MID WEEK MOTIVATION - September 3, 2025 (Marc Lewis & Grant Stegall)

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

Here's your hosts Mark Lewis, david Burgess, laura Ulrich and Pastor Grant Stegall.

Welcome to the Midweek Motivation Podcast for September the 3rd here at DeSoto Hills Baptist Church.

I'm Mark Lewis, I'm Grant Stegall.

We hope this programming can encourage folks throughout DeSoto Hills Baptist Church.

I'm Mark Lewis, I'm Grant Stegall, and we hope this programming can encourage folks throughout DeSoto County and beyond.

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

Welcome to season two, episode one.

We took some time off in the summer.

I took some time off in the summer.

We all needed it.

Yes, and we, of course.

We still had podcast, our weekly podcast on Sunday mornings casting the sermon.

But many of you do enjoy the midweek motivation podcast and were slightly worried that it wasn't coming back.

But we knew all along it was going to come back.

We just have to get into the swing of the fall and get all of the stuff rolling so that I could get back in here and get back at it Now.

You had a busy summer.

Tell us what all you did this summer.

We'll end with what just happened, but tell us what all your family did this summer.

Well, we really kind of started the summer off starting back.

So my sister's oldest daughter, she graduated like she just graduated with her master's degree.

So when she graduated from high school we started kind of a for their senior trip.

She wanted to do a big family vacation.

So we've done that for my sister's three daughters.

And then this year was Eli and my nephew Mac it was their day graduated so they did it together.

But we went to the mountains.

Usually go to the beach, we went to the mountains.

That was we did that in May.

So we started the summer off in May going to the mountains, came back to Bible school, went right to the Southern Baptist Convention, got back from that and then the kids had camp students and children.

I actually had a couple of days there that I was home by myself.

That doesn't happen very often.

I went to the student camp and the girls were grown those are at the same time.

So I had a couple of nights just home.

No, that doesn't happen very often.

I went to the student camp and the girls were grown those were at the same time.

So I had a couple of nights just home.

No, that doesn't happen much and honestly, probably 10 years ago I would have hated it, but I guess I'm old and don't want to do anything now, so I kind of liked it.

I wouldn't have liked it for longer, but for two nights it was good.

And then yeah, it was good.

And then yeah, just it was a crazy summer around the church too.

I was telling somebody the other day I'm not real sure where the summer went, because in the spring I was saying, if I can just get to the summer, and then I'm not sure where it went.

It went fast for sure, and the Lewis household.

We had a great summer.

But again it's the same story.

It seems like after VBS, everything just goes downhill and the summer rolls so, so fast.

We ended up going out of town Many of you probably saw the video on my Facebook but we ended up taking my little camping trailer up north, which we had never done before.

It was really odd because we were expecting really hot weather and so we had packed like we pack when we're camping down here in the South.

It is not like that up in Indiana.

We ended up at Walmart one day buying jackets for everybody in June, in the middle of June, and I asked the lady at the checkout, I was like it is 62 degrees outside and she said, honey, our summer doesn't really come until the middle of July up here.

So we did lots of interesting things.

Hit Indiana, kentucky I'd never been to.

I'd been to Kentucky once but never really hung around in that state, and so we got to spend several days in Kentucky, which was a lot of fun.

Several days in Indiana Got to go to the Bob Ross Museum where he painted in the studio and see his easel.

So lots of fun stuff there.

Now you just capped off your summer with a milestone.

Your oldest you had to move into a dorm at Mississippi College, so he is on his own at this point.

He is there.

Yeah, so we moved Eli in a few Wednesdays ago and, yeah, it was a surreal moment.

I did pretty good that day.

I told him that morning my goal is to not cry today and I didn't.

Thursday morning we woke up and the other kids went to our homeschool community the next morning and I went upstairs and passed his room up.

And the other kids went to our homeschool community the next morning and I went upstairs and passed his room and the light was on in his room.

I don't know if he had left it on or one of the other kids had gone in there, but I opened the door to turn it off and that's when it happened?

Yeah, that's when it happened.

Was it easier with him being at MC, a school that y'all have so much history with, rather than somewhere else?

