do not need to hear something profound.
Simply acknowledge:
God is here.
Then sit quietly for a moment with these words:
“Be still, and know that I am God.” Psalm 46:10 (KJV)
JOURNAL WITH GOD
When my life becomes uncertain, what do I usually do first?
What is hardest for me about being still?
Where in my life am I currently trying to secure an outcome because trusting God with it feels frightening?
What do I believe would happen if I stopped trying to control that outcome?
When my children watch me face uncertainty, what do they currently see?
Do my children mostly hear me tell them about God, or am I intentionally helping them experience walking with Him for themselves?
What do I want my children to know how to do spiritually before they leave my home?
What kind of woman do I want them to remember seeing when life became difficult?
What would it mean for me to become a woman whose faith remains rooted even when the outcome is painful, uncertain, or completely different from what I prayed for?
YOUR TIME WITH GOD
Today, do not give God a polished prayer.
Give Him the truth.
Tell Him what you are carrying. Tell Him what you are afraid of. Tell Him what you are trying to control. Tell Him what you want for your children. Tell Him what you are afraid might happen to them. Tell Him what you hope these 90 days change in you.
Then open your hands.
Actually open them if you can.
Talk to your Father in your own words.
Ask Him to teach you to be still.
Ask Him to help you know Him more deeply.
Ask Him to show you where you are trying to control something that belongs in His hands.
Ask Him to teach you how to recognize His truth through His Word and obey Him when obedience is difficult.
If you are raising children, talk to Him about them by name.
Tell Him what you hope for them, what frightens you, and where you struggle to release their lives into His hands.
Ask Him to teach you how to lead them toward Him without trying to take His place in their lives.
Then be quiet.
You do not need to fill the silence.
You do not need to leave today with answers.
Day 1 is not about answers.
It is about establishing where you will go for them.
For today:
Be still.
Know your God.
And begin there.