MID WEEK MOTIVATION - NOURISHMENT "A Season of Building Habits"

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.

Welcome to the Midweek Motivation Podcast for January 8th here at DeSoto Hills Baptist Church.

I'm Mark Lewis and I am David Burgess, and we hope this programming can encourage folks throughout DeSoto County and beyond.

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

So Dave 2025 is officially underway Now.

College and career.

Y'all just got back from CrossCon.

Tell us what CrossCon is All right.

So CrossCon is a collegiate ministry conference designed for 18 to 25-year-olds in that stage of life to challenge them in their faith, to grow them, to utilize them in missions, expose them to missions, expose them to the work that's going on around the world and how they can be a part of it.

And it's had really great speakers this year.

We've had had to got to listen to John Piper and David Platt and Trip Lee, who are really have been key in my spiritual development over the years.

Just looking up to those guys and following their ministry.

That's a heavyweight slate.

For sure it's like a passion conference.

It's not on that scale.

But you know, with stuff like this, me personally, less is more and so it's a little it's toned down.

Shane and Shane was there.

They are just great and they've been around for years and years and so they're still doing their thing, leading worship, and it was just a good conference.

I love it, and so you took.

you actually took some 18 year olds, so we had a few upper level high schoolers.

That went as well, then, correct.

Yes, I love it.

Yeah, we invited them to join us.

It was really great.

How many did we take?

I want to say we had about 16.

Yeah, yeah, wonderful.

So it was a small enough group to really like enjoy getting to know them and spend some time with them too, which is awesome.

Hey, our regular Wednesday night services start back tonight, baby, and we have new classes that are starting.

So I'm going to run through this really quick, dave.

Our general classes are going to be grief share with Ms Sherry Parnell.

Jeffrey King is going to be doing First Corinthians, a study in First Corinthians.

We have a marriage class six gospel commitments that every couple needs to make, and that's with David Rice.

And then our women's study is the Names of God with Barb Smith, and then men is called Reset, living a Grace-Paced Life in a Burnout Culture.

And I'm not exactly sure where those classes are meeting.

We don't have the room numbers quite yet, but we'll have that information.

Most of those will be on the second floor of the new side, correct and if you come in tonight we'll definitely direct you on where those classes meet.

Part of the reason that we don't know that, necessarily, is because we don't know how many people are going to show up for each class, so those classes may have to switch rooms depending on how many people show up and want to take those classes.

So we'll find out tonight exactly where those classes are going to be, but we want you to come be a part of our Wednesday nights here at DeSoto Hills.

We will start our meals at 430 and amazing food.

We do need to know if you're coming.

So if you can always call the church office on Monday and let us know if you're going to be here Wednesday, or you can sign up using the QR code on Sunday mornings in our worship guide, we are going to be taking our Lottie Moon offering on January the 19th.

We just want to make sure everybody is aware that that's coming up.

And then Disciple Now weekend.

David, disciple Now is one of the biggest events that we put on for our students each and every year, and I mentioned with Laura last week that that is moving over to Longview and I told our people, our listeners, it's a good problem to have.

We simply outgrew this building.

So tell people, chad is an amazing speaker.

Tell people who's coming this year and what they need to do to sign up.

Sure, sure, so this year our speaker is Chad Poe.

He's been on the student ministry scene for forever, like when I was a student in middle school.

He was doing camps and stuff, and so he's been doing that.

He is a great speaker, he knows kids well, he knows students and he takes time with the students.

So he, as long as he'll be here, he will be here to invest in our people and he takes time with the students.

So he, as long as he'll be here, he will be here to invest in our people and so he'll make himself available.

He's really good about doing that.

Also, people of the earth will be here and we have kind of developed this cool ministry partnership with them.

They were here a couple of years ago and I've kept in touch with their guys.

They lead worship at camps all over the United States and they love Jesus, they love people.

You know they say they love Jesus, they say they love people, but they also demonstrate it well, making themselves available to students and to us, and they serve us when they come here.

They serve us as staff and volunteers.

They really do a great job.

So I'm excited about them coming this year.

It's going to be like the perfect team and so, yeah, to reference like the growth aspect of the conference.

It's been insane, it's been crazy, yeah.

So I think we're on schedule to have about eight churches involved this year, which we had about five last year.

We were looking at adding three this year, so we're simply just out of space here.

Right, and I told Laura it's not necessarily the MPC, although it is getting snug in the MPC as well.