Because you've known that college I mean, I have too all my life, even though I went to William.

Carey?

I don't know, because, like my brother, they have a son.

So my nephew and Eli, they were born 59 minutes apart.

We call them twin cousins and so they moved back into Mississippi State Same day.

And you know, just talking to Clay Now, he's like me, he's had a hard time, like you know, just adjusting and that kind of stuff, but I don't know the fact that it was, you know it was I mean Mississippi State's 45 minutes down the road from them, an hour down the road, so but still like I don't, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know if I can answer that question.

If it was easier there as opposed to somewhere else.

I feel like if one of my kids decides to go two states away or something, I'm going to feel like that's a foreign land now if I, if he would have gone off, like not a mississippi school, if he had gone off, yeah, it probably would have felt different.

I'm sure that.

But you know, if he had gone to mississippi state I have he would have had two cousins there.

If he had gone to southern miss, his grandparents are down there, you know, old miss it's been right here, yeah and so, um, yeah, so you know, but if I'm sure, if he would have gone to like Tennessee or Alabama or something like that, yeah, I would have.

Right, it would have been different.

Has he been calling every day?

Y'all been talking every day.

Pretty much We've texted him some.

We really are trying to let him live his life, so we have texted him some.

He did talk to his mom the other night for a long time, but I mean we've communicated, but not necessarily with long phone calls, right.

Well, your next one, sam.

When does he graduate?

Two years, two years from now that's what I thought, all right?

Well, we'll be looking forward to having this conversation again in a couple of years.

I'm not looking forward to it.

All right, let's move on to our calendar portion.

We have a couple of things happening this month.

The biggest thing is we're calling this series Impact Month, and this will be a recurring series that we have here at DeSoto Hills.

But why don't you explain to everybody what Impact Month is?

So one of our goals is to allow our people opportunities, give our people opportunities to be involved in different ministries that we have here.

One way we feel like to get people involved is to let them know about the different ministries.

Here's what the ministries are.

Here's what you can do with that.

Now I hope what grows from that is we're not just bound by what we have, I'm hoping through Impact Month and people see this is what we do, but maybe we're missing something here.

I would like to start to fill this hole.

I would love for something like that to happen.

If you get that inkling, come talk to me, because I would love to talk to you about it.

So what we're going to do every Sunday in the month of September is just highlight one of our ministries.

We started with the, I guess, the easy ministries, right?

The obvious in.

September, the obvious ones.

So we're going to highlight preschool children, students, but we also have a prayer ministry, some different opportunities to be involved with a prayer team, so we'll be highlighting those and so there will be a video as part of the worship service that you can watch that will tell about what the ministry does.

And then we're going to have a table out in the Grand Hall that has a banner out by it that says Impact DeSoto Hills, and so you can go and there will be people there that you can go and ask questions.

They can explain to you what each ministry does and how you can be a part, and then there will be sign-up sheets so you can sign up and become part of that ministry.

It takes a massive amount of volunteer power at a church the size of DeSoto Hills to get all these things and all this programming done.

And we get compliments.

I get compliments all the time from people on how well we do programming specifically at this church and it is a beast to get all of these things, all of these pieces of these puzzles put together for all of the events that we put on at DeSoto Hills.

And so I would Plea with people If you're not plugged in some way at DeSoto Hills, we would love to have you help and we talked about it in the meeting the other day.

Quite a few of these ministries.

People assume that they're going to have to do a lot of preparation every week for and that's just not the case.

Right, right, many like and and even like in our preschool ministry.

Like miss bonnie has everything laid out so you can basically walk in the room and laura has a lot with the children's ministry.

The same way, you can basically walk in the room and just having no prep and they have everything there for you.

They have a craft, they have instructions on how to do the craft, they have the bible story and it's basically you just kind of reading that Bible story.

I mean everything is laid out.

But then there's opportunities, like if you don't want to teach, we always need.

You know, we have a goal of having two people in every room, from preschool up to students, and so if you don't want to teach, but hey, you're willing to build some relationships with kids and get to know them like we need somebody to come just sit in the room and talk to people and talk to the children and talk to the kids and students and get to know them on a more personal level.

So we always need people to do that and there are just tons of other ways.

