Jesus knows His people personally and leads them faithfully.
Show the passage
1“Truly I tell you, anyone who doesn’t enter the sheep pen by the gate but climbs in some other way is a thief and a robber.
2The one who enters by the gate is the shepherd of the sheep.
3The gatekeeper opens it for him, and the sheep hear his voice. He calls his own sheep by name and leads them out.
4When he has brought all his own outside, he goes ahead of them. The sheep follow him because they know his voice.
5They will never follow a stranger; instead they will run away from him, because they don’t know the voice of strangers.”
6 Jesus gave them this figure of speech, but they did not understand what he was telling them.
7 Jesus said again, “Truly I tell you, I am the gate for the sheep.
8All who came before me are thieves and robbers, but the sheep didn’t listen to them.
9I am the gate. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved and will come in and go out and find pasture.
10A thief comes only to steal and kill and destroy. I have come so that they may have life and have it in abundance.
11“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.
12The hired hand, since he is not the shepherd and doesn’t own the sheep, leaves them and runs away when he sees a wolf coming. The wolf then snatches and scatters them.
13This happens because he is a hired hand and doesn’t care about the sheep.
14“I am the good shepherd. I know my own, and my own know me,
15just as the Father knows me, and I know the Father. I lay down my life for the sheep.
16But I have other sheep that are not from this sheep pen; I must bring them also, and they will listen to my voice. Then there will be one flock, one shepherd.
17This is why the Father loves me, because I lay down my life so that I may take it up again.
18No one takes it from me, but I lay it down on my own. I have the right to lay it down, and I have the right to take it up again. I have received this command from my Father.”
The Good Shepherd lays down His life for His sheep.
Discussion questions
What makes it hard to recognize God’s voice?
When have you experienced God’s guidance?
What does trusting the Good Shepherd look like this week?
Challenge
Spend ten quiet minutes each day listening in prayer before speaking.
Other weeks
01
The Light Has Come
John 1:1–18 CSB
Jesus isn’t just a great teacher—He’s God who entered our world.
Show the passage
1 In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.
2 He was with God in the beginning.
3 All things were created through him, and apart from him not one thing was created that has been created.
4 In him was life, and that life was the light of men.
5 That light shines in the darkness, and yet the darkness did not overcome it.
6 There was a man sent from God whose name was John.
7 He came as a witness to testify about the light, so that all might believe through him.
8 He was not the light, but he came to testify about the light.
9 The true light that gives light to everyone was coming into the world.
10 He was in the world, and the world was created through him, and yet the world did not recognize him.
11 He came to his own, and his own people did not receive him.
12 But to all who did receive him, he gave them the right to be children of God, to those who believe in his name,
13 who were born, not of natural descent, or of the will of the flesh, or of the will of man, but of God.
14 The Word became flesh and dwelt among us. We observed his glory, the glory as the one and only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.
15 (John testified concerning him and exclaimed, “This was the one of whom I said, ‘The one coming after me ranks ahead of me, because he existed before me.’”)
16 Indeed, we have all received grace upon grace from his fullness,
17 for the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.
18 No one has ever seen God. The one and only Son, who is himself God and is at the Father’s side—he has revealed him.
No preparation guide was made for this week.
Key points and questions
Key points
Jesus existed before creation.
He is the Word made flesh.
Light shines in darkness, and darkness cannot overcome it.
Discussion questions
When have you experienced “darkness” in your life?
Why do you think John starts his Gospel this way instead of with Jesus’ birth?
What does it mean that Jesus is full of grace and truth?
Challenge
Spend five minutes each day reading John 1:1–18 and ask God to reveal more of who Jesus is.
02
Empty Jars, New Wine
John 2:1–12 CSB
Jesus transforms ordinary lives into something extraordinary.
Show the passage
1 On the third day a wedding took place in Cana of Galilee. Jesus’s mother was there,
2 and Jesus and his disciples were invited to the wedding as well.
