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Exploring Mary's Magnificat: How Humility Leads to Greatness · Arise Women of God

• 0:01
  There are very few Bible psalms or praises that we have that come from women and today we get to discuss one of them.
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  And I am so, so, so excited.
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  We discussed one a couple months ago with Hannah and today we get to discuss what is called Mary's magnificant or her praise after when she's talking to Elizabeth and she knows she is the mother of the Son of
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  God.
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  So we are going to discuss that and dive in to see how that applies to us today.
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  So stay tuned.
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  Welcome to Bible Women in Bathrobes, the podcast where faith meets comfort.
• 0:45
  Join us Tuesday morning as the gals from Women warriors of Flight and their guests don bathrobes and dive into the inspiring stories of women in the Bible and the teachings of Jesus Christ.
• 0:57
  From Esther's bravery to the Sermon on.
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  The Mount, we explore it all with.
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  Warmth, laughter, sisterhood, and maybe even a few sleepy eyed moments.
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  Tune in live or at your leisure as we learn lessons from scripture which empower women today.
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  Hello and welcome to another episode of Bible Women in Bathrobes.
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  I'm your host, Tamara K.
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  Anderson and joining me today is Amy Johnson.
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  Amy, thanks for being on again.
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  Hi.
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  And guys, we are so excited.
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  Let me kind of just bring you up to date.
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  We're covering kind of the whole nativity story leading up to Jesus Christ's birth and the witnesses of him this holiday season.
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  And so we have covered the story of Elizabeth and Zacharias.
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  We then had the angel Gabriel come and visit Mary and we talked about that a couple weeks ago.
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  And then last week we talked about Elizabeth coming to visit Mary and how the babe leapt within her womb and that Elizabeth was a powerful witness.
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  Mary didn't even have to tell her the spirit.
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  The Holy Ghost witnessed to her that Mary was the mother of the Son of God.
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  How beautiful that these two women with their miraculous pregnancies were able to come together at this time.
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  And now we're to this beautiful point in the story in Luke chapter one.
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  And we're going to cover verses 46 through 55, which is Mary's praise Mary's psalm, whatever you want to call it.
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  And it is so incredible.
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  So let's dive into that.
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  It says in verse 46 and Mary said, my soul do magnify the Lord and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Savior, for he hath regarded the lowest state of his handmaiden.
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  For behold, from henceforth all generations shall call me blessed, for he that is mighty hath done to me great things, and holy is his name.
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  Now I'm going to pause right there because there's a lot to unpack in just those few little verses.
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  Amy, I know you've got some thoughts on these.
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  Well, I think last week we talked about.
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  You talked about how those.
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  My soul doth magnify the Lord is the same words Hannah used.
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  And I, I love that sentence just because I really do believe that we have a responsibility to magnify the Lord.
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  I.
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  One of my favorite things to do is to teach the Gospel of Jesus Christ.
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  And I actually have that opportunity at church again coming up here.
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  I just barely got given that opportunity.
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  And one of the biggest things I appreciate that a teacher does is to get out of the way and let the spirit teach.
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  Just like we talked about.
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  Elizabeth knew by the spirit.
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  I really believe that my life is different than your life is different than the neighbor's life is different than my husband's life is different.
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  We all have different filters and things and ways we learn.
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  And, and so as a teacher, I really appreciate when the teacher gets out of the way and focuses on magnifying the Lord so that his spirit can teach me whatever I need to be taught.
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  I also love how she says, rejoiced because I, I really do believe that, that the gospel of Jesus Christ should be about joy.
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  And when we focus on him, we have joy.
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  But I think my favorite of all the things that we talked about today so far, those verses you read is in verse 48.
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  For he hath regarded the lowest state of this handmaiden.
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  And for me, that really just means he sees me.
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  He doesn't just pass by.
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  I'm not invisible, but he sees me.
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  That's what that word means to me.
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  So when Mary says that, I get that.
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  Oh, he regarded me that.
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  I love that.
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  I love all of those things that you said, as you said magnify.
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  I love that example that you shared about getting out of God's way.
