October 19, 2025

Exodus 17:8-13 How the Israelites won the Battle of Amalek

In this week’s old testament reading, (Exodus 17:8-13), Moses, Aaron, Hur And Joshua unite in a group effort to win the battle of Amalek.  Joshua engaged the Amalek people in a physical battle while Moses held the staff of God up. When Moses held the staff up, the Israelites would begin winning the battle but if he put the staff down the Israelites would begin to lose the battle.  Moses’ arms became tired so Aaron & Hur sat Moses on a rock to rest while they held Moses’ hands on both sides, to keep the staff of God held up in order to win the battle (both spiritually and physically)!  It was a group effort to win the spiritual and physical battle of Amalek. 

I love how the Old Testament bible stories are always examples of how God wants us to live in the new testament.  Jesus says, (in Matthew 18:20), when dealing with spiritual battles within the church of believers, “For where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.”  Fighting spiritual battles is a group effort of prayer and communicating truth!

In this week’s gospel Luke 18:1-8 Jesus tells a parable about a persistent widow and says the way we win both physical and spiritual battles is through persistent praying & asking.   So the SPIRITUAL life is filled with FAITHFULNESS & Unceasing Prayer to God/Jesus (Galatians 5:22-23).

Prayer  includes:

1. Thankfulness to God 
2. Asking God for Blessings/Help/Miracles
3. Conversation with God (Both Us Talking to Him and Listening to His answers)

So unceasing prayer includes thankfulness, petitions and conversation with God.  The second part of prayer is asking for blessings/help/miracles or prayer petitions. 

In addition to unceasing prayer, we also noticed (with Jesus’ persistent widow parable) the widow did not just pray and then start mindless scrolling on her device.  

The widow kept having the courage to approach the unjust judge (who neither feared God nor cared about people), and asking and hoping for justice in her situation. She had to have the courage/self-control/self-discipline & hope to keep going back, telling her truth, and likely getting rejected by the judge. In our situations, we can have hope because we know God/Jesus is in control of both the timing of our situations and the unjust judge’s mind and heart. 

So the SPIRITUAL life is filled with FAITHFULNESS & Unceasing Prayer to God/Jesus & SELF-Control to keep going into the world and asking worldly people or people who 

Galatians 5:22-23 SAYS SO…..…….

“But the fruit of the SPIRIT is 1) love ,2) joy, 3) peace, 4) patience, 5) kindness, 6) TRUTH, 7) FAITHFULNESS, 8) gentleness, & 9) SELF-CONTROL. Against such things there is no law.”

The SPIRIT-filled life is filled with the 7th fruit of the spirit, which is FAITHFULNESS, Unceasing Prayer to God and the 9th fruit of the spirit, SELF-CONTROL. 

This is in opposition to the mindlessly scrolling life, worldly life, filled with fear and non-commitment! 

Our 4 children are very blessed!  I don’t think they are dealing with many unjust situations in their lives like the persistent widow in Jesus’ parable.  I think all of them accept Jesus’s birth, death and resurrection as truth, so, (praise God), they all have salvation! 

Currently, Mr. Smith and I are really praying for each of them (ages 21, 19, 17 and 14) to commit to persistent prayer in regards to individual goals/plans (especially in school, sports, jobs and career choice).  

We know from wisdom and experience that to live our best lives (the lives Jesus died to give us!, we need to stay close to the Lord and listen to the desires He is putting in each of our hearts! In Psalm 20:4 it says, “May He give you the desires of your heart and make all your plans succeed.”  

We also know we need to be willing to put time/work/self-discipline/self-control into creating each of our goals/plans while following the Holy Spirit’s lead.  In Proverbs 19:2, it says, “ Many are the plans in a man’s heart but the Lord’s purpose will prevail!”  

We are persistently praying that each of our children commit their career goals to the Lord because we want each of them living their own best life!  Living our best life has only been made possible by committing our goals to the Lord and letting the Holy Spirit lead us!  In Proverbs 16:9 it says, “A man’s mind plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps and makes them sure.”  

