DAY 29: MONDAY

WHEN GOD’S WILL DOES NOT LOOK LIKE YOUR PLAN

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the

LORD.” Isaiah 55:8 (KJV)

MY PRAYER FOR YOU

Dear Heavenly Father,

A new week begins, and today I pray for the woman who has surrendered something to You but still carries a picture in her mind of how she hopes You will work it out.

You know the prayers she has prayed. You know the outcomes she wants for herself, her children, her relationships, her home, and her future. You know which desires are beautiful and which ones have quietly become expectations.

Father, teach her the difference between trusting You with an outcome and trusting You only when the outcome resembles the one she imagined. When Your answer takes longer than she expected, keep her faithful. When You close a door she wanted opened, keep her faithful. When obedience leads through something difficult instead of around it, keep her faithful. When she cannot understand what You are doing, teach her that she does not have to understand Your entire plan in order to obey You in this moment.

And Father, this becomes especially difficult when the outcome involves her children. There are things a mother would gladly endure herself if it meant her children never had to hurt. Give her wisdom to know when she needs to protect them, when she needs to advocate for them, when she needs to teach them to speak, and when she must stand beside them while they walk through something she cannot remove.

Do not let surrender make her passive. Teach her children that following You does not mean becoming silent in the face of wrongdoing. Give them courage to tell the truth, speak up, seek help, establish appropriate boundaries, and refuse to participate in what is wrong.

But do not let pain harden them either. Teach them that they can stand firmly without becoming cruel. They can tell the truth without hatred. They can refuse mistreatment without becoming consumed by bitterness. They can love people with the love of Christ without giving those people permission to continue hurting them.

Give this mother wisdom to teach what can feel like an impossible balance. And when she cannot control what happens next, teach her to trust You with what she cannot carry.

In Jesus’ name,

Amen.

DEVOTIONAL

Yesterday, we rested at the top. We looked backward. We remembered God's faithfulness. We allowed ourselves to stop instead of immediately rushing toward the next thing.

Today, we begin walking again.

And eventually, every woman learning surrender encounters a difficult truth: God's will does not always look like the plan she hoped He would bless.

“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the LORD.” Isaiah 55:8 (KJV)

We often say that we want God's will.

But sometimes what we really mean is, “God, this is what I want. Please make it Your will too.”

We pray for the relationship to work.

We pray for the marriage to heal.

We pray for the job to come through.

We pray for the financial problem to resolve.

We pray for the diagnosis to change.

We pray for the conflict to end.

We pray for our children to be protected from something difficult.

Then we begin imagining what God's faithfulness should look like.

The relationship stays.

The door opens.

The problem disappears.

The person changes.

The child is spared.

The answer is yes.

Sometimes God answers exactly that way.

Sometimes He does not.

That is where surrender becomes more than a word.

Surrender is not simply placing something in God's hands while quietly keeping instructions attached to it. It is trusting that His authority extends even to the outcome.

That does not mean we stop asking. Scripture repeatedly teaches us to bring our requests before God. We can pray specifically. We can ask boldly. We can tell Him exactly what we hope He will do.

But prayer is not control dressed in spiritual language.

There comes a place where our request must meet trust.

Jesus showed us this in Gethsemane.

“Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.” Luke 22:42 (KJV)

Jesus did not pretend the cup was easy. He did not call suffering pleasant. He asked for another way, and then He surrendered the outcome.

That matters because sometimes we think surrender means we should stop caring what happens. It does not. You can desperately want something and surrender it. You can cry and surrender it. You can ask God repeatedly and surrender it. You can be disappointed by an answer and still trust Him.

Surrender is not the absence of desire. It is the refusal to make your desire your god.

And nowhere may this become harder than motherhood.

You can surrender your own future more easily than you can sometimes surrender your child's. Because when your child hurts, something inside you wants to make it stop.

That instinct is not wrong. Mothers are supposed to protect their children. If your child is being abused, endangered, threatened, bullied, exploited, or genuinely harmed, surrender does not mean standing aside and calling your silence faith. You protect. You speak. You seek help. You establish boundaries. You use the appropriate authorities and resources available to you. You teach your child that being loving does not mean remaining silent while someone hurts them.

But not every painful experience is one you can or should remove. A friend rejects them. Someone misunderstands them. They face consequences for a poor choice. They work hard and still do not make the team. Someone they love disappoints them. They experience conflict. They discover that doing the right thing does not always produce an immediately pleasant result.

Those moments hurt too. And sometimes the hardest thing a mother can do is remain beside her child without taking over the story.

Because you know how to call. You know what to say. You know how to fix it. You know how to make the discomfort disappear. But sometimes God is developing something in your child that cannot develop if you remove every difficult thing before they encounter it.

Courage requires something frightening enough to require courage. Perseverance requires something difficult enough to continue through. Discernment requires decisions. Forgiveness requires offense. Faith requires moments when they cannot see the entire path.

That does not mean God causes every hurt simply to teach a lesson. We should be careful about telling suffering people that God did something painful to teach them something. But God can meet us inside what He has allowed and redeem what He did not call good.