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  But I also love the.
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  Just the idea of magnification that it's when you, like, if you have a magnifying glass, it makes things bigger than they are.
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  And, and that's what the spirit can do when we have it in our souls.
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  It can magnify those feelings of just a simple impression to be beautiful and big and, and, and, and perhaps we can see him more clearly because of it.
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  So good.
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  So love it.
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  Yes.
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  You know, and so I like, if I blend that together with what you said, that we can be the vehicle through which others can see him more clearly.
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  Yeah, right.
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  That's What Mary was.
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  Mary was the means.
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  Right.
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  And she recognized that she was the means.
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  Yeah.
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  And we need to recognize that we're the means.
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  We're not the end game.
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  No, we're the means.
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  Yeah.
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  We don't do what we do so people love us.
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  We do what we do so they love him.
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  Oh, I love that.
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  That is so profound.
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  Yeah, yeah, we do.
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  We want to point people to Jesus Christ.
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  And, and then verse 47, he.
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  She says that my soul hath rejoiced in God my Savior.
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  It's interesting.
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  She was carrying him.
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  Right, right.
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  How neat that she had that beautiful and powerful testimony of Jesus.
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  I love what you said about how God knew her and saw her.
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  And it's not just Mary because she was Mary.
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  It's also he sees all of us in our lowest state, in our broken moments, in our times when we feel invisible.
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  He sees us, he knows us and that he can do great things in us as well.
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  Mary says that.
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  And holy is his name.
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  Right?
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  Beautiful, beautiful phrases here.
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  Let's kind of unpack these next couple of verses.
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  Start in verse 49.
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  For he that is, or no.
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  All right, I already read 49.
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  Let's start in 50.
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  And his mercy is on them that fear him from generation to generation.
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  He hath showed strength with his arm and he hath scattered the proud in the imaginations of their hearts.
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  He hath put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree.
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  I'm going to pause right there because all these verses we've just kind of read from 48 to about 52, it talks.
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  There's kind of that, that you can see the shift where she's talking about her low estate and how he's bringing down the pride.
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  The pride.
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  And so here she is this young mid teenager from what we, we think.
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  And she is the mother of the Son of God, someone of super humble birth.
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  I mean, what good thing can come out of Nazareth, right?
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  Jesus can, you know?
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  And, and, and then she talks about the people who are rich and high and proud and all of that.
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  And how interesting it is that, that because of God's mercy, which is mentioned here in verse 50, to them that fear him, this mercy can make even someone who feels like a nobody be great in the sight of
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  God and do great things whether they're noticed by a nation or not.
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  It doesn't matter.
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  Right.
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  It matters that you are on God's errand and doing what he wants you to do.
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  Any thoughts on those verses?
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  Amy?
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  This, this whole thing I've been thinking a lot about figuring out how God works in my life.
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  Right.
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  And to me, this is what Mary is saying.
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  She's figured out how God works in her life.
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  So if you, if we go back and we just really start at verse 48 and we start reading.
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  He works in her life because he regarded her, which means to consider or think of someone in a specific way.
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  And I like that word consider, because like I said, it's not just passing me by.
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  So he regards her.
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  He has done great things.
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  He is merciful.
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  He shows his strength.
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  But then, 52.
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  He loves humility.
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  She doesn't say that, but she talks about how he has put down the mighty from their seats and exalted them of low degree.
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  He loves humility.
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  And then in the next verse, which we didn't reject, he fills the hungry with good things.
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  And so she's figuring out how he works in her life.
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  The other thing that you said that I really loved is you talked about great things and how.
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  Doesn't matter.
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  We can do great things because of God and all the.
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  But what I love is that Mary's job was to raise a man.
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  That was her job.
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  A son of God.
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  The son of God.
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  And sometimes we don't.
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  We lose track of that.
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  We don't see that raising a child is a great thing.
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  Raising a child up to God is a great thing.
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  And so I love that she recognizes that they were still in this world we've talked about where having a child was.
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  Seriously, you don't have a child, that's reproachful.
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  And so I love that that was her great thing.