The song, “Spirit lead me” by Influence Music and Michael Kettlerer is so relevant for our prayers for our children today’s gospel message!  We love this song to listen to as we continue our Sunday worship!   

October 12, 2025

The SPIRITUAL life is filled with FAITHFULNESS & THANKFULNESS to God.

Galatians 5:22-23 SAYS SO…..…….

“But the fruit of the SPIRIT is 1) love, 2) joy, 3) peace, 4) patience, 5) kindness, 6) truth, 7) FAITHFULNESS, 8) gentleness & 9)self-control. Against such things there is no law.”

The SPIRIT-filled life is filled with the 7th fruit of the spirit, which is FAITHFULNESS & THANKFULNESS to God. This is in opposition to the wordly/fleshy life, which is filled with ungratefulness, complaining, fault-finding and blaming.

In the gospel we are studying in our weekly family Bible study, Jesus heals 10 Lepers! All 10 Lepers responded in FAITH before they were healed! The gospel says….”They cried out, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us!” He looked at them and said, “Go show yourselves to the priests.” And as they went, they were healed of leprosy! All 10 of them responded in FAITH to Jesus because they all began walking, to show themselves to the priest before they were actually physically healed. They obeyed Jesus’ command because they BELIEVED Jesus could heal them.  All 10 Lepers had the 7th spiritual fruit of FAITHFULNESS, spoken of, in Galatians 5:22-23.

However, only 1 Samaritan man came back to THANK Jesus! Luke 17:15 says, “When he saw he was healed, he came back to Jesus, shouting, “PRAISE God!” He fell to the ground at Jesus’ feet, THANKING Him for what He had done.”

Jesus eventually says to the Samaritan man, “Stand up & go. Your FAITH has healed you.”

Jesus said FAITH healed the Samaritan man that came back to THANK him. FAITH also healed the other 9 Lepers but they didn’t know FAITH healed them because they didn’t come back to THANK Jesus and be in relationship with Him. 

We don’t know if the other 9 Lepers just forgot to say thank you.  Maybe they were just awestruck and in their own world.  All they could think about was being physically healed of leprosy after many years of  being outcasts.  Their minds were consumed with joy with what they were going to do with this newfound healthy body!  They could go live with their families again and get a job. 

Sometimes now, even in modern times, people BELIEVE in Jesus, pray/ask for a miracle, get the miracle they asked for and then are so consumed with getting what they wanted they forget to THANK Jesus who helped them. They may second guess things after they get the blessing.  They might think the healing came from a doctor, science, a food they ate, or a medication they took. The sad part, spiritually, is these other 9 Lepers did not use leprosy (their trial) to THANK Jesus and get the benefit of strengthening their FAITH and SPIRITUAL relationship with Jesus.

Jesus said the Samaritan’s FAITH healed him.  FAITHFULNESS, THANKFULNESS to God and prayer are all beautifully connected.   FAITH is patient hope. Prayer gives us FAITH/patient hope.

Prayer includes:

1. THANKFULNESS to God 
2. Petitions/ Asking God for Blessings/Help/Miracles
3. Conversation with God (Both Us Talking to Him and Listening to His answers)

The very beginning of prayer is THANKFULNESS to God!  Jesus always began prayer with what he was THANKFUL for. Mathew 26:27 says, “Then he took the cup, GAVE THANKS, and gave it to them….” 

Oprah has said that if you pray and all you say is “THANK YOU To God”  then that is enough!  Prayer can include the aforementioned 3 parts or just be as simple as “THANK YOU  to God/Jesus!”

Charlie Kirk said his experiences with college students in the United States was that Republicans were THANKFUL for the opportunity and hope, which our country provided them. Whereas many liberal college students were ungrateful, often complained and blamed others for their situation.

2 Kings 5:14 (Old Testament/Jewish Torah)

Next Level GRATITUDE to God is telling others, publicly, what God has done in your life! Giving your TESTIMONY! 

