MID WEEK MOTIVATION - October 22, 2025 (Grant Stegall)

You're listening to the Midweek Motivation Podcast from DeSoto Hills Baptist Church in South David Mrs.

Tippy.

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

Welcome to the Midweek Motivation Podcast for October the 22nd here at DeSoto Hills Baptist Church.

I'm Mark Lewis.

I'm Grant Steagall.

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

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

Last episode with Grant, we talked about the Margaret Lackey offering.

Did we have any updates?

Do you know exactly how much we made?

Our goal was 8,000.

I know it was over 8,000.

It was 8,000 and some change.

So we reached our goal.

We reached our goal.

Which was higher than last year's, which is amazing.

So that's uh really awesome.

Uh catch us up on the family.

What's going on with you guys?

Uh just everybody's just in the midst of school.

Um, Eli's is at MC doing great, loving it.

How often do you talk?

He talks to his mom more frequently than me.

Yeah, I think that's just part of it.

I'll uh we'll have a pretty good text conversation at least once a week.

Um, and then we've seen him probably on average about every other week.

It's pretty now it's not always him coming home, maybe us going down there, or you know, me having a meeting in Jackson and going by and seeing him or something like that.

Uh but y'all gonna take him out when you go to the convention?

Surely you're gonna take him out to the show.

Yeah, we'll see him for sure that night for for see him for sure while we're down there.

Yeah.

That'll work out good.

Uh what about the rest of the family?

We're looking forward to did y'all do anything much for fall break?

I know your schedule doesn't line up.

Ours was kind of a week ahead of the public schools, so uh no, you know, we had a we took the the big family vacation back in May.

Right.

Um, so we just kind of hung out at home.

There was a lot going on here at the church, so yeah, it was kind of tough to get away.

Uh but yeah, so we just kind of kind of hung out around here, uh, did some stuff here.

But nice to have just a break from school anyway.

Yeah, they enjoyed it.

Um yeah, but you know, everybody's doing well in school.

Sam's a junior, um, which is hard to believe.

Um have I showed you the video of Sam?

No.

Sam has built an upright base.

Okay.

A bucket base.

So there's d several different styles that they build.

Did he build it out of like a wash tub?

Well, no, he he he took the plans of a wash tub base and modified them and used a bucket just like a five gallon.

It's a five gallon bucket and some scrap lumber that I had laying around and and modified the plans to use what he had on hand, and he has a bass.

Oh my gosh, oh Sam.

It's pretty awesome.

Like, I mean, he uh he's learning on it.

I mean, fine he got it tuned.

Now it's tuned from his phone, so it may not be perfectly yet, so but he's working on it.

And yeah.

Now, for people, our listeners who don't know, Sam marches to the beat of a different drum, and musically he likes a lot of like instrumental and jazz.

Yes, he likes jazz, he likes bluegrass a lot.

He's really into a bluegrass vibe right now.

Okay.

Um old school country music, that kind of thing.

Like the 30s, 40s, yeah.

The earliest stuff.

Man, that's that's so much fun.

So yeah, he's uh he's loving that.

And so is he got is he trying to play along with stuff that he's got?

Yeah, he'll listen to stuff real good and then take his headset off.

And he he has a much let me let me encourage you, he has a much better ear than his dad.

Well, playing one of those you have to because you kind of have to feel it.

You have to feel it, yeah.

And so he's really he's he's having a lot of fun with it.

And you know, he he said this is a a prototype for him that he might, you know, later on build a little bit more significant, like uh one of the wash tub bases that would be a little bit more substantial.

But he's having fun with this one.

I love it.

I love it.

I don't know the exact schedule yet, but I suspect that I may not talk to you again until after Halloween.

So what are the Halloween plans?

And you may not know this being a dad, but are the girls have they already started picking out some costumes or something?

My kids love Halloween.

I hate Halloween.

I know you do.

They've they always ask you to to do something on the house, and you're like, I don't want to do it.

I never decorate for Halloween.

No, I the only way I would decorate for Halloween is if I put Christmas decorations up.

Right.

Um and so no, we haven't had it decorated.

But my kids start planning their Halloween costumes the day after Halloween.

For next year.

For the next year.

Yeah.

Um and so yeah, the girls kind of have, you know, plans with their friends of what they're gonna be.

I I forget what they are.