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  Carry and raise a child up unto the Lord.
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  Oh, and she did that.
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  And everybody gets to do their own mission.
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  But the privilege of raising a child up to the Lord is the greatest privilege I've ever had on this earth.
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  That is a really good insight.
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  I love that.
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  And I think that as women, especially with the influence of the world nowadays, it's.
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  It's not as common to rejoice in that.
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  Right.
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  And so I love that.
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  And yet there are some who, like Elizabeth, pray for that opportunity and are denied it.
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  Right, Right.
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  I have some amazing friends who have been blessed by adoption.
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  Right.
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  And, and what a blessing it has been to them to raise children up unto God in perhaps a different way, which is wonderful.
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  Right.
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  So so many beautiful things here.
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  And, and I also love how she.
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  You said she was discovering her purpose here, that these, these, these words are her testimony of how.
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  Of things God has taught her in Interim between that time of the angel to her miraculous conception to now here she is, pregnant with the Son of God.
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  And.
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  Yeah, you.
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  You read the beginning of verse 53.
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  He, she says, he hath filled the hungry with good things and the rich he hath sent away empty.
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  He hath open, which means helped his servant Israel in remembrance of his mercy as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed forever.
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  And so what this is speaking to in my mind is again that verse that you said that.
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  That he loves the humility.
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  He fills the humble and the hungry with good things.
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  And he hasn't forgotten his promises to Israel.
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  His promises.
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  If we look back through the Old Testament, we can see that all of the things, all, everything from the law of Moses pointed toward Jesus Christ.
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  All those performances, those ordinances, those atonement of putting the sins of all of Israel on this scapegoat.
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  And you know, I mean, everything points toward one man, Jesus Christ.
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  And here she's saying it is finally coming to pass.
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  We looked forward to this day.
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  Israel has looked forward today for hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of years.
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  This coming of the Messiah, it's finally here.
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  Wow.
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  These promises are fulfilled as he spake to our fathers, to Abraham, and to his seed forever.
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  To all of us.
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  This is beautiful.
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  Thoughts on Those verses, Amy, 54 and 55, where she says, he has hope in his servant.
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  Do you see what she says he's helping her with?
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  He's helping her to remember his mercy.
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  And he does that with me when I spend time with God.
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  He helps me in remembrance of his mercy.
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  And then she says, as he spake to our fathers and to his seed forever.
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  So she's literally saying, he hears me.
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  He speaks to me, and he helps me remember that he is merciful to me forever.
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  And I love that.
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  Because to me, what she's.
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  What Mary's saying is what all the things she's saying here are words to me.
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  This is how God also will work in my life, if that's what I want.
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  53.
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  He filled the hungry.
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  As long as I am still hungry for the things of God, I will not go away with an empty feeling.
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  But if I turn and shift and decide that money and the things of this world are more important than he is, I will walk.
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  I will go away feeling empty.
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  I will not be satisfied.
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  But as long as I am hungry for the things of God, he is there to fill it up and fill it up and fill it up and fill it up.
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  And I love that.
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  Sometimes I think about the woman, especially a lot lately.
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  Right now, where we have been, we're finishing up our almost two full years of unemployment as my husband's getting ready to graduate with his rn.
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  And I, we started with a full bank account and no debt, and we've ended with an empty bank account.
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  Right.
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  And I think about that a lot when I'm using shampoo or moisturizer or whatever.
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  And I think about the woman with the cruise of oil.
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  I think, just one more day.
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  God just can you.
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  Just one more day.
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  And he does.
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  He just does funny little things that even though I run out of hairspray, the money's there to replace the hairspray.
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  The resources are there.
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  And so I really.
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  I really believe this, that she.
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  If we looked at these verses with no other intent except to learn how God works in our life, we would learn so much about how God works in our life.
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  Yeah, I.
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  I love what you said there about being hungry and being filled with good things.
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  And it depends on what you're seeking, right?
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  Are you thirsting after things of God?
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  Are you thirsting after the pride of the world?
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  It's your choice.
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  You can pick.
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  But what is ultimately going to fill your soul?
