Category: Devotionals

Leading a circle · 1 Peter 5:2

Maybe you’ve been asked to lead a group and it made your stomach drop a little. Lead? You’re not a teacher. You don’t have the answers. You’re barely keeping your own faith fed some weeks. How are you supposed to lead anyone?

Here’s a sentence that might set you free. Peter tells the leaders of the churches exactly what the job is:

Be shepherds of God’s flock that is under your care, watching over them — not because you must, but because you are willing.1 Peter 5:2

Shepherds. Not CEOs. Not professors. Not event planners. And a shepherd’s whole job is embarrassingly simple: know where the sheep are, and go get the one that wandered off. That’s it. Leading a small group is not primarily about having the best insight on the passage. It’s about caring whether people are okay.

Which means you’re probably more qualified than you think. If you can notice that someone seemed off tonight — quieter than usual, laughing a beat late, first to leave — you can shepherd. If you can send a text on Thursday that says “hey, you crossed my mind, how are you really?” — you can shepherd. The skill isn’t theological. It’s attention.

The hard part isn’t the teaching. It’s the noticing. In every group there’s a quiet member slowly slipping toward the back row. They still come, mostly. They don’t say much. And because they’re not a problem, they’re easy to miss — right up until the week they stop coming, and no one can quite say when it started. Good shepherding is catching that drift early, while it’s still just a quiet week and not a goodbye.

Because that’s what leading really is. Not standing at the front with answers — standing beside people and refusing to let them slip through unseen. The best thing you will ever do for your group is not a brilliant study. It’s being the person who noticed, and cared enough to reach out.

You don’t have to have it all together to do that. You just have to be willing. Peter says that’s the whole job.

Walking Partners · Mark 6:7

It’s a short verse, easy to skim past: “Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two” (Mark 6:7). Two by two. Such a small detail that we read right over it. But stop on it for a second, because it tells you how Jesus thinks about the whole Christian life.

He had twelve disciples and a lot of ground to cover. If the goal were efficiency, he’d have sent them out one by one — twelve towns at once instead of six. But Jesus wasn’t optimizing for reach. He paired them. He was willing to cover half as much ground so that no one would go alone.

Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two.Mark 6:7

Why? Not because the mission was too big for one person — because we are. Faith held solo tends to drift. Courage held solo tends to fail. Joy held solo tends to leak out somewhere on the road. We were built to go two by two: someone to remind you what’s true on the day you can’t remember it yourself.

You see it everywhere once you start looking. Moses had Aaron. Ruth had Naomi. Paul had Barnabas, then Timothy, then Silas. Even Jesus, who needed nothing, pulled three friends closer in the garden and asked them to stay awake with him. The life of faith is not a solo climb. It’s a walk, with someone beside you.

Most of us know this and still end up walking alone. Not on purpose — life just crowds in. The group meets every other week, which is lovely, but Tuesday at 2 p.m. when the bad news comes, no one’s in the room. The gap between “I have a church” and “someone actually knows how I’m doing” is where a lot of quiet drifting happens.

The difference between a faith that lasts and a faith that fades is rarely a matter of information. It’s usually a matter of company — someone who knew, who stayed, who kept walking with you when it would have been easier to walk alone. Jesus never sent them out alone. He’s not going to start with you.

Prayer · Romans 8:26

There are prayers that come easily — the grace before dinner, the quick thanks when the test comes back fine. And then there are the other kinds. The ones you can’t get out. The seasons when you sit down to pray and nothing comes but a long exhale.

If you’ve been there, Romans 8 has a line for you:

The Spirit helps us in our weakness. We do not know what we ought to pray for, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us through wordless groans.Romans 8:26

Read that slowly. Paul doesn’t say the mature Christian always knows what to pray. He says none of us do — “we do not know what we ought to pray for.” Not the pastor, not the person three rows up who always sounds so sure. The not-knowing isn’t a sign you’re failing at prayer. It’s the normal condition of being human in front of God.

And into that not-knowing, the Spirit doesn’t hand you a script. He prays for you. “Wordless groans” — the kind of sound you make when the grief is too big for sentences. God is not waiting on the far side of the right words. He is already in the room, already praying, already carrying what you can’t lift.

Which means the pressure is off. You don’t have to compose something worthy. You don’t have to fix your own heart before you’re allowed to bring it. You just have to show up — even empty, even mute — and let the Spirit do what he is already doing.

That’s harder alone, though. When you can’t find the words, the last thing you usually do is tell anyone. You go quiet. You carry it by yourself — on the drive to work, at 2 a.m., in the pew with a fixed smile. The weight doesn’t lift; it just goes unwitnessed.

This is exactly what a circle is for. Not a stage. Not a testimony you have to polish. Just a few people who have agreed to carry each other’s names to God. When the words won’t come, you don’t have to explain why — you just have to let them in. And somewhere across town, someone stops, and prays the words you couldn’t.

So if you’re in one of those seasons, here’s your permission slip: you don’t have to have the words. Sit down anyway. Breathe. Let the groan be the prayer. And then, if you’re brave enough for one small thing, let someone else know you’re there — and let them pray you the rest of the way home.