Uh, but yeah, they they've had their costumes planned for a while.

Um well Keelan, and this is an audio show, not a video show, unfortunately, for our viewers, because y'all would laugh really hard at this, but Keelan has begged for years for the inflatable costumes.

They're not they're nothing new.

Those are nothing new.

I I tend to find the ones more hilarious where your upper body is out than the lower body.

But she wanted that crazy Tyrannosaurus Rex, which I think was probably the first inflatable one that ever came out, and then they went viral online or whatever.

So we teemooed and found one because the one the US ones are really expensive and I wasn't spending that much money.

So we found something on one of those crazy sites, and it was like 30 bucks, which I could swallow that peel.

She put that thing on a few days ago and marched through the living room.

And our dog and say your dog hated it.

And let me let me let me preface that.

For those thinking that we have some beautiful Labrador that's, you know, 80 pounds.

This thing is a tiny poodle.

I mean, that's it's a small, small little dog.

Millie came up off the couch, and what's funny is the dogs stare at the head of the thing.

They don't stare down where Keelan's face is coming out of the porthole.

Right.

She stared at the head of that thing and she backed off that couch and behind some pillows, and she was not comfortable.

Even with Keelan in it, you know, making noise, you can tell it's Keelan in there.

She won't go, she won't go near that thing.

And she wasn't angry or whatever.

She just was on high alert, baby.

She lit off that couch in a dead sleep in seconds.

So Keelan, if you're at Fall Fest and you see a dinosaur prancing around, it'll be Keelan.

Although I told Jennifer, I think she'll last 15 minutes in that thing.

Because you can't do anything.

We don't.

We are my kids used to love wearing their col they always w I say love, they wanted to wear their costumes to Fall Fest.

For people to see them.

But they quickly figured out, especially with some costumes, you can't do all of the things you can't have fun in it.

We've kind of quit wearing costumes to Fall Fest and just do it for trick-or-treating, which uh we usually do a big neighborhood trick-or-treating thing, but um as kids are getting older, um, all of us are involved in different things, and so I don't even think we're gonna be able to do the big neighborhood potluck and hayride thing this year.

We're just gonna walk from our house, which it again I am totally okay with.

I here's I'm a curmudgeon on this.

I even beg my kids, I'll say, How about if I go to the store and I will buy you your own bag of candy, that mixed thing of candy.

You can go pick it out if you won't make me go trick-or-treat.

That's that's a pretty good deal, actually, because you can pick what you want.

They want to go house to house.

They want to go house to house.

Well, Halloween is on Friday night this year.

Right.

So all of us involved with high schools are gonna be at football games, not able to trick-or-treat.

Some of the football games I think are on Thursday.

I don't think ours is.

Now it may have changed and looked at the schedule.

Somebody might have seen that and changed it over, but yeah, it's gonna be a problem for us for sure.

Okay, um, what else did I have on here?

Okay, what's something that you are reading now?

You've already peeked at this, so you may have something in mind.

What's what's something you're currently reading?

Either a devotional, Christian living, theologic uh theological something?

Have you read anything recently that you have enjoyed?

That I've enjoyed.

I tell you, you know, going through um the the the Bible readings things that we did when we hit Proverbs was I've read Proverbs before, but it was just kind of new to me.

I guess maybe I'm in a new area of l of life than I was last time I read it.

Yep.

Um and I've really kind of committed every like so there's 31 Proverbs, which means one proverb a day, except for the months that are 30 days, you read two one day.

So I've really kind of committed to reading through the Proverbs one chapter a day, kind of every day, on top of whatever I'm doing.

That's been a really good uh for me, just kind of a um, you know, just a re refreshing thing, but also a challenging thing.

Uh talking about wisdom all the time, my prayer since I've become the pastor is God give me not just experiential wisdom.

I don't want the wisdom of Solomon, I want godly wisdom.

And so that's kind of been a step for me to grow uh in that.

Um so that's been good.

Interesting.

Uh any movies, TV shows, podcasts you've been enjoying lately?

I am a I've become a podcast guy.

I know you are.

And podcasts are great, especially for those of us who exercise what you do.

Um they're they're great because you can you can put them on in the car or exercise.

You they can filter time mowing the yard, weed eating the yard.

And they and they make the time for those those menial tasks fly.

Yes, yes.

