Welcome to today's encouragement from Our Daily Bread.

I'm Tom Felton and I titled our reading, God's Greater Power.

In March 1945, the Ghost Army helped U.S. forces achieve the Rhine River crossing, giving the Allies a vital base to operate from on World War II's Western Front.

The soldiers were most definitely human, not apparitions, all part of the 23rd headquarters, special troops.

On this occasion, the 1,100 man team imitated

30,000 men by using inflatable decoy tanks, blasting troop and vehicle sound effects over speakers,

and more. The relatively small number of ghost army members led the enemy to fear

what appeared to be a far greater force. In Judges Chapter 7, the Midianites and their allies

also trembled before a tiny army that loomed large in the night. Gideon, a judge, and military leader of Israel, was used by God to make his

puny army a source of terror for the enemy. They also used sound effects, blown trumpets,

smashed clay jars, human voices, and visible objects, blazing torches, to make the vast enemy, as thick as locusts,

believe they were facing a colossal foe. Israel defeated their enemy that night,

with an army whittled down from 32,000 men to just 300 by God's command. Why? Because that made it clear who truly won the battle. As God told

Gideon, I have given you victory over them. When we feel weak and inferior, let's seek

God and rest in his strength alone, for his power is made perfect in our weakness.

Today's Our Daily Bread devotional scripture reading is from Judges

Chapter 7, verses 7 and 8, and 16 through 22.

The Lord said to Gideon, with the 300 men that laughed, I will save you and give the Midianites

into your hands. Let all the others go home. So Gideon sent the rest of the Israelites home, but kept the

300, who took over the provisions and trumpets of the others.

Now the camp of Midian lay below him in the valley.

Now picking up at verse 16.

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