MID WEEK MOTIVATION - April 9, 2025 (Marc Lewis & Laura Ullrich)

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 and Pastor Grant Stegall.

And Laura.

Welcome to the Midweek Motivation Podcast for April, the 9th 2025, here at de soto hills baptist church.

I'm mark lewis with laura ulrich you got to get in the mic, laura ulrich.

Goodness, gracious thought I taught you better than that.

It's been a minute we hope this programming can encourage folks throughout de soto county and beyond.

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

Okay, you have been really really busy and you had some pretty exciting news.

What have you been up to this week?

Well, it's not just this week but the last, like three years, of my life.

I went back to school, which some days I regret that decision.

But I went back to school to get another master's degree in clinical mental health counseling.

It's a very official title and the goal is to pair counseling with children's ministry and kind of do both Offer counseling to the community in a real kind of capacity, not just here and there, but as a licensed professional person.

So I've been in school for a while to get that degree.

I'm still in school, but in order to graduate which I hope to do in the very near future you have to pass this huge comprehensive test.

Over the last three years, of all the things you've learned.

And you have to study, study and study, and it's a big purple book.

It's terrible.

And you have to study, study and study, and it's a big purple book.

It's terrible.

And so I found out just recently that I passed the whole entire test and I don't have to take any of it again.

Congratulations.

So thank you.

That's kind of a big deal.

We're all glad in my family that that's over.

Yeah, and maybe your life can start to slow down a little bit, because you've basically been squeezing this in on all your off time.

Yes to slow down a little bit because you've basically been squeezing this in on all your off time.

So life has been hectic and you have kids and they don't stop.

So it's just.

Everything piles on, and ministry doesn't stop either.

So everything piles on, and I'm bivocational, so I certainly feel you, because it seems like it's a never-ending list of things that you end up having to do.

Okay, so the Lewis household has been trying to do better about family time.

How do y'all handle?

You know how crazy life ends up getting, and so my girls are to the age now and yours are starting to get there where they would rather take an iPad into a room by themselves and sit down and watch something while they eat dinner or anytime.

As soon as they get home from school, they really want to plug into virtual world and they can do it for hours and hours and hours at a time and be just fine, and so weaning them off of that is a huge chore, and I know I know any parent listening to this more than likely is fighting the same battle.

So you feel me.

They get very addicted to the devices and it's very hard.

So we put in a number of tasks that they end up doing through the week and we do give them their their device time on the weekends for sure okay, but we've been heavily limiting that during the school week for the past month I guess, and it has done them a lot of good and it's warming up so we can get outside.

So we're forcing them outside some, which they were not doing during the winter, and we have, for sure, have tried to sit down as a family at the dinner table five nights a week, which, I'm ashamed to say, we did not do for a very long time, just because you're so tired and you finally get it cooked and you just collapse wherever a couch, living room, wherever and eat your dinner and then move on to the next task.

So we've been consciously trying to do that.

How do y'all combat trying to keep your family time together?

And I'm sure you go through the same battles.

It's rough and it's funny that you mentioned iPads.

We don't have time for a whole tech talk about the effect of screen usage on kids, but I was just talking to my counseling friends today about usage and iPads and video games and how it really is like an addiction, like it really like that's what you know, especially with kids.

For sure they crave it, and when they get it it's like oh, I'm getting my fix.

And then when they don't have it, they go through all this withdrawal.

So it really is like an addiction.

You should see what a kid will do at school if you take their device.

I mean they will, and the parents too.

They will go to the ends of the earth.

They will declare war to get a device back.

That's how precious that because it's.

It's almost like you're taking their entire communication whole world away correct yeah, so it's um, it's certainly bad.

Bad news what?

What are some steps?

Do you have any suggestions for people?

um, one thing I suggest is, like y'all have done, you know, set boundaries around it.

You know we're not going to.

You can't have screen time until you do.

You know, X, Y and Z, or you can have more screen time on the weekends than you can during the week.

Another big thing is to filter what your kids have access to on their iPads, iPhones, whatever, and that's really important to kind of, you know, take off the social media aspect of things up to a certain age and even kind of beyond that.

Like I said, there's a whole science behind it.

