Confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous person is powerful and effective.
JAMES 5:16
In the mountains, as in most wild places, predators stalk their prey. The Cooper’s hawk, for instance, will eat smaller, medium-sized birds. Cooper’s hawks are fierce-looking raptors, with impressive talons and beaks. A single bird such as a jay or a flicker or a mourning dove—especially a young one—seems like it would be easy pickings for the larger bird. But jays are smarter than that. If a Cooper’s hawk starts skulking around, hoping to snag a tender young fledgling, the smaller birds don’t scatter in alarm. Rather, they give the alarm, shrieking at the hawk with raucous voices. They harass it relentlessly. Eventually, the hawk may leave, looking for more vulnerable prey.
We might learn something from those jays. First Peter 5 tells us that our enemy the devil is also “looking for someone to devour” (v. 8). Sometimes as Christians, we are afraid to admit that we’re in spiritual trouble. It feels less risky to put on our Sunday faces and pretend that everything is fine. But how can our brothers and sisters—our spiritual “nest mates”—help us if they don’t know we need it? Fellowship with trusted believers can offer a lifeline of prayer and encouragement. Together we can make noise in prayer and praise, fighting together against temptation and spiritual attacks.
Thankfully, it is not all up to us. In Matthew 18:20, Jesus said, “Where two or three gather in my name, there am I with them.” God has promised both to hear us and to be with us.