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  That's the question that you probably should be asking, that we each should be asking.
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  I also loved what you said about remembering that God helps us remember and see his mercy.
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  Because sometimes if we're going through a hard time, it's hard.
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  It's harder, I guess I should say, to remember.
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  So it's important to write those things down, but then to also look, she kind of went from this.
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  This view of he helps me remember to he helps Israel remember and reflecting on her fathers and her heritage.
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  And.
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  You can see her bringing in that heritage of faith.
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  Now, whether you are the first convert to Christianity in your family or.
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  Or not, you can find people that you can learn from their stories in your faith community.
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  Right.
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  I think one of the most amazing things I learned list as I listened to people on my last podcast, Stories of Hope and Hard Times, was the lessons that they learned and things that brought them to God, which
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  were often huge and difficult things that they had to pass through.
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  But their story of faith inspired me.
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  And I think that's kind of what Mary is saying here, is that we have little things that increase our faith that we need to remember.
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  But then we also need to reflect back on our heritage of faith.
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  And we can even now scoop this whole Bible up and say, this is my heritage of faith, too.
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  This story of Mary and Elizabeth, this is my heritage of faith.
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  You know, these are stories that are part of my story because they're miraculous and they build my faith so we can dive into the scriptures and, and these two count is our heritage of faith.
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  Right.
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  I love that, and I love that when we talk about heritage, that it's interesting to me that this whole psalm and that line where she says, he helps me remember my, his mercy comes right on the heels of
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  Elizabeth visiting her in this, in the storyline.
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  To me, I'm picturing this scared teenage single mother and feeling overwhelmed in all the feelings.
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  And then the spirit sends this woman who's stricken in years and carrying a child and has to have her own worries and her own fears and her own exhaustion, and somehow that heritage comes together.
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  And now she's got this psalm that's talking about, oh, my life's really great because of God.
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  So I love, I love how that comes on the tail, even, even though we don't really know how fast after.
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  It happened, pretty fast after.
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  And actually Mary went to visit Elizabeth, but it says, because the, the angel told Elizabeth or the angel told Mary that Elizabeth was in her sixth month.
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  And it says, and Mary arose and went with haste.
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  We talked about that in our last episode.
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  So you weren't there.
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  But.
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  But then we see them coming together and rejoicing together in both of their miracles.
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  Right.
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  It's awesome, right?
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  Yeah.
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  And so here she gets to see this whole pregnancy thing from a totally different perspective.
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  That's what I think is awesome.
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  Yeah, is.
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  And sometimes that happens.
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  Like, I, I, I watch my daughter and my kids, they start raising their kids, and all of a sudden they see me as a mother from a totally different perspective because now they're living it.
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  Right.
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  And so Mary's pregnant, Elizabeth's pregnant.
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  They come together and they each get to see a different perspective.
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  Oh, it's so, so beautiful.
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  And there's so much, there's so much in these verses.
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  Oh, my goodness.
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  I just love them so much.
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  Okay, well, let's wrap up.
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  What are.
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  Have we covered everything that you wanted to cover in these verses or anything that you wanted to draw out?
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  And if so, do you have some good takeaways that you want to wrap up with?
• 22:24
  I just, I just for me, I really, honestly, it is about what reading these verses and seeing God's hand in my own life, I, I'm a big fan of, of applying my scriptures to me.
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  Where do I fit?
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  How is this really my story?
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  And, and I think I can go through each of those verses and See, yeah, I remember when I felt low, lowly, and he regarded me.
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  I remember when he did great things to me and through me.
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  I can remember when he was merciful to me just because I went to him and repented.
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  I can, I can see his strength.
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  I, I think for me, that's my takeaway, is that I can remember God and his mercy as I read these verses and apply it to my own life.
• 23:19
  Oh, that is such a powerful takeaway that Mary's story can be our story as we approach God with humility and looking for his hand in our lives.
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  If there are people around you who are proud or acting hottie and rich, perhaps maybe you're seeing them on social media that, that what really matters is humility.
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  Or, or maybe what if you're acting proud in your marriage, with your children?
