MID WEEK MOTIVATION - January 28, 2026 (Laura Ullrich)

You're listening to the Midweek Motivation Podcast from DeSoto Hills Baptist Church in South Haven, Mississippi.

Here's your host, Mark Lewis, David Burgess, Laura Ulrich, and Pastor Grant Stigall.

Welcome to the Midweek Motivation Podcast for Wednesday, January the 28th here at DeSoto Hills Baptist Church.

I'm Mark Lewis.

And I'm Laura Ulrich.

And we hope this programming can encourage folks throughout DeSoto County and beyond.

Be sure to subscribe and share our link on social media.

All right, we're in a new year.

We've got a lot of exciting things coming up here at DeSoto Hills for our children.

Can you lay on us a few things that you know you are preparing to do for the year?

Sure.

Okay, so you know, our big events, Bible School, is coming up in June.

First week of the fifth.

First week of the first of the fifth.

Yes, thank you.

And then Mark Lewis knows that date well.

And then children's camp is July 2nd, 3rd, and 4th.

But note, we will be home by noon on July 4th.

So everyone can participate in their 4th of July festivities.

Where's Children's Camp this year?

It's at the Grove where it was last year in Cordova, Tennessee.

So about 40 minutes away.

It's glorious.

It is a great spot.

It is.

It was lots of fun.

We had fun last year.

Um this year we're hoping to recreate the fun.

Yes.

But we'll be back in time for Fourth of July.

That was that was a little bit of kickback last year about that, so we've solved the situation.

Nice.

Maybe.

Right.

Um and you've got preteen retreat coming up first, actually.

No, that's not first.

That would be second.

Because you have forgotten about our missions madness events.

Oh yes.

It's happening.

Cynatobia.

Hernando.

I'll handle it.

That's first Hernando Baptist Church on February the 21st.

If you want to go, well, you could come, Mark Lewis, but really if it's for your kids.

Right.

First through sixth grade, if they want to go, it's$10 a person.

Sign up online by February 4th.

Then it's the preteen retreat, the 26th and no 27th and 28th.

Yeah.

Fantastic events.

And then you've got uh, of course, all the festivities that will be happening in the fall, and lots of other things that no doubt will be dropped in here and there.

You tend to do a few things with the students over spring break and stuff like that.

Righto, yes.

So uh good stuff.

What uh we're gonna do uh table topics.

You remember table topics?

Oh, I do.

They're pretty fun.

It's been a little while since we've done table topics.

Table topics, table topics, table topics, table topics, table topics, table topics, table topics.

All right, Keelan grabbed this one up and she was asking me a few minutes ago when I was prepping, and I gave her an answer, and she was just, of course, shocked because she didn't I never talked about this particular house.

What do you remember about the homes your family have lived in?

Okay.

So we're a little unusual in that for the f my whole entire life, I grew up in the same house, never moved, until I went to Texas to seminary.

Well, I went to Sanford, stayed on campus, okay, fine.

Went to seminary, mom and dad, then decided at some point between seminary and here that they would move not once, but twice.

So my first twenty.

So they lived on the mountain.

Tell tell people about the mountain.

I call it the mountain.

The mountain, red mountain.

It's it's okay.

So I'm from Birmingham, Hoover, to be exact.

And uh Bluff Park community is up on the top of a mountain.

Um, and it's very beautiful.

It's wild.

But it is on a mountain, like your ears will pop as you drive up the mountain.

I don't think you appreciate because you you grew up at it and it was just it was like this is normal.

But it's literally a community that winds up and it's high on up there, like crazy high.

And one side you've got Birmingham.

Yeah.

And the other side you have what's the community back behind you where the galleria is and all of that.

What do they call that area?

Is that still considered Hoover?

Hoover.

That's where I you know, close to where I live.

The galleria was like ten minutes from a house, maybe.

Well, it's the back of the mountain.

Yeah.

So but growing up the house was great.

Um I remember one cool thing was we added on, so like in Alabama, you have basements.

Right.

So we don't really have that here.

Um, and so you go downstairs and there in this in the inside of your house, you go downstairs and there's a basement.

Well, when my brother was in middle school maybe, um, we added on into that basement.

We took some of it and made a like a playroom and a bathroom and a bedroom.