I mean, ms Bonnie just came to my office today, as we were recording this on a Wednesday night, looking for somebody to hold babies tonight.

We have a slew of babies right now in our church, which is awesome.

I'm so excited about it.

But she needed somebody just to hold a baby tonight and rock them while their parents are at church and doing the things they do, and so that requires nothing but you being willing to hold a baby and rock them while their parents are at church and doing the things they do, and so that requires nothing but you being willing to hold a baby and rock I mean.

So there's lots of, lots of opportunities and I know I highlighted kind of preschool there but there's lots of.

You're not going to hold any children or students and rock them, obviously, but there's things to do that doesn't require you to teach and doesn't require you to be up in front of a huge group, just requires you just to get to know some people, and so we always need help in those.

And then the prayer ministry.

I mean there are.

There are times when people meet um, I'm really excited about I'll tell you about this but a new prayer time that's coming up.

Um, someone in our church talked to me.

They had heard this done and God had really laid it on their heart.

But to start a group of people praying during our services, and so this lady is going to.

She came to me about it and I said that sounds great.

How can I help you get it going?

And so she's heading it up and we're going to start that.

It hasn't started yet.

It's going to be fresh new after impact month.

We're going to get.

It hasn't started yet.

It's going to be fresh new after Impact Month.

Hopefully people will sign up to be a part of that, and then we can get that organized and get that rolling in October.

So yeah, there's lots of different things and that's just highlighting four ministries.

In the spring.

We're going to highlight four more that you can be a part of.

We probably spent a half an hour to an hour talking about this back in the summer as a staff, and I remember it was.

It's hard to try to pick what ministries you want to start with, so if anybody's like a little bit miffed, please don't be.

We identified a whole list of ministries that we knew would be great to feature and we plan on it.

We really wanted to be careful to only feature one a week so we can highlight it and give it all the spotlight on that week, so we're going to do this again.

We're going to get them all.

Yes.

We're going to do another Impact Week in March.

I believe it's in the spring, I can't remember On our calendar over here it says March.

So I think March is going to be the month that we do it, and we will identify four other ministries and then next year we'll do it all over again with some more.

We'll do four more different ones, right so?

we're excited.

Impact Month is going to be amazing and we're excited that it's here.

So be sure to catch that each and every Sunday morning and please visit those tables if you have any interest or any curiosity at all.

You don't have to sign your name to visit the table and just find out something, right?

If you just have a question like when does this meet, or how often do you meet, you know, just come talk to folks and let them and I'm telling you, if you hear the passion of some of these people who are involved in the ministry, you're going to fall in love with it Absolutely.

We wanted to mention.

At the end of the month, september 28th, is a night of worship.

That's also going to be a business meeting.

It's going to be a fantastic night.

I just mention it because I want everybody to be aware and go ahead and put it on your calendar, because we want you to be there and we're also going to have some special business that night in the business meeting that we want to fill you in on.

And then, finally, fall Fest is coming up October the 26th, and we told you earlier that we do a lot of programming here at DeSoto Hills and it takes a lot of people to pull that off Boy, none more than this one.

Fall Fest is a beast.

I would liken it to vacation Bible school.

It takes just as many people as VBS does.

So tell us about, just briefly about.

Fall Fest this year.

So Fall Fest will be from 3 to 5.30, as always.

We'll begin I mean we've already begun discussions on getting ready and organizing Fall Fest.

It takes months.

Yeah, it takes a long time and so we've already talked about that and been contacting vendors and things like that, and so, yeah, we're going to get ready, be heads up on that.

We'll really start having some signups right at the first of October where you can sign up on how you can help.

There's going to be some new opportunities.

We're going to do a prayer.

We did a prayer tent last year.

We're going to do two of those this year, just opportunities for you to stop and pray for people.

Those this year just opportunities for you to stop and pray for people.

And so if you want to help but can't stand up and help at a game or something like that, hey, if you can sit down and pray for people, you know.

Absolutely.

And so, yeah, we're really excited about it.

It's going to be coming up and a lot more information and details will be coming up very soon, very soon, absolutely.

All right, that wraps up our calendar.

We're now going to shift to our devotion portion of the podcast that we call the.