But basically, just be mindful, and we have a rule at our house that if you have an iPad, you don't go to your bedroom with it.

You stay where we can see you, or you at least stay downstairs, because the kids rooms are upstairs and they're not allowed to take their devices upstairs, and so that helps and at any time it's really more our old Addison, because she's in that age where you know that's important to her and at any time we have the ability and the right to go in and see what she's doing and see who she's talking to and, yes, what they're talking.

Another good thing is to make it to where your kids, before they download an app, they have to ask your permission.

You can set up your iPhone.

I don't know about Android, but you can set up your iPhone to send a message to you before your child downloads an app which is great, downloads an app which is great.

The only caveat there is to make sure that your um, your apps, are not downloaded to your child's ipad, because if they, if you, share an account, you have to be careful of that, right?

so I was gonna ask you if you were an apple house.

I thought you were.

Um, the parental controls for apple.

Now it is a booger to try to set it up because there's so many options, but that's what we have YouTube for.

But the parental controls for Apple are spectacular.

And our girls, I mean, I dare say they're locked down completely.

They can't really do anything.

We do not allow any social apps whatsoever.

Anything.

We do not allow any social apps whatsoever.

We finally let Riley have Pinterest, which Grant had said was a little bit of a social aspect to it, I guess because you can pin and see things that other people have done on there, but it's really more just an idea board.

But they don't have access to any of that stuff and they, like you said, they they have to send a request to download anything, even even to add a contact, and riley's to the age now where obviously she wants to add friends numbers all the time but she can't even add a phone number and receive or send calls or text anyone that we haven't okayed.

So I would tell parents um utilize those tools if you're an.

Apple user, because that can certainly help and you can put time blocks on it, which is also wonderful.

If you don't want them on their phone at 8 o'clock at night, just make it cut off.

They typically will just shrug.

They'll give it a big old sigh, they get mad and they'll throw it, but then two seconds later they'll find something else to do because they just realize well, let's can't do anything with this now.

So, all right, let's talk about the calendar.

Here at church, we have the easter egg hunt coming up um april 13th, which is this sunday at 2 pm.

Do what do people need to know?

Uh, is it going to be in the back by the backyard?

I'm assuming?

uh, assuming it's back here it's gonna be well no, actually it's gonna be weather permitting.

Um, the preschool will be um in the playground area and then in that grass area right next to the playground, and then first through sixth grade will be down at the pavilion okay um hunting in the wooden lots of fun places to hide eggs down there.

Yes, yes, yes, okay, so this Sunday 2 pm, weather permitting, yes, if we have weather issues, you're going to move it indoors.

Indoors, correct.

We'll still have it just indoors, Correct?

Bring an Easter basket.

And I'm assuming we won't know that exactly, but I'm assuming the preschool would probably be downstairs and the children would probably be upstairs.

If that's the case, we want to mention that Easter is coming up on the 20th.

We are having three services 8 am, 9 am, 10.30 am and we will have Sunday school at regular 9 and 10.30 hours.

We also have that Volunteer Appreciation Sunday coming up on April 27th.

We're going to have a donut party, laura, for that one.

And if you haven't already put it on your calendar and I certainly hope you have, vbs is June 2nd through 6th.

Your calendar, and I certainly hope you have vbs, is june 2nd through 6.

We want to make sure everybody's here and not planning anything, uh, on those dates people are still asking when is vbs?

Are you serious?

oh yes, at least once a week I get a text.

I still love you, though, if you're out there and you're like oh man, I sent laura text yesterday.

I still love you, it's okay do we have a banner scrolling about that on sunday mornings?

If not, I need to make one, I don't know If not let's get on that.

I'll work on that All right Table topics, all right.

All right, we were talking about family time at the table and our girls do enjoy talking table topics at the table.

So if you're sitting there wondering what you can do, with your children staring angrily at you across the table, because you've taken their device and they can't watch Full House instead of actually talking to you, table topics typically will turn the tide.

You ask a couple of interesting questions and they will get rolling.

We ended up asking about the favorite sport the other day.

Yes.

And they were, of course, talking the major stuff and football, all of that stuff, and they looked over at me and I said roller derby, do you remember it?

No, Roller derby no, yes.

This was skating.

