What's up, what's up? Incredible loved and valued people. My name is M.MA McDaniel, and I love you so much. Can I also just say, I do not take it lightly that you would come and hang out with me on a podcast.

I just, I can't believe that I started this podcast five years ago.

And I remember, I remember being so nervous and feeling so ill-equipped.

I remember being so scared because the idea of coming on and sharing God's word every week sounded daunting.

I was afraid that I was going to run out of words to say.

And I remember just pleading with the Lord for his guidance, for his provision and telling him, like, I will be obedient to what you're calling me to do, but I can't do it and I don't want to do it without you. I need you to show up. I need you to be sufficient in my weakness. I need your strength to be magnified. I need you to

reveal your all-surpassing power. I need you to give me each day my daily bread in order for me to do

what you call me to do. And now we are five years in to this podcast. And I look back and I'm like,

this is by God. And I never once felt like, oh, I got this.

It has been such a journey of growing in faith and increasing in an ever dependence upon God.

And isn't that how we were made to live is to live in a trust and dependency upon God. It keeps us abiding in him,

realizing that everything that we have and everything that we do is because of him. It's by him.

It's for him. This isn't even our message today, but it makes me think of, I was in the book of judges just in my own time with the Lord a couple weeks ago.

And I was reading about Gideon, and Gideon is about to lead the Israelites to go and conquer the Midianites.

And he has an army of like 22,000 soldiers, like a pile of people.

And the Lord tells him, your army is too big.

You need to shrink it down.

And so by a different matter of events, shrinks down his army to 300 people.

And the Lord tells Gideon why it was so important that he shrinked down his army.

He said, because if you keep it this big

and go defeat the Midianites, the Israelites are going to think that they did it in their own

strength. And they need to know that this victory is coming from me, that it's because of me.

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