We don't have breakout space in this building and that's a problem.

Yeah, yeah.

So as many people are coming to break out in so many small groups.

Small group rooms was a challenge last year, but also the breakout spaces.

We have a lot of local pastors coming in that will draw those students into these bigger rooms, and so they're just we're maxed out Absolutely, so it's a great problem to have.

It's going to be an incredible event.

If you're not signed up for it.

You need to sign your students up.

You can do that by going to our website and you can click the link.

We will have our registration open for about another week, so make sure that you take care of that.

We do need to close it eventually just because we need to be able to get our T-shirts and all of our final numbers in.

So if you could help us out and sign up your student this week, that would be great.

Can you tell people the ages, in case they don't know?

Yeah, so the Disciple Now Conference is for kids that have completed or that are currently in 7 grade or twelfth grade.

All right, and so shout out to our college students, who always come and help.

They come back from college, they take the weekend and they help lead small groups.

And that's one of the big things that we have done is to invest in our high school kids so that they're ready to come back to D-NOW and do what the older kids did in their life to invest in the younger kids, and so we've got so many college students that are excited about coming back every year, and so that's a great opportunity to serve.

Yeah, it's going to be a blast.

You can register online again at desotohillscom.

I also wanted to mention that we are walking through the Bible together this year as a church and you can find more information about that on our website.

You can order the book if you want to.

It's called the Daily Walk Bible and you can find that link on Amazon.

You can find the information on Sunday mornings at our Welcome Center.

You can also click the link on our website and get all of that information.

But if you don't want to use that actual book, the Daily Walk Bible, you can use your Bible.

We have listed all the information that you need to walk through that each and every day on the website.

So be sure and use that resource.

We've really championed this challenge as a church this year and we want you to be a part of it.

We do have lots of other events that will be happening in 2025.

If you're curious about all of those events here at DeSoto Hills, you can swing by the church and pick up a complete year calendar.

It'll list most everything through June 2025.

You can also grab one on Sunday mornings at our welcome desk in the Grand Hall.

All right, dave, it is the new year.

What New Year's traditions do you and Han do, or what New Year traditions did you always do growing up, like were you the stay up till midnight kind of guy?

Yes, for sure.

So when I was like middle school and high school, we would go over to my cousin's house on my dad's side.

They're our best friends growing up and we would have fun.

We would build a bonfire.

There'd be so many people over there and so all the like older high school students that were my older cousin's age, they would all come over, we'd have a good time and we would always shoot fireworks.

I was just about to ask for those who don't know Dave and haven't heard his stories in the attic before.

You were a little bit of a pyro guy.

You loved fireworks growing up for sure, yes, and we always.

it always ended up in some kind of you know war with fireworks, which I know is awful.

I'm not condoning this.

okay, students, if you're listening, you know me you don't do this anymore you're just saying it happened it happened, it had to but was there yelling from parents about this?

Or y'all did this outside.

They're all in, like they're inside yeah, my parents weren't there.

It was like my aunt and uncle and they had no idea what was going on.

But we're just shooting each other with fireworks oh my goodness, what is your favorite holiday food or treat?

I meant to ask you that too, um back in the holidays, but I wanted to know favorite holiday food treat would be uh, I mean dressing around.

Thanks, thanksgiving is my favorite.

Is there a Christmas one, though A Christmas one.

Yeah, I mean.

Yeah, we typically do a breakfast feast on Christmas morning with my family.

So that's probably our, our longest standing tradition at the, you know, with the Burgess family Breakfast casserole bacon, the whole nine yards.

Breakfast casserole is like we always go big, we get sausage and eggs and biscuits and gravy and we just have a good old, like country style breakfast buffet every Christmas morning.

Could you guess what?

You know what my favorite dessert ever is?

You know what my favorite dessert is?

It's cake, some form or fashion of cake?

technically, number one is ice cream.

I do like, I do like a la mode, so I like.

If I have some chocolate cake, I definitely I'm gonna want to feel like ice cream.

That's right.

Ice cream is is number one.

During christmas, though, it's chocolate pecan pie like the.

Derby, pecan pie where it's just gooey For sure.

Yeah, that's good.

I love pecan pie and it's the only time of year I eat it.

Really.

Only time of the year, Like if you handed me that in the middle of the summer, I would look at you like you were crazy and say no, you're like this is not ice cream, no, thank you, it's not worth my calories, right, exactly, I'll eat some ice cream this afternoon.