Midweek Moment.

So I hope you have been continuing reading on in your Daily Walk Bible.

I want to kind of pick up where we've left off.

We haven't talked about it and we really haven't had these opportunities to encourage you to read through that.

But look, if you've fallen off.

Mark, I always tell people if you've just missed, say, july hit and you just didn't do it in July for some reason, hey, my encouragement to you is just pick it back up and you don't have to try to catch up in July.

You can, and I know people that do that.

They'll just read like two days and until they get caught up or something, and you can do that and that's fine.

But if that just seems overwhelming, here's my encouragement to you today September the the 3rd, pick up on September the 3rd and start reading that and finish out the year.

And just as an encouragement, october starts the New Testament.

So you've almost made it through the Old Testament, right?

You're almost there, so just hang in there.

If you've continued to do it, I'm so proud of you.

If you haven't, hey, and you've just tried, hey, just pick it back up.

Don't fret, don't make yourself feel bad about it or anything like that.

Just pick it back up and start reading again.

Life happens to all of us.

It absolutely does, absolutely does.

So, that being said, september.

So today's September, the 3rd, september, the 1st, you started the book of Hosea and you're reading that.

So Hosea starts a different part of the Old Testament, the part that we call the minor prophets.

Ok, so the minor prophets we call them minor prophets, not because of it's a minor message, just because they're really short.

So there are 12 minor prophets.

So you understand here's, here's what we call a minor message, just because they're really short.

So there are 12 minor prophets.

So understand, here's why we call them minor.

In the month of September, you're going to read all 12 books, Okay, so they're called minor because they're short.

But I read an essay on this the other day and a guy named Richard Furr.

He says this as a collection the minor prophets speak with a unified voice, the message of God to a wayward people during the most tumultuous times in Israel's history.

So there's 12 minor prophets.

They're kind of arranged chronologically, which a lot of books in the Old and New Testament are not arranged that way, but they're arranged chronologically.

They start from pre-exilic period, which means the time before the people were exiled.

There's a couple that deal with while they're in exile.

There's a few that deal with post-exilic time.

So, like after they return back, they really start with the Assyrian conquest of northern Israel, go through the Babylonian conquest of Judah and work all through that Most minor prophets.

So here's something to keep your eye out In all 12 books, most of them are organized around three major points.

So the points are there is a warning of impending judgment, impending divine judgment because of disloyalty to God.

So there's a warning of something bad is going to happen if something doesn't change.

Then there's a call of repentance hey, you've got this, but here's an opportunity for you to repent and avert that judgment.

So if you repent, you can avert some of that.

And then, but overall, there is a.

The third part is there is a message of hope, of restoration.

So even for some of the prophets, some of the minor prophets, it's like well, it's really too late, you need to repent, but judgment is coming.

But here's the hope One day it will be made new, one day there's a hope for this to all come back and be fixed.

And that hope is some of that is for that day, like, some of the minor prophets will say hey look, you're going to be judged, you're going to be taken into exile, but in 70 years you're going to come back.

So there's a hope for those people then.

But throughout all of them, there's a hope, for there's a greater hope, a greater expectation of an eschatological kind, when all will be made right.

So there's a hope for that day, but there's a hope for a greater hope.

Some key concepts found in this is the day of the Lord, which is really talking about it.

The day of the Lord is almost obscure, for sometimes, when they say of the Lord, the day of the Lord, the prophet is referring to judgment.

Judgment is coming.

Sometimes, when he says the day of the Lord, he's talking about hey, you're going to be restored.

David Furr, this article that I read.

He defines this the day is simply a time of divine intervention and engagement in the affairs of man.

It's a time when God acts in response to the acts of Israel and the nations, and so that's some concepts found throughout this.

So, real quickly, you're in Hosea, so let's identify this in Hosea.

Okay, hosea was written mostly to the northern kingdom of Israel, some to Judah, but mostly to the northern kingdom of Israel, and Hosea is really addressing idolatry that had become very rampant in the northern kingdom, and he does it in such a way.

And so many of these minor prophets do outlandish things.

God calls them to do outlandish things as a metaphor to make his point.