Your children need to learn that. They need to know that God is not only present when Mom successfully fixes everything. They need to encounter Him when Mom cannot.

That may mean sitting beside your child and saying, “I don't know how this is going to work out, but we are going to keep doing what is right, and we are going to trust God together.”

Then let them pray.

Not only listen while you pray.

Let them tell God they are angry.

Let them tell Him they are scared.

Let them ask why.

Let them ask for help.

Let them experience what it means to bring their own troubled heart before Him.

This is how faith becomes theirs.

And while you teach them to surrender outcomes, teach them that surrender does not require surrendering their voice.

There is a dangerous misunderstanding of Christlike love that can cause people to believe being loving means tolerating whatever someone does to them. It does not.

Jesus was loving, and Jesus spoke truth. He showed mercy, and He confronted sin. He forgave, and He did not call evil good.

Christlike love is not permission for another person to continue causing harm.

Your child can say, “Do not speak to me that way.”

Your child can tell a trusted adult what happened.

Your child can leave an unsafe situation.

Your child can ask for help.

Your child can establish appropriate distance from someone who repeatedly hurts them.

And your child can do those things without hatred.

That is an important distinction.

We do not want to raise children who believe strength means retaliation.

But neither do we want to raise children who believe kindness means becoming an easy target.

We want children who can stand, who know what is true, who know when to speak, who know when to leave, who know when to ask for help, and who refuse to let another person's behavior determine the condition of their own heart.

Someone can hurt you without receiving permission to teach you hatred. Someone can mistreat you without becoming the person who decides your character. Someone can refuse to apologize without preventing you from eventually releasing bitterness.

You can establish a boundary and still pray for someone. You can tell the truth about what happened and still refuse revenge. You can forgive someone and still recognize that trust has not been restored. You can love someone with the love of Christ and still acknowledge that closeness with them is not currently wise.

These truths belong together.

And they matter for you as much as they matter for your children.

Perhaps you are facing an outcome right now that you desperately want to control.

You have prayed.

You have done what you know to do.

You have spoken where you needed to speak.

You have established the boundary.

You have sought wisdom.

And there is still a part you cannot control.

That part belongs to God.

Peace before promise does not mean believing everything will turn out exactly the way you want. It means becoming so anchored in God that even when the outcome is different, you still know where to stand.

That is the woman we are becoming.

Not a woman who never experiences troubled waters, but a woman who knows where her feet belong when the waters rise.

Not a woman whose children never suffer, but a woman who knows how to lead them toward Christ when they do.

Not a woman who controls every outcome, but a woman who remains faithful with what belongs to her and trusts God with what does not.

TAKE A MOMENT

Think about one outcome you are currently trying very hard to secure.

Ask yourself: What actually belongs to me here?

Maybe it is a conversation, a boundary, an apology, a decision, an act of obedience, protecting someone, speaking truth, asking for help, or simply remaining faithful.

Then ask: What part belongs to God?

Separate the two.

JOURNAL WITH GOD

Is there something I have surrendered to God while still expecting Him to produce the specific outcome I want?

What am I afraid it would mean if God's answer looked different from my plan?

What responsibility genuinely belongs to me in this situation, and what outcome am I trying to carry that belongs to God?

When one of my children is hurting, is my first instinct always to remove the pain, or can I discern when they need protection and when they need my presence while they walk through something difficult?

Am I teaching my children that Christlike love includes truth, courage, boundaries, forgiveness, and refusing retaliation?

Do my children know they can tell me when someone hurts, frightens, pressures, or mistreats them without fearing that I will dismiss what happened?

How can I help my children learn to speak for themselves while still knowing I will step in when protection or advocacy is truly needed?

Is there someone I need to forgive without confusing forgiveness with restored trust or unlimited access?

What would faithfulness look like if I stopped trying to guarantee the outcome?

YOUR TIME WITH GOD

Today, bring God one outcome you have been trying to control.

Tell Him what you want. Be specific.

Then tell Him what frightens you about receiving a different answer.

Do not force yourself to pretend you are comfortable with every possibility.

Surrender is not pretending you have no preference.

It is bringing your preference honestly before God and choosing to trust Him beyond it.

Then ask Him what belongs to you today.

If you need to speak, speak.

If you need to protect, protect.

If you need to establish a boundary, establish it.

If you need to apologize, apologize.

If you need to wait, wait.

If you have done what belongs to you and the rest depends upon another person, an unknown future, or circumstances outside your control, leave that part with God.

And when your children encounter something painful, resist giving them only your solution.

Help them identify what belongs to them too.

Ask what is true, what they can do, whether they need to speak up or ask for help, whether something is unsafe, whether there is something they need to take responsibility for, and what they need to trust God with.

Then give them room to talk to Him themselves.

You are teaching them something they will need long after they leave your home.

They can stand strong without becoming hard.

They can speak truth without becoming cruel.

They can love without permitting harm.

They can forgive without pretending.

They can remain faithful without controlling the outcome.

And when they cannot see what God is doing, they can still know where to stand.

So can you.

Do what faithfulness requires today.

Then trust God with what happens next.