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  If you're acting proud, what if you're more concerned about being seen than seeing them?
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  What if you're the one that needs to have a little bit of chastisement and a little bit of help to be brought down so that you can be exalted later?
• 24:19
  That is a really good point.
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  I really like that.
• 24:23
  I remember.
• 24:23
  No, that's my life.
• 24:25
  Oh, yeah.
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  I remember my oldest being, like, I don't know, two years old or something like that.
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  And, and he had done something, and I had had to reprimand him.
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  But then I felt bad afterwards, you know, because he's two.
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  You know what I mean?
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  Yeah, sure.
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  He's still learning.
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  He's still figuring out what all this is about and life and all that stuff.
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  And so I felt like I needed to go apologize.
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  I think I'd raised my voice, and I, I, I didn't want to be that kind of mom, you know?
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  And so I remember going to him, and it was the hardest thing to have those words come out of my mouth.
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  I'm sorry.
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  Mommy should not have yelled.
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  You know, I love you.
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  You know, you're a son of God and you're amazing.
• 25:12
  You know, just those affirmations of who they are as children of God and, But saying those words, like, for the first time as a parent apologizing to a child, I didn't realize how hard that was until I had
• 25:24
  to do it.
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  Do you know what I mean?
• 25:27
  And I love, and so I love that little insight there of sometimes we have to be humble enough to apologize to others.
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  That is hard to do for me.
• 25:38
  Full disclosure, this last week, I literally watched the Lord prompt me to say, hey, thank your husband for that, or tell him you noticed he did that good.
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  And I haven't gotten the words out.
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  And I.
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  I know I need to fix this because he needs to hear those things from me.
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  And it's really easy to give full disclosure because I know he won't listen to this.
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  But you see, and.
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  And I think that.
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  That as we really are honest with ourselves, we can really see how God works.
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  And he's.
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  He's working with me.
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  He's working.
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  He keeps saying, do this, do that, and hit.
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  One day it's gonna just fall out of my mouth and he's gonna be like, good job.
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  Let's do it right.
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  But.
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  But isn't it neat that we can see ourselves both in.
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  In the humility example of Mary's praise here, and also in the prideful.
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  That's what God wants.
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  Because we are both.
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  Yes, we are both.
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  And how neat it is that he is with us on our journey, wherever we are, and he wants us to improve.
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  And so I think that that is probably one of the coolest things we can take from here, at least from my perspective, is that he can regard us in our lowest state.
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  Whether we are feeling high on the horse or we feel like we are on the ground and we've had mud rubbed all over us, we are just kind of dragging that wherever we are, he is there for us
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  and he can help us improve.
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  And just follow those little promptings that he sends your way and everything will be okay.
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  And all this, all this points back to, I rejoice in God, my Savior.
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  I rejoice that he sees me in my messed up low estate making mistakes all the time.
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  And he still loves me enough to help me along on my journey.
• 27:46
  So good.
• 27:47
  So good.
• 27:48
  I know.
• 27:50
  All right, guys, thanks for joining us.
• 27:52
  As we've talked about Mary's beautiful, magnificent here, and praise the Lord in your own way, because he has done great things to us.
• 28:06
  Remember those things and embrace the heritage of faith that you can find around you, those who live around you.
• 28:15
  And also embrace your faith that you can find in these scriptures.
• 28:19
  There is so much good in them.
• 28:22
  Spend some time with God today and he will embrace you even tighter and help you in your life.
• 28:30
  Thanks for tuning in to Bible Women and Bathrobes, hosted by Women warriors of Light.
• 28:36
  We've loved exploring the story of remarkable women or the teachings of the Savior today with you.
• 28:43
  If today's episode brought someone special to mind, be sure to spread the word and don't forget to hit that subscribe button so you never miss a moment of inspiration.
• 28:53
  And Sisterhood Just a friendly reminder.
• 28:57
  All opinions we share are entirely personal as we are trying to decipher and apply Bible teachings just like you are.
• 29:05
  Until next time, stay faithful and may your journey be blessed and illuminated by God's love.