And it was underground, which I thought was really cool.

And then, you know, once he moved out, I got to live underground.

So it was fun.

I would have wanted an underground spot if I was up on that mountain because if a tornado or something tore through, you would definitely want a space to go.

That's why they had basements.

And we went down there several times.

And like my closet was the space spot to go because it was completely underground and so once you left, they moved, but they stayed in that same community, they just decided to trade houses in that community.

To you know, downsize to a garden home.

I guess it was kind of a garden home.

And um, yeah, so they moved just like five minutes down the road.

And I came home and I mean they told us they were moving, and then they lived there for a while and then they moved here.

Right.

Okay, what's the most fun game for a group?

And you are a children's minister, so I'm sure you've got uh favorites.

Oh, and my family loves to play games, so it may be hard for me to pick just one on the spot.

Um golly, I don't know.

Like I really for a group.

Like I'm gonna have to think about that.

Like while you're thinking me some some heads up on the phone.

While you're thinking, I'm giving I'm we're playing a new game tonight uh with the youth, and you were the first person I thought of when I was building this game because I was like, this is a game solely designed for Laura.

Right.

What is it?

I love it.

It's called Risky Pick.

Okay.

And you see this massive wall of tiles, and half of them are huge point values, a thousand points, five hundred points, whatever.

The other half of them are tasks, and you have to do the tasks in order to get the points.

When you hit play, every card flips over and then they shuffle, and you have no clue which one is which.

And it's literally a risky pick.

And some of the cards are your favorites.

You had the game called Zonk.

There are Zonk cards.

Oh, we haven't played that in so long.

There are Zonk cards on this thing that takes everything from you, just bankrupt you.

And that is a soul crushing card.

Oh.

And there's like three or four of those tiles, and then some of the tasks are like win a coin toss.

And if you win, you get like three thousand points.

And if you lose, you get negative three thousand points.

You need to play this game.

Oh, you'll you'll love it.

We might do that for the preteen retreat, actually.

That would be a preteen retreat.

See, we're planning a squeaking.

Anyway, but you can't.

We do like the uh what's the game that we played last week that um with the animals and you're on stage and somebody can't see the screens, but everybody else can, and they have to act out the um say what, that's it.

Okay.

They have to act out the animal sound or whatever sound the thing on the screen makes, but it might not make a sound.

And then the person has to guess.

It's pretty fun.

All right, we'll do one more.

Okay.

What do you hope will be the next big household invention?

Now you know they've got all this robot technology that's getting ready to come in, and my girls are terrified.

They do not want a robot walking around in the house.

Would you really get a robot for your house?

I mean, really.

I don't think I would spend big money on that.

Right.

However, how many uh do you not loathe doing menial tasks like dishwasher, laundry, sorting laundry, folding laundry?

Mm-hmm.

The ones that they've got coming out now that they are demoing, and mind you, they are not ready for the public yet.

But they have the RIFD tags in them, and they literally know what person in the house the clothes belong to.

They fold it and they can take it to that person's room and put it in the correct drawer because it knows which drawer the things go in.

Oh, imagine Imagine for a second that you leave for work in the morning and your house is a hot mess, and when you get home, it is spotless because the thing has done all the laundry, has vacuumed the floors, has watered your plants.

They showed one going outside and literally watering all the plants, and it kept up it knew which plants needed watering.

It can it could look and use AI to figure out what everything needed, and I I'm just saying.

That's a little much like but you know what it reminds me of?

The Jetsons that robot made Rosie the Robin on the Jetsons who would do all of those things.

Right.

But I don't I so if I could pick, I really would like somebody something to fold my clothes.

Now they make a clothes folder dryer, like dries and folds.

But you know, I mean I need it just to fold.

A month ago, you were you were going deep diving on Roomba vacuum cleaners.

Did you ever decide on a robot vacuum cleaner?

We do.

I got one, um, and it mops.

However, I have not figured out the mopping function of this vacuum cleaner.

And it does vacuum, but you know, they were all like, this doesn't get stuck on cords.

This won't pull up your rug.

Well, that is a lie.

So I've decided pulling rug and getting stuck on cables.

So I've decided there's no perfect Roomba robot.

If you know of one, let me know.

Um but this one, I mean, it it does the job.