So Hosea is called to marry a woman of ill repute.

Oh, my goodness.

Okay, oh, my goodness.

Okay, he's called to marry a woman of ill repute as an illustration of, and she leaves him, and then God calls Hosea to go after her.

And the metaphor is look, israel is the bride of.

Israel was God's chosen people, and they left him to serve idols, but the faithfulness of God remained true and he still loved them and he went after them and restored them.

And so, while that is a message for Israel, it is also a message for the church, because even in the church today, we deal with idolatry.

Now, we don't necessarily deal with us bowing down to little statues, right, but an idol is really anything that replaces God as the center focus of our life.

That happens all the time in our lives.

Absolutely, it could be a job, it could be money, it could be a relationship, it could be video games yes, I mean name it Extracurricular activity.

I mean there's all kinds of things that could become idols to us and we quickly turn our backs on God and forsake him.

And basically, the word used in Hosea is we commit adultery against God by worshiping these other things, but there is a call to repent and come back to God and find restoration, because he has never stopped loving us, and so that's really kind of the overall message of Hosea which becomes a message throughout the minor prophets.

I'll leave you on this verse, I think really kind of summarizes the call of the minor prophets, but it's found in Micah.

In Micah 6-8,.

Micah writes this he has told you, o man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you.

He has told you, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you?

but to do justice and to love kindness and to walk humbly with your God To our listeners.

If you're wondering, these are very unplanned podcasts, so Grant has no clue what I might ask, and I usually have no clue what he's going to ask, but I'm curious.

I'm going to nerd out just a little bit and you may not have the answer, which is totally fine Scholarly, as scholars and historians do, we believe that the children of Israel really revered these prophets Like did they believe everything?

Because they had seen some crazy stuff?

God did some crazy stuff and you would think that when they heard their granddad's story about some of the stuff that happened with Moses, that they would pay attention.

But apparently they never learned.

No, a lot of times the prophets were not revered until later, really until after they were after their lifetime.

So they became popular.

Quote unquote artists after yes.

And even if you, even in the New Testament here's some of the like when Jesus railed on the Pharisees a lot of times, one of the things that he said, I need to go back.

I don't have the quote, I mean I don't have the exact reference in verse right now, right, but one time he said to the Pharisees he said listen, your fathers rejected the prophets in their day.

You accept them, you go back and you've read them, but your fathers rejected them, just like you are rejecting me, and it's going to come back around where they go.

Oh, we missed it, just like you did with your fathers.

And so Jesus even told them that you accept these guys now, but your fathers didn't.

I mean Jeremiah had to flee to Egypt.

I mean a lot of these guys were very much rejected, and a lot of them because they called people to repent and they told people you're sinning and you're living in sin, and nobody likes to hear that.

Especially those kings of the time.

Many of them had to straight up confront the kings.

They thought they were gods, so it was just no.

Those kings of the time many of them had to straight up confront the kings.

They thought they were gods, yes, so it was just no, most of the time they were not accepted.

I'm sure there were some people who heard the message and tried to repent, and some of the kings actually did too.

There were a couple of times where judgment was averted for a little while because a king came in and did repent, but most of the time, no, they didn't really listen.

You read the Bible and you're just like man.

They never learn.

But then again we're sitting here doing some of the same stuff, absolutely.

Well for our listeners.

Part of the reason that me and Grant and the other staff love these things so much is because this is a time he was just mentioning when we sat down that we get to hang out and chat with each other, and so what you're hearing on these podcasts is very raw.

I mean, we're having a conversation together.

Well, and you just said this In that article that I read, this guy said the Twelve, talking about the minor prophets, railed against many of the same issues we faced in the 21st century Social injustice, hypocritical ritualism, idolatry and spiritual apathy.

So that's what they railed against, which I mean.

We're not in a desert with little statues, no, but we're in our own desert, essentially with our own statues.

And if we're not careful and don't live lives of repentance and confession, we become the same people.

Something to think about as we lay our head on that pillow tonight.

Thanks 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 desotahillscom, our YouTube channel at Desota Hills Baptist.

For all of our church family, we love you guys.

We're so excited to be back with season two.

We'll see you back here next week, 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 AM.