It was really the 70s and 80s, but this is where they would get on roller skates and skate around the track.

And you had to get so many laps and you could literally take out violently people on the other team.

And so you would have these people on roller skates and it was imagine like hockey fights happening on the roller skate rink.

And I remember, I told my girls, I remember this one dude, this was like an ESPN throwback channel or something I remember watching.

And this dude had a crazy hair, like I mean, like the doc.

On Back to the Future, yes, yes, hair.

Imagine this thing.

And this guy is just, he's probably six foot five, huge, towering, and he would just be sauntering around and then all of a sudden, he would just grab a guy by the head, throw him in the middle and then run after a chair and a table and then pick up tables and chairs in the middle and bash.

I'm telling you, it would just throw you completely off and you'd be like, oh my god is it like wrestling, like old school wrestling on roller skates?

yeah, but but they were, but they were, they would come out pretty pretty beat up and and this sport, this sport still exists to some.

I remember, um it's a sport like on tv yes, like televised On like sport networks.

Oh my God.

Yes, and I remember I've seen movies and TV shows before where they reference the characters playing this sport, roller jam, crazy, insane, anyway.

All that to say, this came up at Table Topics and of course my girls were like fascinated about this sport they've never heard of before.

These are the kinds of things that can come up with your family at mealtime.

See, you don't have to talk about math class.

They don't want to talk about that with you.

But roller derby they certainly will talk about.

All right, what's the most unlikely place you've ever made a friend?

and I racked my brain and I really couldn't think of a good answer, but I wanted to see if you had one by well, you know, way back long ago in the dark ages, you know I used to ice skate and like competitively and I made a friend at the ice rink, like several friends.

So that would be kind of an unlike like real friends.

Like I still remember their names, amber and Katie, and I made them at the ice rink.

It's been many, many years, so I'm ashamed to say that I could not remember their names.

Now, if I had to.

But, I do remember in high school, when I moved here to South Haven, my senior year, meeting several foreign exchange students and looking back on it now, I think it's because they felt like a fish out of water being here, and I did too, because if you're dropped into a high school the size of South Haven which this is before DeSoto Central, when South Haven was a huge mega school so to be dropped into that kind of school environment, your senior year, when you're supposed to know everybody and at least know where to walk in on the first day of school and stand, yeah, because you're a senior, you know nothing.

So I think, looking back on it, I think I probably befriended some of those foreign exchange students because I felt the same way they did and I was like, well, you know, these guys don't know anything either.

So I think that's probably an unlikely friend experience.

What's your favorite way to spend time outside?

Now I put my answers there, there, so don't you read mine.

All right, I'm not gonna read your answer.

Um, it's a good answer, though I would say, okay, this is gonna sound.

Really I don't know if it's my favorite, but it's kind of a bizarre thing.

Um, I like to like pull the weeds out of my flower bed oh come on it's true, like I find that very like therapeutic.

I don't know.

I just I don't know.

I feel like I'm doing something good for my flower bed, like you know, but when there gets to be too many, it's a little overwhelming yes, I have to.

I hate doing that.

Now I do like taking like a trimmer to, like a shaper to the bushes and stuff right.

Okay, kind of the same thing but going down on the ground and pulling weed by weed is monotonous, well it gets a little tight, like if there's not too many.

So but to like an activity other than that, um man, I guess doing anything with my kids outside, and we like to play basketball, we like to go for walks, we like to.

My kids like to chalk the house you know where you take chalk and you paint the bricks and it's still there.

Addison probably did that, I don't know six months ago and it is still on the brick yes so I don't know if that's good or bad but keelan likes to take it to anything the, the, the house, the fence, any of.

Oh, the fence is a great idea.

Yes, yes.

Okay, so I put on here because you were looking bike riding and I've seen several church members.

In fact I saw two yesterday in a neighborhood that I had never ridden in before, about three miles from here.

So if you see me out in town riding, I love and I've said it on here before before I love the fact that south haven has become very outdoor friendly and they have been putting in the bike trails all the way across town and eventually they're going to get all the way from here to the hospital.

So that's nice they're moving that direction.

Okay and uh, it's just odd.

I ran into two different church members, one putting out their garbage can and some others sitting in a swing, and of course they see me pass on a bike with my helmet on and a look of total confusion.