I do not want this, but chocolate pecan pie the best one that you can buy in town is actually at Cracker Barrel, but it wasn't as good this year, so they've changed their co-pack or whoever's making it, because they're not making.

By the way, I don't want to ruin everybody's Christmas and holidays, but Cracker Barrel is not making all those desserts in their kitchen.

No.

It's a bunch of high schoolers back there working people Taken out of the freezer.

They come on a truck from their co-packer plant out of a freezer and they're set on the.

You just made so many people sad.

I'm just telling you, I have kids that work at Cracker Barrel.

Mr Lewis, we don't make any of those.

Those are all shipped in frozen.

So whoever made the chocolate pecan pies at Cracker Barrel for this season, shame on you, because it was not good, all right.

Finally, before we leave 2024, as we are entering 2025, what memories did you make with your family this year?

What stands out as a staple from 2024?

Anything.

What stands out as a staple from 2024?

Anything.

Yeah, so really we have some friends that we're close with, just ministry friends that we've made over the years, and a couple of times during the holidays we made sure to gather, and so there are about five families, five, six families that are involved.

We go over to one of their houses and we just hang out, gather.

Our kids range from a year, less than a year, to 18.

And so, yeah, so there are people and there's one one of us is not me, but one of one of the people in our family, in our group group, uh, friend group, is pregnant, and so I mean, we have a big span of of of ages of our kids, but we're all pretty close to the same age, and so this year I realized how important it was to hang with them and to be close with the people that encourage you to love Jesus, to pursue Jesus and to build community and family.

There's people outside the church that we're with, and then we gathered with several families this year who were in the same season of life, and it was just so encouraging.

They loved us well, we love them well.

It's the perfect community really Christians have is that we love each other no matter what's going on, and so I definitely felt that with spending time with the people that we love this year.

Man.

That's incredible.

Yeah, it was good.

My memory would not be near that spiritual or valuable.

I just needed ice cream.

No, I think the one that sticks out for me is we landed in Orlando during fall break and, if everybody remembers, that's when the big hurricane came through, so we got to ride out a hurricane, which was definitely a memorable experience.

Last week, laura kicked off the new year looking at Philippians.

Today, david's going to talk about getting in the Bible and getting in the Word in a segment that we call the Midweek Moment.

All right.

So midweek moment this week I'm going to throw it back to the Christmas story, or leading up to the Christmas story, where Mary, she's found out she's pregnant and that she doesn't know how it happened.

She doesn't know why.

I mean she believes God, she trusts the angel, she trusts the words of the angel, but she's like, okay, she talks about how humble she is, that she's shocked that God would even consider somebody like her.

So that's where we're throwing it back to a little around the Christmas story.

But I think it will set us our minds where kind of we need to be as we're going through Scripture, as we're reading God's Word together this year, and the importance of that and just the importance of making the effort to equip yourself spiritually, to be equipped Like our people are doing that we're going to church, we're taking these classes, we're sitting in Sunday school and we're engaging with each other, but sometimes life gets busy and sometimes our Bible reading gets on the back burner, right, okay?

So there's this passage of scriptures called Mary's Song of Praise.

It's also known as the Magnificat.

Okay, Okay.

And so the things that this girl says, we know that she's young.

There's speculation that how old she is she's back in the cultural time she's maybe 13, maybe 15, maybe 16, 17.

I don't know.

She's young, okay.

And so she speaks the Magnificat and she's referring to Scripture, and it just shows her wealth of knowledge of God's Word, and I'm going to read it to you.

And let me just say you know we always think of this as like this sweet, beautiful Christmas story.

Can you imagine, if you were to think about this for just a second, the reality of what's happening?

You're pregnant and you shouldn't be pregnant and an angel has come into your face that you have never seen a spiritual angel drop in to your life before.

It's like a terrifying nightmare.

Like you I mean.

This is right, I you know, terrified you know you're worried about our ghosts real when you're 13.

And she's like, oh, wow, an angel.

Yes, so that's where we are.

The angels announced she's gone to see you know, the birth of Jesus was foretold and then so this is her reaction she visits her cousin Elizabeth, and this is her reaction to all this news that's going on, all this new stuff that she's hearing and all the stuff that she's involved with she.

This is her response.

Okay, and she said, and the scripture says this in Luke 1, starting in verse 46.

It says magnifies the Lord and my spirit rejoices in God, my Savior, for he has looked on the humble estate of his servant.