3 When the wine ran out, Jesus’s mother told him, “They don’t have any wine.”
4“What has this concern of yours to do with me, woman?” Jesus asked. “My hour has not yet come.”
5 “Do whatever he tells you,” his mother told the servants.
6 Now six stone water jars had been set there for Jewish purification. Each contained twenty or thirty gallons.
7“Fill the jars with water,” Jesus told them. So they filled them to the brim.
8 Then he said to them, “Now draw some out and take it to the headwaiter.” And they did.
9 When the headwaiter tasted the water (after it had become wine), he did not know where it came from—though the servants who had drawn the water knew. He called the groom
10 and told him, “Everyone sets out the fine wine first, then, after people are drunk, the inferior. But you have kept the fine wine until now.”
11 Jesus did this, the first of his signs, in Cana of Galilee. He revealed his glory, and his disciples believed in him.
12 After this, he went down to Capernaum, together with his mother, his brothers, and his disciples, and they stayed there only a few days.
No preparation guide was made for this week.
Key points and questions
Key points
Jesus’ first miracle reveals His glory.
He brings abundance where there was emptiness.
His timing is always intentional.
Discussion questions
Where do you feel “empty” right now?
Why do you think Jesus chose this as His first miracle?
Where have you seen God provide in unexpected ways?
Challenge
Pray specifically for one area where you need Jesus to bring renewal.
03
Born Again
John 3:1–21 CSB
Following Jesus isn’t about becoming better—it’s about becoming new.
Show the passage
1 There was a man from the Pharisees named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews.
2 This man came to him at night and said, “Rabbi, we know that you are a teacher who has come from God, for no one could perform these signs you do unless God were with him.”
3 Jesus replied, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”
4 “How can anyone be born when he is old?” Nicodemus asked him. “Can he enter his mother’s womb a second time and be born?”
5 Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, unless someone is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.
6Whatever is born of the flesh is flesh, and whatever is born of the Spirit is spirit.
7Do not be amazed that I told you that you must be born again.
8The wind blows where it pleases, and you hear its sound, but you don’t know where it comes from or where it is going. So it is with everyone born of the Spirit.”
9 “How can these things be?” asked Nicodemus.
10“Are you a teacher of Israel and don’t know these things?” Jesus replied.
11“Truly I tell you, we speak what we know and we testify to what we have seen, but you do not accept our testimony.
12If I have told you about earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you about heavenly things?
13No one has ascended into heaven except the one who descended from heaven —the Son of Man.
14“Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up,
15so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
16For God loved the world in this way: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life.
17For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
18Anyone who believes in him is not condemned, but anyone who does not believe is already condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God.
19This is the judgment: The light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than the light because their deeds were evil.
20For everyone who does evil hates the light and avoids it, so that his deeds may not be exposed.
21But anyone who lives by the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be shown to be accomplished by God.”
Nicodemus knew religion but still needed new birth.
Salvation is God’s work, not ours.
God’s love is the motivation behind salvation.
Discussion questions
What’s the difference between religion and a relationship with Jesus?
Why do people struggle with the idea of needing new birth?
How has God’s love changed your life?
Challenge
Memorize John 3:16 or John 3:17.
04
Living Water
John 4:1–30; 39–42 CSB
Jesus satisfies the deepest thirst in every person.
Show the passage
1 When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John
2 (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were),
3 he left Judea and went again to Galilee.
4 He had to travel through Samaria;
5 so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property that Jacob had given his son Joseph.
6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon.
7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water. “Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her,
8 because his disciples had gone into town to buy food.
9 “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.
10 Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.”
11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’?
12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”
13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again.
14But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well of water springing up in him for eternal life.”
15 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”
16“Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.”
17 “I don’t have a husband,” she answered. “You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said.
18“For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”
19 “Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet.
20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”
21 Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem.
22You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews.
23But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him.
24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”
25 The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”
26 Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”
27 Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”
28 Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the people,
29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?”
30 They left the town and made their way to him.
…
39 Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of what the woman said when she testified, “He told me everything I ever did.”