And then hey, but like I don't slam the brakes on, I just kind of wave as I'm going, you know, 17 miles an hour by them.

Now, are you on your electric bike, or are you on like a real?

I do have an electric bike, or are you on like a real?

I do have an electric bike and that's typically what I'm riding across town, um, but I'm still doing pedal power.

So the way it works is, you will put it on.

I'll typically either run on zero assist or assist level, one which is just barely helping you so if you're like going up a hill, if you've tried to climb a hill on a bike before it is challenging, so this just takes about half of the difficult part away from you, so you're still getting a workout, but it's more enjoyable, because if you can just pedal as if you were on flat land all the time, biking is more fun.

Sure, so that's what you'll see me all over town.

I love riding all the way over Central Park into Greenbrook even over to State Line Road.

I'll ride all of those areas.

Okay, I'm eagerly awaiting for them to get trails all the way over to 51, because I actually love Highway 51, which a lot of people are like there's nothing over there, but there's nothing over there, but there's, my favorite music shop is over there.

Like there's.

There's lots of things that I like to do over on that side of town.

So bike riding you want to talk about melting stress away?

Just riding out in the city of South Haven definitely melts my stress away.

What is?

What's an everyday problem that bothers you?

Don't look at my answer.

I should not have written.

You should not have.

I've never given you a script before.

I have not given your answers to anyone.

All right, so I'm not going to tell your answer.

I'm going to come up with my own Everyday problem that bothers me.

Oh, oh.

I drive a lot now, since I have to travel to memphis for school and for um practical hours and all this.

And so, as I'm driving um a problem that bothers me people wait to the last minute to merge over into your lane, like I don't understand.

Why are you?

You know you have to get over why are you waiting till the very last second to get over into my lane?

I really feel, like most people, if I ask this question to most people, it's going to involve the road, because I feel like even us sweet Christians get an awful lot of road rage and it's just easy to do in the city of South Haven and, as it would happen, my answer is a road rager as well.

No one in South Haven uses turn signals anymore, and it drives me absolutely do you use your turn signal all the time?

even when I'm just taking a sharp curve in the neighborhood, I inadvertently turn.

You know, in deer chase they had that really hard left turn and every time I put a blinker on just instinctively because you're turning so far left you're like I'm taking.

It drives me crazy the amount of people that just do not use any sort of turn signal whatsoever, and I don't understand that.

It's troubling, it's a real situation.

All right, that is Table Topics.

All right, that is table topics.

Uh, you can find all of these table topics on amazon, everyone's favorite online shop.

Uh, if you just search table topics, they're going to come in like a clear acrylic cube.

Have you ever bought the table topic cubes before?

there's tons of them not that particular kind we bought.

Bought others though.

You can find them in card box form and stuff too.

But anyway, table Topics definitely check those out with your family.

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

All right.

So for our devotion for today I wanted to look at kind of the reading that we've had for the week and with our Daily Walk devotional Bible.

If you don't have one, you should pick one up or you can order it from the Amazon.

But for today's reading it's in 2 Kings, chapter 5, and it's a very familiar story about an army commander that had leprosy, named Naaman.

2 Kings 5 · chapter mention

Most of you have heard this story before, but today I want to focus on a very minor, or seemingly minor, character in the story and we're only going to look at like the first five verses of the story.

The story is all throughout chapter five and you know, as we all know, it ends with Naaman being healed of his leprosy through the prophet Elisha.

But I wanted to look at this seemingly minor character, so I'm going to read 2 Kings 5, verses 1 through 5.

2 Kings 5:1–5

It says king of Aram.

He was a great man in the sight of his master and highly regarded because through him the Lord had given victory to Aram.

He was a valiant soldier but he had leprosy.

Now bands from Aram had gone out and had taken captive a young girl from Israel and she served Naaman's wife.

She said to her mistress.

If only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria.

She said to her mistress if only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy.

Naaman went to his master and told him what the girl from Israel had said by all means go.

The king of Aram replied I will send a letter to the king of Israel.

So Naaman left, taking with him 10 talents of silver, 6,000 shekels of gold and 10 sets of clothing.

The character I want to highlight is this girl, this young girl from Israel.

