Hello again brothers and sisters, Amanda here! It has been a while, and I am so excited to get back to sharing with you all! I had been rolling around several ideas in my head for what to write this week, but the Lord took me in a completely different direction this morning (He seems to like changing things at the last minute with me ;) haha) so I will walk in His will and share what He put on my heart. Thanksgiving is right around the corner for those of us in the United States, so I suppose it is no surprise that todays post focuses largely on food! But what kind of food? Read on to find out! I started a new devotional this morning. Normally I pick one from the vast selection on my bible app, but this one is a physical book. I cozied up on... Continue reading

Hello all! Amanda here, I am so excited to share a wonderful testimony with you today! This one starts out rocky, but I promise it has a happy ending :) Depression I loathe that word, depression, it is a thief and a liar! It can creep up on us any time. If we are not keeping our eyes on the Father, living life in worship, staying in his word, and praying through the storms. It can overtake an otherwise healthy mind like a plague of locusts on a bountiful field, leaving nothing but barren wasteland behind. I have watched this demon (for that is exactly what it is!) attempt to destroy people I love more times that I need to discuss. For this reason I have a very severe kind of righteous anger/hatred towards this particular monster. Because of all I had witnessed within my close circle of loved ones... Continue reading

Hello my friends! Amanda here! I have a special post to share with you this week. You see, today (August 13th) is my 13th wedding anniversary! There was a time when I thought we would never make it to this point. After all, we all know being in a marriage, any marriage, is challenging. When you throw in a spiritual mismatch it certainly adds an extra layer of complex difficulties. We have faced so many storms I was sure would sink our ship, yet here we stand! On solid ground and more united than ever! Is our marriage perfect? Nope! Is he saved? Not yet :). But Daniel and I are in a place now I once thought was impossible. A place of mutual respect, strong communication, and beautiful peace. I want my message today to bring hope. Hope to anyone out there struggling in their mismatched marriage. While I... Continue reading

Hell0 all! Amanda here. Hasn't this study been incredible? I don't know about all of you, but I will definitely be looking back over this study again and again! Lynn, Ann, and Ian have all done an incredible job sharing their insights into the wisdom of God. I feel so very blessed to be a part of this team! With that being said I am anxious to dive into chapter 5 with all of you! There is so much wisdom and instruction packed in to these 33 verses. Nearly everything about how we should conduct ourselves as children of God is summarized here. And yet there was a time in my life when I would have found a chapter like this too overwhelming to read, let alone study! As a teen and young adult I struggled greatly with condemnation and perfection. I would read chapters like this and feel so... Continue reading

Hello and happy Monday my friends! Amanda here, I had a little something laid on my heart last Sunday that I have been waiting to share with you all. I hope this blesses someone today! It is summer time here in the southern U.S. and that means good food, cold drinks, nearly unbearable heat, and lots of swimming! My kids are so excited every year to get back in the water. Despite their enthusiasm neither one of them are very strong swimmers. They seem to fight the water more than anything haha! I was driving home from church when this thought zapped me! It was like a divine download and I immediately turned on my talk-to-text and starting writing a rough draft of this post. My kids were in the car listening and they clapped when I was finished haha! I am taking that as a sign everyone needs to... Continue reading

Hello all! Amanda here, I hope you had a great weekend and a wonderful Mothers Day! I have another "WOW God!" story to share with all of you (the picture is a little hint). So lets jump right in! I have to start by saying the spiritual journey God is taking me on as a mother is nothing short of amazing. I have hard time finding the words to describe it sometimes (which, if you know me, is unusual haha!). I feel it is all at once joyful and solemn, fun and difficult, peaceful and chaotic! I am sure that is how most mothers view raising their children. I am so VERY aware that God chose me to steward these little warriors that sometimes it takes my breath way! And the event I am about to share with you was one of those breath-taking moments. Almost every night since December... Continue reading

Hello my SUMite family, Amanda here with you on this Monday morning. I had something wonderful happen with my kids about two weeks ago and I am so excited to share it with with you all (trying hard not to say "y'all" here HAHA!). Lets jump right in! Let me start by saying I believe in spiritual gifts, I believe we all have them in one form or another as believers. I also believe these gifts can manifest at pretty much any age, child, teenager, adult, or senior citizen. I believe this because I was given the gift of prophecy at the age of 12! God wants his people working in his gifts, and there is so much work to be done it just makes sense that some of us would start young! Anyway, since my son was about six he has been able to sense spiritual forces. He is... Continue reading

Hello all, Amanda here. I am excited to share with you all what has been going on so we are going to dive right in! I shared a post not too long ago about the throne of my husband's heart. How I audibly heard God tell me to be prepared for Him to take that seat, and the changes that would take place in my husband and in our lives as a family. Well, for a while nothing new happened. Things have been going along pretty normally and I had really stopped thinking about that moment so much. It seemed to spring up hope in me, and I was afraid that hope would lead to disappointment. So I put it on the back burner of my mind and got on with life. Then last Sunday something else happened. After church service an older lady I greatly respect came up to... Continue reading

Hello all! Amanda here for day three of our fast. I hope all of you are doing well and staying hungry for more of HIM! As Ann mentioned in Monday's post, our theme this week is Friendship with God. I have been rolling this concept around in my head the last few days and asking myself the question "what does friendship with God look like?". I have been jotting down thoughts as they come to me and I wanted to take this time to share with you what I believe God wants us all to remember about what it means to be friends with him. For my side of the friendship it means I want to know him deeply. I want to know his thoughts, his desires, and what pleases him. I want to know what angers him, what he finds detestable, and what he will not tolerate. Friendship with... Continue reading

