MID WEEK MOTIVATION - January 14, 2026 (James Lewis)

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

Here's your host, Mark Lewis, David Burgett, Laura Ulrich, and Pastor Grant Diegall.

Welcome to the Midweek Motivation Podcast for January the 14th, 2026.

It is a new year.

Last week we took the week off, uh, just trying to collect ourselves from a busy, busy holiday season.

But we are certainly glad to be back this week.

And I am with the Pastor Emeritus and my father, James Lewis.

How are you?

Good.

You have a good uh we had a good family holiday.

We had a great family holiday.

And we had some amazing news, which most people might already know, but in case some of our listeners don't, would you like to fill them in?

Amazing news.

Kathy Mark's mom, my wife, has been battling cancer for the past uh eight months.

We've been taking chemo, and uh right before the new year she got an all clear.

So we're through with chemo and her strength's already coming back, so we are blessed beyond measure.

Yes, and uh of course, crazy with God's timing, because all of this came right after you retired and oh what a mess it would have been you trying to juggle working on the on top of that.

Yes, I could have done it, but it was so good that I didn't have a lot of responsibilities and could just help focus on her.

Yes.

And now um maybe y'all can look forward to her getting her strength back and going and doing some of the things you really wanted to do because it for people who don't understand or haven't had a family member through this before, uh everything shuts down because you are so weak you just can't do anything.

Correct.

And it gives you a new appreciation for being up and going and uh I think we'll uh seize the day a little more now, even.

Absolutely.

You're gonna have to take her on some trips, you know, she's gonna want to go to some places.

Yes.

Uh the holidays.

Tell us what all you and and Kathy did over the holidays.

Well, it was a little different holiday for us because we didn't spend uh a lot of time at the farm.

We didn't even decorate the farm.

As you know, we have a getaway place, and so we didn't go there much because we were in between chemos and doctor appointments and pet scans.

But uh in the in in essence, we were able to have our family Christmas with y'all on Christmas Day.

We enjoyed that and um We did get away at the end of the season with the farm, which was a lot of fun, and it j it worked out perfectly because it was so cold through the holiday and then it warmed up right as we got to the farm.

It was.

And we we were able to farm with with the whole family and have a kind of a celebration time that chemo was done and the news was so good.

So uh and your mom really enjoyed it, and she felt good.

So that was that was good.

It was it was a lot of fun.

Uh here at DeSota Hills, we are kind of cleaning up the holidays and prepping for um our next season, but I wanted to uh talk about you for just a second because you are no longer at Shannon.

Tell us a little bit about how all of that and and that was uh almost a two-year journey.

Correct.

For the past two years, uh just about every Sunday morning I've been driving to Shannon, Mississippi, which is the other side of Tupelo, Brewer Baptist Church, uh, and doing their Sunday mornings.

Their pastor had died suddenly several years ago, and so I've I enjoyed that and and I think it was helpful for them.

But uh then a door opened for me to come a little closer to home, a church that needed some help, and so I told uh Brewer that I'd been there two years and felt like they were in good shape and that uh I was gonna go home and try to help uh another church in the next chapter.

The beauty of that is it's uh just like fifteen, twenty minutes from the house as opposed to an hour and a half driving to Shannon.

So that's that's a blessing.

It's Grace Creek Baptist Church, right outside of Hernando, right on Getwell, cross over Holly Springs Road, and it's on the left down kind of in the country.

And for those who might uh be observant on Sunday mornings, they would have noticed that the last few months you've been here at the nine service.

Right.

Which you didn't used to have the the luxury of doing.

Right.

The beauty of that, I can come to the nine o'clock service, and I've been slipping out during the invitation and getting to uh Grace Creek in plenty of time.

So that's uh and I've enjoyed being back and seeing some people.

I I tried to come back on Wednesdays while I was at Brewer, uh, but I I just see more people on Sunday mornings by being able to be here.

And there's some Wednesdays that you're out of town because y'all go to the farm some during the week.

Correct, and I'm gonna help um Grace Creek out on some Wednesdays.

So I probably won't be here as many many Wednesdays as I've been in the past, but uh because it's so close I can can go and help them out some.

And you can eat lunch at a regular hour instead of a hamburger on the road or correct eating at 1 30 like you were doing.