I have studied this story before, I've taught it to kids multiple times, but I've never really looked at this young girl.

Did you even know, mark, that she existed in the story?

No, I've never even thought about it.

Yeah, so no, who does right?

It's Naaman and the king and elijah.

that's the main character of the story it's background, background character that you'd forget about right immediately right.

So, but I think we can learn from her, and I was.

When I was studying this passage.

Um, there was a little devotional excerpt from a different bible that I have where priscilla shire makes note of this young girl, and so I just want to kind of highlight what she said and add a little bit to it.

So if you look at verse two, where the kind of the young girl comes around, she has been taken captive from Israel.

So we know that.

You know, israel and the Israelites are God's chosen people throughout the Old Testament and she, the king of Aram, had gone in, had captured some folks in Israel and had taken this young girl from her home, had taken her away from everything that she knew, from the comfort of home, and placed her in Naaman's house to be the servant to Naaman's wife.

We don't know anything about this girl.

We don't know her name, we don't know what she looked like.

We don't know anything about this girl.

We don't know her name, we don't know what she looked like, we don't know how old she was, we know nothing about her other than she was Israelite and she was a servant to Naaman's wife.

So what is interesting about this is the girl has a very important role to play because she introduces Naaman to the idea that he can be healed from his leprosy.

She gathers all her wits about her and goes to her mistress and says if only my master would see the prophet who is in Samaria, he would cure him of his leprosy.

This girl saw Naaman's need and had the boldness to speak up, because she knew who could cure him.

She knew that Elijah, with the power of God, the power of the Holy Spirit, could come in and could cure Naaman of his leprosy.

Had she had not spoken up, I often wonder what would have happened.

You know, would Elijah still have been able to cure Naaman of his leprosy?

You know?

Could God still have orchestrated that?

Of course he could have, because he's God and God can do everything.

But God used this seemingly minor character in the story to introduce Naaman to the idea of healing.

And I wanted to focus on her because I wanted us to be reminded today of two things.

One is, sometimes we are in uncomfortable situations.

We find ourselves either in a situation that we didn't plan for, or a situation that maybe we planned for, but the details haven't turned out quite like we wanted them to, or we are just completely like a fish out of water and we don't know up from down, kind of like Mark was saying about his senior year of high school.

And even in those moments, just like with this girl, god can use us, because God has orchestrated for these moments to happen.

It's nothing outside of his control, it's not outside of his control, it's not outside of his will.

It was very much the sovereignty of God that put this girl in to Naaman's household for such a time as this.

And the second thing I wanted to look at was the confidence that this girl had.

And once again, we don't know how old this girl is, only that she's a young girl from Israel, she's an Israelite, she's seen, she's heard of the miracles of God and she knows that God is very capable and able to heal Naaman from his leprosy if Naaman will step out in faith and trust what she has to say.

And so she takes all of her confidence, goes to Naaman's wife and explains the situation to her.

And I thought, man, you know what confidence does that take when you know nothing about where you are?

But yet you are so confident in who God is and in what God can do that you can step out for a minute and tell someone else about how God is working and how powerful God is and can be in their life.

And so I think for us just to remember that when we find ourselves in uncomfortable situations or we find ourselves in situations that we didn't plan for, that we need to go back to God and say, okay, god, here I am, this is not what I planned, but maybe this is what you've planned, and so how do you want to use me in this situation?

And then be confident to say, okay, god, this is how you want to use me.

Well, I am going to trust you and I'm going to step out and be confident in what you've asked me to do, because this poor girl she didn't have a clue about Naaman and his family, but she knew about God and the sovereignty of God and what God was able to do.

And, as we know the story ends, naaman is healed of his leprosy through the prophet Elijah and, most importantly, through the workings of God.

And so I think that just focusing for a minute on this minor character in the story reminds us that when we're uncomfortable, we need to seek God.

When we're trying to figure out what God wants us to do.

We need to ask Him and then act confidently and have courage, because God has asked us to do something hard.

Thank you so much, laura.

That was amazing.

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 or our YouTube channel, which is at Desoto Hills Baptist Church For all of our church family.

We love you so much.

We will see you back here next Wednesday morning for the podcast 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 1030 am.