The Samaritan man was healed physically from leprosy by faith. Jesus said so. By publicly thanking Jesus, he not only grew his spiritual relationship with Jesus but he also grew the relationship of the entire crowd of believers watching. 

Our vision back in 2017 (for our vlog on the AmenWeekly.com YouTube channel), was to tell our children testimonies and to have other parents tell their testimonies to their own children. Our vision still includes vlog testimonies that encourage parents to tell testimonies to their own children but adds the opportunity to tell these testimonies through an online, weekly family Bible study, vacation Bible school (VBS) called “Team Pink Entrepreneurship Camp,” and a Sweet Home Economics Class (beginning, intermediate & advanced levels). Just like Elisha would not accept Naanman’s money because Elisha wanted to point Naanman to God, we intend on keeping our vlog testimonies free to point other families’ to God/Jesus/The Holy Spirit.

When my husband and I were first married in the early 2000s, we watched the video “The Secret” after we had seen the author’s interviewed on the Oprah Winfrey Show.  The concepts in the video/book (mainly gratitude, the law of attraction & goal setting) made a lot of sense to both of us. 

My husband had had a lot of success as a QB (making it as far as playing football professionally in Europe), using “The Secret’s” strategies (without knowing they were biblical strategies), by being introduced to them from a family friend and mentor, Bruce, when he was in high school in the early 90s. 

Although I hadn’t had a lot of “worldly success” at that time (my mid 20s), using the methods in The Secret (thankfulness to God, making positive statements & praying for things I wanted-goals) I had had many miraculous experiences with the Holy Spirit in my life from the time I was very young.  For example, praying for snow (when the weather report showed no chance of precipitation), and then getting snowed-in to our cabin in Lake Arrowhead, California. You see, not exactly worldly success? But the Holy Spirit gave me the chance to experience fun sledding and get the hands-on childhood experience of goal setting (I packed my snow gear) through prayers answered:) 

However, the main reason goal setting (as it connects with thankfulness to God & the law of attraction), really stuck out to me as a way to live your best life was because I created goals daily as a Speech & Language Pathologist for students.  I saw firsthand how assessing students’ present levels of performance and creating goals for all kinds of speech and language disorders (mainly social-behavior) was effective. In fact, the entire profession of Speech & Language Pathology and effectively treating students is based on assessing a student to find their areas of strengths (things to be thankful for), the law of attraction (during training/therapy praising what the student is doing well (positive affirmations) and targeting weaknesses through creating measurable, observable and attainable goals for students.  We would begin with a long-term goal (1-3 years away) and would continue to benchmark the goal until it was a measurable, observable and attainable goal for each therapy session.  I also was privileged to go to Loma Linda for Graduate school, where I saw a scientific research study on prayer and positive patient outcome.  The study proved that even if a patient did not pray themselves, if they had someone praying for them their outcomes were significantly better than people who did not pray or have someone who prayed for them.  

Anyway, after seeing this video, Mike and I began writing lists of all the things we were thankful for, focusing on the law of attraction (saying what we wanted instead of what we didn’t want) and setting all kinds of short and long-term goals for both our personal and professional lives. We have been blessed with a ton of success through working & praying to accomplish these goals.  We have owned a successful business for 20 plus years that has allowed us time flexibility to enjoy raising our four children all while buying, owning & living in a house in Huntington Beach, California (which have been some of our long term goals). But it didn’t stop there!  With my background in goal setting (particularly with children), we didn’t just set goals for ourselves but I also began setting goals for our children when they were babies. 

Now, let me be the first to admit there are all kinds of problems that come up as to why people (myself included) don’t reach their goals or at this time of the year-don’t stay consistent with their New Year’s resolutions! Let me tell you these problems are amplified when you are trying to set goals for your child or children or have them begin setting their own goals!   

The biggest problem I see is people not using the power of the Holy Spirit when they set goals.