And so I I really um I've really become a podcast guy.

I love the briefing by Al Moller.

Yep.

Um I I it's an everyday thing.

I I I enjoy it a lot.

Um I'm trying to think what's going on.

I catch the Daily Wire.

I think it's called the Daily Wire, which is the first one.

The Daily Wire is a good, yeah.

Um it it's good.

That they have the morning wire and then the afternoon wire.

That's a good one.

I I used to listen on that one a lot more than I than I have recently.

Um some that I've recently found, or there's one somebody introduced me to called the Everyday Pastor.

Yep.

Um, I've enjoyed that.

Uh and then there's one that some some local guys are doing.

They call it The DeSoto County Brief.

The they call it Brother Pastors.

Oh, okay.

I haven't heard about one.

And it's it's three guys.

One is actually a pastor in Memphis, um, but but two others are pastors in Olive Branch.

Okay.

And it is, I mean, they go they have some pretty deep con deep theological conversations that are is that a weekly cast?

Yeah, it's a weekly cast.

Okay.

Um, and it's the two local guys that I know, Ben Williams, who's the pastor at Redeemer in Olive Branch, and uh Lawson Harlow, um, and they man, they do a great job, and it's it's just it's very challenging.

Um, I've enjoyed listening to them a lot.

Their first ones was walking through What is the church?

And it's been been really good for me, really refreshing, but also just challenging because they are they're pretty deep thinkers and I've enjoyed that.

I hit several different podcasts weekly.

Um, the Verge cast I listen to a lot.

It's a lot of tech stuff since I'm a tech guy.

But uh so I'll pivot to TV shows.

I'm really into documentaries.

Okay but there's one that we've been watching called The Money Game, and it is all about the NIL deals surrounding the University of LSU.

So it's just based at LSU, Jaden Daniels, Livy Dunn, all of the people who have like made millions and it's it is fascinating to me to see how they have turned college into a business.

I mean, it's they're making millions, millions of dollars.

Right.

So uh that one's really interesting.

That one's on Amazon Prime, if you're curious, because half the battle is people will say something, hey, you need to catch this show, and you're like, where do I find it?

It takes me three years to find this thing that everybody's talking about.

Right.

So uh as far as just ones we watch, like Amber and I and it's just seasonal, you know, is hometown.

We love that.

We love you know it's not on right now.

Uh but it's funny, like Amber doesn't like all of them, but she likes that one.

Right.

Um, and so we we get into that one when it's when it when they're in season.

Um, you know, I I I do I guess I watch movies some just um I don't have a show that I watch.

I watch movies if, you know, and a lot of times it's just background noise while I'm cooking supper or doing something like that.

But I like those just adventure.

Like the the one I watched just recently was was Jason Bourne.

It was the latest Jason Bourne.

Right.

Uh, you know, those kind of movies are the kind of the things that the classic.

Although I found myself I I've found myself not being able to watch some of those at bed, like at night.

Like the closer I get to bed, or when I come home on a long day from a long day, and I'll start wanting to go, nope, not tonight.

I can't tonight.

And so I'll go back and watch it on a Saturday or something.

But yeah.

We do we do way more discovery stuff like that at night before we go to sleep.

Number one, they're shorter.

We can't stay up late for one anymore.

And then number two, I'm the same way, man, as I've gotten older uh heavy stuff, trying to watch heavy stuff before dramas and stuff before bed just doesn't do it.

All right, we need to get to the calendar at church because we've got quite a bit coming up over the next month.

We have Fall Fest coming up on October 26th and the times for that because I always get it wrong.

3 to 5 30.

3 to 5 30.

Uh again, October 26th.

Mississippi Babbits Convention follows that right up October 27th to 29th.

Keep uh people in your prayers because there are people all over the state of Mississippi who will be uh heading to Jackson to take part of that.

And Grant's in Madison this year.

Amazing.

Yeah.

Uh that's a great location, actually.

Uh close to lots of hotels and and restaurants.

But uh Grant and his wife are going, and then is my dad and mom going?

Brother James, who turned 70 this week, by the way.

Happy birthday, Brother James.

Yes.

Uh family movie night follows that November the 7th, and the Thankful Together Dinner will be November the 10th, Monday, November the 10th.

That is for women ministries, and we still have those signups active, so make sure you check that out soon because we do need to get a count of who's going to be at that.