Hey there SUMites! Amanda her, I am so excited to share something God revealed to me weeks ago that really rang my bell! For several years my husband struggled with an addiction to alcohol. He was never violent or dangerous, but it was still slowly taking over his life and becoming a top priority. Drinking was what he looked forward to the most at the end of every day and the start of every weekend, it truly was his idol for many years. One night we were reminiscing about things and he started to talk about drinking. He spoke of it fondly, and admitted to missing it. That hurt my heart in more ways than one. Suddenly, while he was talking I heard God. Now, when I say I heard God I mean I HEARD Him, loud and clear! God said to me, "Can you handle him loving ME like... Continue reading

Hello my lovely SUMites, Amanda here! I have loved reading Ian and Ann’s posts on how they read their bibles! It is always inspiring to me to hear or read how other believers like to study Gods word. I have loved bibles since I was a teenager. I wanted the one with the trendy cover or cool maps inside. I ended up with several bibles in a variety of styles over the years. Sadly, I was more interested in the look of them than actually reading them. You see, I struggled badly with condemnation in my teens. I felt I could only study when I was “being good”, once I stumbled and did something that wasn’t good, I would feel too guilty to keep studying. This was a cycle that repeated itself into my early twenties. The Bible, especially the New Testament, was a book of rules in my eyes.... Continue reading

Hello beloved SUMites! This month while I was asking God what he wanted me to write about I felt him say “REST”. I believe he is leading some of us into a time of deep rest, I know he is me! So today I am going to share with you a few things our Father has been showing me about rest. I hope it blesses you as it has me! When our children are small we prioritize their rest. I don’t know about you, but nap time was taken pretty seriously when my kids were babies! Most days we would arrange our schedule around “rest time” to make sure we were home. During those times my house was transitioned into rest mode. I turned all the lights down low, my phone sound off, and all noise had to be kept at a low volume. Then I would read and sing... Continue reading

By Amanda Pace I had prayed about what to write and settled on this story before I watched Lynn’s amazing video on spiritual warfare in the SUMite facebook group. Isn’t God’s timing amazing! This post will also be about warfare, but it is more of a personal testimony as well as declarations I feel God wants me to share with all of you to claim for yourselves. So here we go! Years ago, I was attending my wonderful church and went up front to ask for prayer as I often did. I was feeling so weak and alone, like my life and marriage were falling apart. I was so scared of what might happen to my kids and their faith. In short, I was filled with doubt and fear. My pastors knew me and my situation, so I didn’t have to explain much when I came up for prayer. They... Continue reading

Once in a while my children will say or do something that blesses my spirit beyond words. When those moments happen it feels as if God is saying, “See? They ARE learning! And you are doing a good job!”. One of those moments came a few weeks ago with my seven year old daughter. First, let me give you a little back story. My husband has been an atheist for almost 11 years. Of course as children get older they notice that daddy does not pray or come to church and they start asking questions. That is around the time my husband will have a talk with them about what he believes. This was something I REALLY struggled with at first. I had to pray many times about how I was supposed to handle it! I felt that God told me it was important for Hubby to feel heard and... Continue reading

By Amanda Pace We often think of running a race as just that, running, as fast as you can and as hard as you can towards a finish line. Blood pumping, adrenaline nigh, excitement and anticipation pulsing through your body as you see your finish line getting closer and closer! Running a race you can see the end to is easy enough, and many people would even consider it enjoyable. It's exciting because you KNOW you are going to reach the end, often you can SEE it before you even start running. But what about the races we cannot see the end of? What about those of us who feel like we have been running for months, years, or even decades? Towards a goal, a finish line, that we never seem to reach. This message today is for us. The ones soaked in sweat and tears, the ones who live... Continue reading

Hello my lovely SUMites! I have a little story God put on my heart recently. It is a little bit intense, but I think it is the perfect metaphor for how some of us may be feeling in this season of life. I hope it speaks to you as much as it spoke to me. Then I will share one of my own experiences with letting go. Imagine yourself hanging over the edge of a high cliff. All you can see below your dangling feet is a dense fog. You have no idea if the ground is 2 feet or 200 feet away. You start to panic! Your mind is racing, your breathing quickens, your heart is pounding in your chest. You are completely terrified of the unknown. As your mind races, questions arise, "How did I let myself get here? What happens next? How can I get myself out... Continue reading

"Then He withdrew from them about a stone's throw, knelt down, and began to pray, 'Father, if you are willing, take this cup away from me - nevertheless, not my will, but Yours be done.' Then an angel appeared to Him, strengthening Him. Being in anguish, He prayed more fervently, and His sweat became like drops of blood falling on the ground" (Luke 22:39-44, CSB). Jesus felt fear, He felt anguish, He felt overwhelmed, He felt exhaustion. We know this because of scriptures like the one above. But what did Jesus do about it? What was His response to this event He knew was causing all these feelings? Even in the face of pain beyond measure, He told the Father, "Not my will, but YOUR will be done." Jesus had human feelings. That is one of the beautiful things about conversing with Him in prayer, we can be honest with... Continue reading

When we open and USE the Word of God, speaking it out, reading it, declaring it, teaching it to our children ect. We are wielding a weapon! Continue reading