Secular people (who read The Secret and try to apply the methods without God) have a,  “I do it myself mentality” goal setting approach that does not rely on God’s power & the free gift of the Holy Spirit. So by trying to do it all themselves, they burn out!  Or saying you can do anything you put your mind to is not true, biblically!  If God is not putting a goal in your heart it doesn’t matter what “I try,” I just can’t do it by myself! In Proverbs 19:21-23 King Solomon says “Many are the plans in a man’s heart but the Lord’s purpose will prevail.” My husband had this happen to him in his football career! Highschool football was in his heart and he had a lot of success but his goal of playing in the NFL was not God’s plan for him.  It didn’t matter how thankful or positive or how much he worked his goal did not happen.  We know now through bible study that just was not God’s plan for him.  Romans 8:28 And in all things God works for the good of those who love Him, who have been called according to His purpose.  God had a bigger plan for him! 

Another major problem is, I have even heard pastors and priests of major churches saying your only goal should be Jesus!   I feel like these pastors and priests either don’t understand the power of the Holy Spirit or their motive is money gained from church attendance.  Jesus came to put his love in the minds and hearts of everyone in a personal way. I think he loves people who set personal and professional goals and work and pray for them! Then He can help us through the free gift of the Holy Spirit!  This makes us thankful to Him, builds our faith, trust & relationship with Him when our goals are achieved and makes us positive people to be around because of our God-confidence!  

The Solution is goal setting and getting the Holy Spirit working in your’s and your family’s life!

When setting goals for yourself or your child/ren you want to think in terms of 

1. Mind (informal & formal education) 
2. Body (hygiene, diet & exercise)
3. Spirit (prayer with God alone & others who fill you spiritually)

Keep in mind, goal setting is different for under age 5, ages 5-10, ages 10-20 and 20+.  A lot of times under age 10 parents are creating the goals for their children while over age 10 children can begin to set their own goals.   Also, a major consideration is trying to understand what God is putting in each child’s heart.  

My suggestion would be to get the power of the Holy Spirit working for all 3 areas in your life!  Age appropriately expose your family to as much of the following as possible:

1. Read & Study the Bible (daily if at all possible)
2. Listen to Christian Music.  There are tons of modern Christian Bands and lots of fun Christian Children’s music.
3. Get out into Nature!  The beach, ocean, mountains, lakes makes us all feel close to God.  In Ancient times people believed in many gods because they were in nature all the time!  Now that we are around man-made buildings all the time there are people who don’t believe in God at all!  Nature is wonderful and refreshes us and children especially need to be outside or encouraged to be outside to feel spiritual!
4. Join a Church/Youth Group!  In the summer, have children go to Vacation Bible School.

Our son plays baseball and he has created some tough hitting goals for himself.  I kept encouraging him that if any negative thoughts came into his mind to pray about them and dismiss them.  Only focus on positive thoughts, things he is thankful for and successful outcomes.  He started singing “Don’t Worry About Anything Instead Pray About Everything” which was a song from Kingdom Rock from Vacation Bible School CD that we use to listen to constantly on our summer  road trip to Yosemite!  It made me chuckle that scientific social training of exposing children to song was spot on!  Research shows that stroke victims who can not speak can sing!  Exposing children to song with scripture (which was a spiritual goal I made for him long ago) made him remember the scripture and he was getting hands-on experience goal setting and working towards achieving his goal at age 12.  

Why, as a licensed Social Pathologist & mother of 4, would you encourage families to write a list of all of their blessings and share them each year at Thanksgiving?

Our four children (like most children with a fun childhood) absolutely love Halloween and would skip to Christmas if they could:) I, on the other hand, absolutely love Thanksgiving and not just because turkey with all the trimmings is one of my very favorite meals! It’s because listening to all the things our four children are thankful for is like Christmas to me! 