And then finally, night of worship on Sunday night, November the 16th at 5 p.m.

That just gives you a quick snapshot of the next month here at the church.

Anything, any of that you wanted to follow up on?

Uh no, you you hit it pretty good.

You and Laura hit it good too.

Uh so.

All right.

Well, it's now time for the portion of our show that we call the Midweek Moment.

All right, so I want to do something a little bit differently for the midweek moment today.

Um, so we've started New Testament.

Yep.

Uh where you you're being today is I think Luke 15.

So, so in the middle of Luke.

So you've done Matthew, Mark, you're almost through Luke, about to hit John real soon.

So going through the gospels and going through the New Testament, which probably feels like more familiar territory and things like that for us.

Pastors tend to stay more in the New Testament than they do the old.

They do, they do.

So um, but but what I want to do a little bit this morning is just help us think about how we how we we read through those things.

Because you can't read, and this applies to the all the whole Bible, but since we feel probably feel more familiar with the New Testament, we'll we'll start there a little bit.

Um, so we just talk about how we need to be aware of even within the gospels, there's so many different genres of literature, even within the gospel.

In the gospel, you have parables, in the gospels, you have paradigms in the gospels, you have metaphors, you have similes, you have prophecy, you have all these different things, and you can't read them all the same.

Correct.

You have to you have to kind of go through and read those.

It would kind of be like, so let's just let's just take, let's take C.

S.

Lewis, right?

So C.S.

Lewis wrote a book, one of my one of his more famous books called Near Christianity.

Okay.

It's a a nonfiction book, um just talking about the the basis of Christianity, okay.

C.

S.

Lewis also wrote The Chronicles of Narnia.

I was about to say Lion Witch in the Wardrobe.

Two extremely different experiences if you're reading those books.

Right.

Okay.

And then he also wrote um a book entitled uh Surprised by Joy.

I haven't heard of that one.

It's a it's kind of an autobiography, the shape of my early life.

And so so he he he wrote.

So you got one author.

You cannot read Chronicles of Narnia the same way you read mere Christianity.

Absolutely.

And you can't read Surprised by Joy the same way you read Chronicles of Narnia or the others.

Like you have to, you have to know the genre, have to know the context of what you're reading and and those kind of things.

And so the the same is kind of true as we not kind of true, the same is true as we read all through the New Testament.

Like think think of the big genres of the New Testament.

You you have Gospels, you have Acts, which is in itself its own genre.

Like there's there's no other book like Acts, okay?

Then you have the epistles or letters, and then you have the revelation, which is also apocalyptic, and so it's it's it's it's its own category as well, too.

And you can't just approach all of them the same way.

So even within the gospels, you have you have parables, you have miracles, you have Jesus, the Sermon on the Mount, it's it's this long discourse.

You can't read the Sermon on the Mount the same way that you but even in the Sermon on the Mount, he has similes, he has metaphors, you know, uh and and so you you just have to read those in context.

And so uh I guess my my thought to you is let's think about the gospels a little bit.

One uh the gospels are not a biography.

Some sometimes we think they're a biography, they're this not a per it's a theological biography.

Okay, so you have to take each gospel writer, you have to look at who he was writing to and the context to whom he was writing to kind of understand what he was saying, okay.

And so you look at we we just went through John, the Gospel of John.

Gosh, it's been over a year ago that we were in the Gospel of John almost.

We finished John in like November of last year.

So we're coming up on a year that of being out of John.

John, I mean, he was a god, he was a gospel writer.

He was writing about uh the kingdom of God.

That was a big thing in his his writings, but he told us his purpose for writing.

I'm writing so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may find life in his name.

He he told us this is what he was doing.

So as he's writing, he's doing that.

Matthew, when he writes his, when he writes his gospel, he is writing really to people who are kind of on the line.

Either people who were Jewish who have become believers, or people who are Jewish and are close to becoming believers.

So he writes a lot about the prophecies and how Jesus fulfilled those prophecies.

Um the theme really kind of of Matthew is Jesus is the Messiah King.

He is the king that was promised, he is the Messiah that was promised.

Look, here's how you can know that.

Here's some prophecies that that he addresses and he fulfills.

When Luke write his writes his gospel, he addresses it to this guy named Theophilus.

Luke and Acts many consider are two parts of the same book.