For behold, from now on all generations will call me blessed, for he who is mighty has done great things for me, and holy is his name and his mercy is for those who fear him.

From generation to generation.

He has shown strength with his arm, he has scattered the proud and the thoughts of their hearts.

He has brought down the mighty from their thrones and exalted those of humble estate, and he has filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he has sent away empty.

He has helped his servant, israel, in remembrance of his mercy, as he spoke to our fathers, to Abraham and to his offspring, forever, and Mary remained with her.

So this was right after the announcement, okay?

Well, after the announcement she goes to see her cousin Elizabeth, then they're talking about all the crazy things that God's doing, and then she has this song.

But it's not just her making up words, and this is why Bible study and being equipped is important and why we're talking about it.

This is roughly a 13-year-old to 18-year-old girl.

She knows the Word.

We look at this passage of Scripture and she is referencing some major Old Testament texts.

She's referencing things in Isaiah, she's referencing several passages in the Psalms and in even Micah.

She concludes the statement from Micah 7.20.

And so she is just equipped.

She knows the word, she hears the word, she loves the word, and so she has put her faith.

That's what her faith looked like.

It's in, she's trusting in the word and she's equipped with the word.

And so that's why I'm uh, like this year, you know, reflecting on that around christmas time and then, as we go in, as we're coming off from CrossCon and starting this new year, when we're reading the Bible together, it is our like, holiness, and this is what I've been saying to our students holiness just doesn't happen by accident.

Being equipped just doesn't happen by accident.

It takes intentionality, it takes us making ourselves available to being changed by the word, and so, if we want to be changed by the word, if we want to fall in love with the word, we want to go deeper with God and trusting him and knowing him more, we've got to place ourselves in the way of the word, and so that's why Grant's been harping on reading the Bible together.

That's why we're making a big campaign about it is because we want to be people of the word.

And so Mary, that was Mary, and then there's no like.

We don't have an excuse.

We have the full word of God available to us, and I want our listeners and our people, the people of our congregation, to take hold of this truth that the Word is available and the Word can change us.

Get the Word, get into the Word and let the Word come out of our lives.

It's not going to happen by accident.

You have to put yourself in the way of the Word, and so a couple of things that I want to mention as we prepare to be equipped by the word in 2025 is just some tools that may come, may be handy for our people.

And they're handy for me, all right.

So when I sit down and read the word, there are some questions that I ask myself as I engage scripture.

It's called the sword method of Bible study.

And so when you think about the sword, it has a handle, it has a blade, it has a hilt, and they point in four different directions.

The blade points up to God.

So you ask yourself what does this?

What does this passage say about God?

The handle points down.

What does it say about man?

The, the hilt, points side to side.

One side, you know.

You ask yourself is there a command to obey or an example to follow?

And the other one, you ask yourself is there a sin to avoid?

And then you wrap it up with how do I see the gospel in this passage?

This is called the sword method of study, the sword method of Bible study.

I've been teaching this to our students for years now, and so a lot of them will engage scripture Also.

Man, get serious about your prayer life.

There's another method to kind of keep your prayer life guided.

It's called the Acts Prayer.

It's adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication.

It's called the Acts Prayer.

It's adoration, confession, thanksgiving and supplication.

It's worshiping God, confessing sin, being thankful for what he's doing in your life and then making your request known to him.

And so what I do personally and this is just free of charge, okay I keep a sheet of paper and I fold it.

On the front I say prayers, and inside I have sections like what do I pray for my family?

What do I pray for my friends?

What do I pray for our church?

And like I'll be praying these things and new things every day will come up in my mind when I'm thinking about these things.

And what do I pray for myself?

And every day I see these things and new things come up in my mind when I'm thinking about these things.

And what do I pray for myself?

And every day I see these things and new things come up.

And then I have record and I'm like, oh, my goodness, like God answered this, I love it, like God did this and this is how he did it, and I have a record of it showing that God intervened and listened.

And so those are the two big things that I want to help encourage our congregation to do is to love the word, put yourself in the way of the word and and and get situated in praying and in loving God through prayer and getting to know him through prayer.

Those are the two biggest things, like if if I could give my advice to anybody every day, read your Bible Every day.

Talk to the Lord, it makes a difference.

That's so incredible.

Thanks for listening.

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

You can catch our services online at desotahillscom.

You can also catch our YouTube channel at Desoto Hills Baptist Church.

For all of our church family.

We love you.

We'll see you back here next Wednesday.

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.