During Passover (also a meal & a required tradition of the Jews), Jesus took bread and GAVE THANKS (Luke 22:19)!!! I imagine Jesus, our model-perfect Father, feels the same way I do, that Thanksgiving is the best start to celebrating His Birthday! He also sees the potential (like I do as a nationally licensed Social Pathologist) for parents to use the Holiday to model and teach children the spiritual skill of gratitude.  His ultimate goal would be that children will eventually give-time, talents & money (advanced social-behavioral skills), from a heart filled with gratitude (spiritual skills) to God, the whole year and not just on His birthday.

The problem with many children growing up “these days” is a lack of gratitude to God for what they have.  One of the problems is that in teenage culture, it has become “socially cool” to complain, be sarcastic and (bossily) tell others their opinions and what to do. 

Of course, for some kids growing up, it’s not their fault!  They are growing up in both a secular society as well as a secular family, without reading the bible and  putting the spiritual skill of daily thanksgiving to God into practice.  These kids are probably celebrating Thanksgiving by paying attention to the more secular parts of the Holiday such as who’s coming for dinner and what foods they are being served, which gives them the social opportunity to complain as opposed to giving thanks to God. Ugh!

Even in homes with Christian/Jewish parents these parents, may not know “how to” use the yearly Holiday to train the spiritual skill of being thankful to God to improve their child’s/children’s spiritual & social skills.   I know our family (although we made meal times a priority) didn’t make writing down lists of what we are thankful for a tradition until more recently.

The Bible agrees with scientifically researched social training methods-that what a student thinks in their mind (receptive language skills) & heart (spiritual skills) is what comes out in his/her words and actions (expressive social-behavioral skills). So, we really can’t work on developing children’s social skills without working on spiritual skills. As both a licensed Social Scientist & mother of four, the research (& our own case studies of our four children) says daily mealtimes are the best opportunity for parents to teach social skills. I would add Thanksgiving as the best yearly opportunity to teach the spiritual skill of Gratitude (which highly impacts social skills) as a fun family bonding tradition and hands-on-learning experience.

On Thanksgiving, as our four children have been growing up, we have always gone around the table and said what we are thankful for.   About 3-5 years ago, we also began having everyone write a list of 100 things they are thankful for.  This year, we didn’t have an amount of things but we just said each item/person has to be very specific.  For example, you can’t just say, “Dad.”  You have to say the reasons you are blessed with Dad like his sense of humor, work ethic or grit, etc. 

Once the lists are completed, then we share our lists with each other as we enjoy our Thanksgiving meal. This year it was brunch because we had our turkey at my in-laws:) This thankful-list-sharing helps our family bond as well as work on our social skills including appropriate turn-taking and complimenting each other. Adding this positive social activity also helps us avoid making rude comments, offering our own opinions and talking about politics or Religion;)  We try and encourage everyone to talk about spirituality, not Religion.  Spirituality is how Jesus is effecting me and my life.  Religion and Politics talks about groups of people and has its place but, in my opinion, not at the Family Thanksgiving Table:)

Reading each person’s list out loud also jogs everyone’s memories of all the blessings we have received over the year! Inevitably, each one of us forgets 1-2 highlights, but as each person says their list out loud, it reminds us and we can add them to our own list.  I know this year, I had forgotten our hike to the Hollywood sign, & visits to Griffith Park Observatory and LA Museum of the Arts. My husband remembered so I added them to my list! 

Another benefit to hearing everyone’s yearly lists is you really learn the types of things your spouse or children honestly value & enjoyed. Sometimes the things we are spending money or time on are not the things our children really cared about which helps us get ideas for Christmas gifts or to plan other fun things to do together:)

In addition to teaching the spiritual skill of gratitude, writing down lists of what each person is thankful for can really begin to create a beautiful family journal of memories as a keepsake for years to come! My biological Grandmother use to tell me to write everything down and I gotta admit it always made me feel guilty!  I felt so overworked when our kiddos were young! I was having trouble keeping them clean, fed and educated let alone having the time to write down as much as I would have liked! They said so so so many funny things so I know I missed stuff! I’m still hoping Jesus was and is taking video that I can watch when I get to heaven:)  But of course, I really appreciate everything I did write down and I would encourage other parents to write as much down as you can (just like my Grandmother told me) because honestly  if you DON’T write it down you oftentimes forget! No pressure though because the Holy Spirit’s Grace will help you remember the truly important stuff! 