It just, you know, I could be at work and at 10 o'clock in the morning and it says, it's stuck on whatever.

Please come home and please fix me.

Well, it's 10 o'clock in the morning.

I can't get home till five.

So figure it out.

Yeah.

Table topics.

And that's table topics.

We do enjoy some table topics.

We are now going to move on and shift to our devotion portion of the podcast that we call the midweek moment.

All right.

So I was telling Mark before we got started that this midweek moment uh might be a little all over the place because I feel like, you know, this is just a moment for me to just talk about what God's been teaching me, and my brain is kind of all over the place all the time.

So this would probably be much the same.

So I apologize beforehand if this seems a little random, but maybe not.

Um in the book of Psalms, there's a very familiar verse that is Psalms 4610, or Psalm, one singular Psalm 4610, that says, Be still and know that I am God.

And we all know the verse.

We all look at it and we're like, okay, we're supposed to be still and acknowledge God is who he says he is.

Great.

But that's not exactly, yes, that's part of it, the translation, but that's not all of it.

And um, once again, it's a lot easier to say than to put into practice.

So um looking at that verse, I did a little deep dive myself into some Hebrew um translation of this actual verse.

Look at you.

Yeah, right?

So Google.

Um, but I did I did study a little bit in seminary, not Hebrew, but anyway, moving on.

Um, so okay, be still and know that I am God.

That is actual translation from the original Hebrew, which I cannot uh pronounce, say, nor spell.

So just know that is not what the original text said because it was written in Hebrew, not in English.

Um so it was translated into that phrase, and while it's not a bad translation, we tend to hear God telling us to get quiet and still so we can hear his voice, or ask us to turn our minds so he can reveal himself to us, or something similar.

So I'm gonna be still so God can show me more of himself.

Great, that's fantastic, but another part of that translation of that phrase, be still, also means to cease or let go.

So if you look at it that way, it's like let go, I am God, or hey Laura, cease, I am God.

And when you think about it that way, it adds a little more punch to that passage, I think, to that little phrase sentence, um, because it puts me, puts you, puts us in a state of total dependence upon God, in a total state of recognition of who God is in our lives.

Um and then I was thinking about so God's been teaching me to be still, to be silent, and not only in my words, which actually is not too terribly hard for me to do, but more so in my brain, because my mind runs constantly.

It's just the way God made me, and um, and in my doing, but more so just my thoughts.

It just runs all the time, and it's a work in progress.

So the silence part is also quite difficult for me.

Um, and I don't know if you've ever played like um what is it, the quiet game with kids, right, Mark Lewis?

We've done the quiet game, or you just ask people to be quiet and you like see how long they can go without any noise.

And kids hate that.

Like they can't do it, they can't they can play the quiet game for a little while, but just sitting and being silent is next to impossible for a group of kids.

For sure.

It's actually pretty funny to watch.

But um that's what God asks of us.

And and in the book of Philippians, you know, we go from being still in Psalms to cease and let go.

And Philippians, Paul talks about being humble and having a an attitude of humility the same as Christ Jesus.

And this other book that I read a while back by Ginny Allen called Get Out of Your Head, it's a great little Bible study, um, talks about you know taking your thoughts and making them to be silent before God.

And then out of that silence comes that humility and that total dependence on God.

And then in this um other little thing I found online, um, it says that God seems to be telling us in Psalm 46.10 to stop freaking out or to stop trying to fix everything since we can't control it anyway.

The writer says, I picture myself standing before God with my head bowed and my arms and hands hanging limp, my shoulders hunched forward, whispering to God, I got nothing.

And the Lord replying, It's about time.

The Lord is telling us to give up.

What freedom that brings to actually do that.

Now it's really hard for people who like me like to be doing, their brain likes to be thinking, we like to be in control of things, just to give up and let God.

But He promises that when we do that is when He can truly work in our lives.

Thanks so much for listening.

If you don't have a church home, we'd love to see you here Sunday morning.

You can catch our services online at DeSodahills.com, our YouTube channel at DeSoda Hills Baptist Church.

For all of our church family, we love you.

We'll see you back here next Wednesday morning, bright and early.

God bless.

This has been your midweek motivation.

We'd love to have you join us in person on Sunday mornings.

Our services are at 9 and 10 30 a.m.