Rise Up:
What Mothers Can Teach a Nation

What Road Are You Making?

Pastor Phil opened with an unusual question — pulled straight from a military exchange between King Akish and David in 1 Samuel 27:10: "What road have you made today?" David was at war. He knew exactly what he had accomplished that day and he answered without hesitation.

The question Pastor Phil turned on the congregation: What road are you paving for your family? Because roads are always being built. The culture is building one. Media, peer pressure, and social norms are all laying asphalt in the direction of your kids' hearts. The real question is how much of that road is yours.

Staying engaged isn't optional. Every day a child is under your roof, something is pulling at them. That means parents — especially fathers — need to be like David: strategic, aware, and present. Mamas, Pastor Phil noted, tend to have a built-in radar for this. Dads have to work a little harder to stay in tune. But both are called.

Deborah: The Mother Who Rose Up

The first mother Pastor Phil highlighted from Scripture was Deborah — and her story hit different in the context of the culture we're living in today. Judges 4 introduces her with an impressive résumé:

Prophetess. Wife. Judge. She was literally running the court system of a nation. But Judges 5 reveals the context she was working in: the highways had shut down. Culture had gotten so dangerous, so corrupt, that people were cutting through the wilderness just to avoid it. Sound familiar?

She didn't rise up as the prophetess. She didn't rise up as the judge. She rose up as a mother. That's the word that stopped the chaos. And it carries a warning for all of us: your anointing, your calling, your ministry — none of it automatically translates into your family. You have to show up as a parent.

The nation is messing with our kids today — not just through politics, but through culture. And the answer isn't a better program or a bigger anointing. It's mothers and fathers who are willing to rise up and do the work inside the home.

Proverbs 31: Consistency, Not Perfection

Most people teach Proverbs 31 as the gold standard — the perfect woman checklist. But Pastor Phil came at it from a completely different angle, starting with verse one:

King Lemuel is only mentioned once in all of Scripture. Many theologians believe Lemuel was Solomon's pen name — which would make his mother Bathsheba. The same Bathsheba from 2 Samuel. The one the story doesn't start kind for. She was, as Pastor Phil put it plainly, "the other woman."

And yet — she wrote Proverbs 31. Not from a place of perfection. From a place of hard-won consistency. That changes everything about how we read that chapter.

The pressure on mothers to achieve some impossible Proverbs 31 standard is real — and it's not what the text is asking for. Even the Apostle Paul said he hadn't arrived yet. If Paul hadn't reached perfection, neither have you. And that's okay. What Bathsheba taught her son wasn't a checklist. It was a principle: let your yes be yes and your no be no. Show up the same way tomorrow that you showed up today.

That includes with adult kids, too. Consistency sometimes means holding a line even when it's uncomfortable — not bailing grown children out of every financial hole, and not softening standards every time someone cries. Love and consistency aren't opposites.

What's In Your House?

The third story came from 2 Kings 4 — a widow whose husband had died and left the family in debt. With nothing left, she was facing creditors who could legally take her sons into slavery. She had one thing: a small pot of oil.

She called on the prophet Elisha, and his response turned the story:

The oil kept flowing until there were no more vessels left. She sold what she had, paid the debt, and had enough left over to live on. The miracle didn't start with something big. It started with the little she already had.

Pastor Phil's word to parents: stop looking outside your home for what God has already placed inside it. The church can help. Community can support. But the supernatural starts with the natural — the everyday consistency you pour into your kids, your marriage, your home. Give God what you have, close the door, and watch it multiply.