Another really great benefit is that when combining (Thanksgiving Lists) with last year’s Christmas Lists, Prayer Petitions & New Years Resolutions, it creates a way to scientifically measure how many of our family’s prayer requests (wants & needs) were answered!  This should make everyone even more grateful to God (& others involved) in making answered prayer a reality when we have written evidence!

Something that blew me away this year was that our second child and daughter, Julia, (who is 17) said she was thankful for her opportunity to work! I had to fight back the tears since my grandfather (coming from the Great Depression), would tell us that we needed to be thankful to our employers and give them respect for the opportunity to work.  I feel my husband and I have have been very grateful for our jobs and careers along our life journey. We have been hoping and praying our kids would feel the same way. The reason I thought this was difficult (as parents) to teach was because my husband and I have employed at least 20 young college graduates over the years,  who (judging by their words and actions), didn’t really appreciate the opportunity we gave them. From that experience, we wanted to make sure our children appreciated whatever job they were given. We have been praying for them, having on-going conversations with them, as well as having them go out and get their own jobs with the possibility of being rejected. Yes, their was some rejection (which was difficult as a parent to watch) but this is exactly what our daughter was saying on Thanksgiving day as she read through her blessings list that because she experienced some of the rejection it made her appreciate her job:) So only through our daughter sharing her gratitude list were we able to find out that our gratitude training and prayers had been answered!  I was so overjoyed that she “got the gratitude lesson” that I was trying to hold back tears and also thinking I needed to add this to my list of things I’m thankful for!

So this past week, our 6th grade daughter, Sarah, had to turn in an Ancient Egyptian Artifact Project, as well as give an Oral Presentation Project of her chosen artifact.  I encouraged her to do Ancient Egyptian Bread making for quite a few reasons. 

First of all, I am trying to post weekly (Home Economics w/ a Bible message) themed posts, so I have a vested interest in this content😂 But all joking aside, bread was the staple of the Ancient Egyptian Economy (Economy? Economics?) and has a major biblical message!  

Ancient Egyptian bread making has to be the most historic (Home Economics with a Bible message) lesson we have on record. Bread Iinks the peoples our 6th grader has studied so far (Nomads, the Mesopotamian Civilization and the Ancient Egyptian Civilization),  in her secular history book.

So you might be asking why is Mrs. Smith using a secular history book to teach our 6th grader Ancient History?

This is a great question! The reason I use this book is because it is a textbook specifically made to teach children ancient history. As a nationally licensed Social Pathologist (who has a lot of experience and expertise in teaching critical thinking skills) I feel this book has excellent critical thinking questions.  Although a little warning: Be careful and read with your child because it does include some loaded questions:)  Although I don’t agree with the historic dates and the fact they have taken the Bible stories out of the book, studying the everyday lives of both of these different ancient civilizations from a social studies standpoint is the best way to teach children.  History really comes alive when we see the social and economic connections of the nomads, Mesopotamian & Egyptian civilizations from the people in the Bible like Abraham (from Ur in Mesopotamia) to Joseph (enslaved in Egypt) and God (who with Moses as their leader) led the Israelites out of slavery so fast that they didn’t even have time for their BREAD to RISE! 

When we add the bible & this other beautifully written book by the brilliant Creation Scientist Bruce Malone (who have included accurate historic dates) I am overwhelmed by God’s clues He has been trying to give us all since the beginning of history to find Him<3<3 

If you have a 6th grader who is studying Ancient History (or any grade child who is studying Ancient History), see the embedded YouTube video lesson attached to this blog to make sure you include the bible history and how the Nomads, Mesopotamians and Egyptians were all linked through bread & the bible stories in Genesis and Exodus!