Both of them are addressed to this guy named Theophilus, who some will contend he's not really a real guy.

Most a lot of guys, I I including myself, he I we think he was, I think he was a real guy.

Um probably some kind of gentile person of um what's the word?

Person of not power, but influence.

Good person of influence.

But while he's writing to Theophilus, at the same time, the overall audience is probably a an audience of Jew of Gentile believers.

Okay.

Okay, so so if you especially in Acts as you trace it through, he it's writing we we I think the theme of Acts is that you will be witnesses, Jerusalem, Judea, Samaria, the uttermost parts of the earth, that we're called to be witnesses and how that spreads to the to the whole world.

And in in Luke, it really is a gospel of uh to to Gentiles, but really who are believers he writes about salvation, but a lot of it is how salvation influences the believer.

And so here's what you here's what you come to when you come to the gospel.

So often you see the same story but from different eyes.

Okay.

Just just recently, um, I was talking to uh some people who had had um gone through a very traumatic experience, okay, and it was a family.

And so it was there were three brothers who I'm I'm close to the three brothers, and they had just gone through a traumatic experience.

So I called each one of them separately.

They described the same event three different ways, three different ways.

And the the ending was the same.

This it was the the outcome to the event was exactly the same.

But it was interesting in the way that they saw it, the things that they chose to focus on when they were telling me about the event.

One brother focused on this area, another brother focused on this area, another brother focused on this area.

And so I I got off the phone and I talked told Hammer, I was like, This is what makes the gospels believable to me.

Right.

It's yeah, are the there might be this that Luke didn't say that that Mark said or Mark said this and Luke said it a different way, and and okay, but it's not because they made up an event or anything, it's because they saw it, or at least so Luke wasn't an apostle.

Luke he probably witnessed maybe some of it, but but Luke's gathering hit most of his information from either eyewitness accounts or from what eyewitnesses have written or from an eyewitness telling him.

And so even in Luke, when he's hearing these things, like what somebody wrote about the event, might somebody the person telling him might might have just, and it's not that it was a different event or something different happened.

It was just they focused on different things.

Right.

And so as you as you approach the gospels and and you see some of those little nuances, don't see it as like, oh, well, see, this couldn't be true because Mark said this.

And look, no, enjoy the variety of the story.

Right.

Luke is writing to different people with a different task, telling, doing a different thing than John was, than Mark was.

And so as as they're doing that, see, oh, okay, they're telling the same story, but it's through different eyes.

So my challenge to you as you as you read through the New Testament, as you read through the gospels, as you read through Acts, enjoy, enjoy some of those nuances and go, oh, these are here, this is the big these are real people.

Right.

They're real people writing about real events that really affect our lives.

We so often just get so caught up in it being about characters.

And and we think uh of characters in a story.

We're talking about real people who were genuinely affected by the life of Christ, especially by the life of Christ, who were genuinely changed by the life of Christ.

And the way they came to salvation may not the way Paul came to salvation was not the way Peter came to salvation.

Right.

You can't expect the you can't expect them to see it exactly the same.

Same outcome, same person.

The story's not different, just the lens through which they saw it was different.

My challenge to you is you as you read through these, enjoy those differences.

I've heard more than one evangelist before tell people at large conference style gatherings that if they had accepted Christ right then to start by reading the book of John, why would you say that that's usually the case?

Several reasons.

John's a little bit easier to read.

Okay.

Um John is more pointed in he gives you this is why I'm writing the book.

Uh Luke, he has things that he's writing about, but he's not quite as pointed as as this is why.

So it it helps you.

If you if you know that John's writing this, why did John write about why was John's first miracle, Jesus turning water into wine?

Well, that's a pretty amazing story.

Well, it's a pretty amazing story, but nobody else wrote about it.

Like why, why, why?

Well, it John tells us that the reason there were lots of miracles that Jesus did.

Right.

But he picked seven.

That you see you it helps you understand why.

It just kind of helps you put it in context.

John's a little bit easier to read.

Um, and also it's there's I mean, you read a chapter a day, there's like 30 chapters or 29 chapters, and so you read a chapter a day and a little bit easier to digest than some of the other ones.

Yeah.

All right.

Well, that was pretty fascinating, man.

I I loved it.

Thanks so much.

And thank you guys 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 so much.

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

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.