Right, yeah.

All right, we are cleaning up, like I mentioned, here at the church.

We did want to mention that um next weekend, January the 23rd and the 24th is going to be Disciple Now Weekend.

And that that event has changed names through the years a couple of times.

For a while, we were we were calling it the Hills Heights Conference.

Some people will still call it that, but we've got so many more churches that are involved now that uh it seems like we've just kind of gone back to calling it Disciple Now, it's really a conference style event.

Um, it's not it's not the same old Disciple Now where we go into homes and all of that years ago.

Um, it's very conference-oriented.

We put that event on at Longview Heights now, and because the event has gotten so big, we can't even house all of the students from around the county in our building.

So it was an actually a really good problem to have.

Uh, Longview has lots of space in that big, huge, beautiful building.

So we end up over there.

Uh, and so it's really fantastic, and that is coming up next weekend.

You still have time to sign your students up.

You can go to Sotohills.com.

You will find the payment links on there.

They're not gonna want to miss it.

We have an incredible worship team coming out of South Alabama.

They are like one of the best worship teams I've ever encountered and worked with.

Absolutely amazing, uh, talented speakers, lots of games, lots of food, lots of good stuff gonna happen.

And uh most notably, students' favorite thing year after year that they talk about is the other relationships and the friends that they make that weekend that they haven't talked to or met before.

So again, Disciple Now coming up the 23rd, the 24th.

That's not this weekend, that's next weekend.

You need to go ahead and sign up your students right now.

We have lots of other information and events coming up at DeSota Hills, and we'll be getting into that, all of that information in the coming weeks.

But now we want to move straight into the segment that we call the midweek moment.

This time of year, a lot of people are focusing on after Christmas sales.

You can find a lot of bargains, and a lot of people do Christmas shopping for next year, this year.

Uh today I want to give you an after Christmas scripture that I want you to think about.

Uh we're not looking for it to be a bargain, but I hope it'll be a blessing to you.

A very familiar verse that we always look at at Christmas is this verse that says in Luke chapter 2, verse 7, and she gave birth to her firstborn son, laid him in a manger, because there wrapped him in swaddling clothes, laid him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.

Luke 2:7

I think sometimes when we read that last part, there was no room for him in the inn.

We see it as a as a statement of condemnation.

Why wasn't there room in the end?

Why didn't the innkeeper do this?

And sometimes I think because of that we tend to throw uh the innkeeper under the bus, as it were.

But I I really think it's not uh it's not intended to be a condemnation.

It is an observation.

There was no room in the inn.

It wasn't that uh he didn't look for room, he didn't there was no room in the end.

Some people say, well, he could have given uh maybe his room.

He being a businessman that time of year and with those people coming in, he'd probably already rented his room out.

So literally there was no room in the end.

So here's what I want you to think about when you think about the innkeeper, maybe at the end of this year and when you you when you put that manger scene out next Christmas, uh let's celebrate that he did find the manger.

Here's here's my focus I want you to think about.

Instead of worrying about what you can't give Jesus in 2026, think about what you do have available.

Uh what is it that you're not you sometimes we were so much about what we can't, we don't have the voice to sing, or we don't have uh this skill or that skill.

And I think often we overlook the things we do have.

That he he didn't have any rooms, he couldn't give Jesus' family a room, but he did have a manger.

I now we want to give him the very best we have, and on that given day, the very best he had was a manger.

There's a great illustration of that, even in the Old Testament, with with King David that I've been reminding people of for years.

Prior to being king, he was this uh child, uh this teenager who went up and and we know the story, slew Goliath, and it's a great story.

And if you know that story, he went and uh when he went and uh was willing to go up against Goliath, Saul said, Well, if you're gonna go, put on my armor, take my armor, and David put it on, but it didn't fit him.

It it wasn't right.

And so I've been telling people for years, David, the Lord used David to slay Goliath because David gave him what he had.

What he had was a sling and five stones.

And so let me challenge you as you enter the new year, instead of worrying about everything you can't do or comparing what you can do compared to everybody else, just be willing, like the innkeeper, to give Jesus what you have.

Have a blessed day.

Thanks so much for listening.

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

You can catch our services online at Desotahills.com, our YouTube channel at DeSota 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.