40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days.
41 Many more believed because of what he said.
42 And they told the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, since we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.”
A transformed life naturally points others to Him.
Discussion questions
What are people chasing today to satisfy their souls?
Why do you think Jesus chose the Samaritan woman?
Who first introduced you to Jesus?
Challenge
Share your faith story with one person this week.
05
Do You Want to Get Well?
John 5:1–17 CSB
Jesus invites us to move beyond excuses into healing.
Show the passage
1 After this, a Jewish festival took place, and Jesus went up to Jerusalem.
2 By the Sheep Gate in Jerusalem there is a pool, called Bethesda in Aramaic, which has five colonnades.
3 Within these lay a large number of the disabled—blind, lame, and paralyzed.
5 One man was there who had been disabled for thirty-eight years.
6 When Jesus saw him lying there and realized he had already been there a long time, he said to him, “Do you want to get well?”
7 “Sir,” the disabled man answered, “I have no one to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I’m coming, someone goes down ahead of me.”
8“Get up,” Jesus told him, “pick up your mat and walk.”
9 Instantly the man got well, picked up his mat, and started to walk. Now that day was the Sabbath,
10 and so the Jews said to the man who had been healed, “This is the Sabbath. The law prohibits you from picking up your mat.”
11 He replied, “The man who made me well told me, ‘Pick up your mat and walk.’”
12 “Who is this man who told you, ‘Pick up your mat and walk’?” they asked.
13 But the man who was healed did not know who it was, because Jesus had slipped away into the crowd that was there.
14 After this, Jesus found him in the temple and said to him, “See, you are well. Do not sin anymore, so that something worse doesn’t happen to you.”
15 The man went and reported to the Jews that it was Jesus who had made him well.
16 Therefore, the Jews began persecuting Jesus because he was doing these things on the Sabbath.
17 Jesus responded to them, “My Father is still working, and I am working also.”
What is one area where Jesus is asking you to trust Him?
Challenge
Take one practical step you’ve been avoiding.
06
The Bread of Life
John 6:25–40 CSB
Only Jesus truly satisfies.
Show the passage
25 When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?”
26 Jesus answered, “Truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate the loaves and were filled.
27Don’t work for the food that perishes but for the food that lasts for eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set his seal of approval on him.”
28 “What can we do to perform the works of God?” they asked.
29 Jesus replied, “This is the work of God—that you believe in the one he has sent.”
30 “What sign, then, are you going to do so that we may see and believe you?” they asked. “What are you going to perform?
31 Our ancestors ate the manna in the wilderness, just as it is written: He gave them bread from heaven to eat.”
32 Jesus said to them, “Truly I tell you, Moses didn’t give you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
33For the bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
34 Then they said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”
35“I am the bread of life,” Jesus told them. “No one who comes to me will ever be hungry, and no one who believes in me will ever be thirsty again.
36But as I told you, you’ve seen me, and yet you do not believe.
37Everyone the Father gives me will come to me, and the one who comes to me I will never cast out.
38For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of him who sent me.
39This is the will of him who sent me: that I should lose none of those he has given me but should raise them up on the last day.
40For this is the will of my Father: that everyone who sees the Son and believes in him will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.”
What does it look like to feed your soul instead of just your schedule?
Challenge
Replace fifteen minutes of social media with Scripture and prayer each day.
08
The Resurrection and the Life
John 11:17–44 CSB
Jesus has power over death, fear, and hopelessness.
Show the passage
17 When Jesus arrived, he found that Lazarus had already been in the tomb four days.
18 Bethany was near Jerusalem (less than two miles away).
19 Many of the Jews had come to Martha and Mary to comfort them about their brother.
20 As soon as Martha heard that Jesus was coming, she went to meet him, but Mary remained seated in the house.
21 Then Martha said to Jesus, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died.
22 Yet even now I know that whatever you ask from God, God will give you.”
23“Your brother will rise again,” Jesus told her.
24 Martha said to him, “I know that he will rise again in the resurrection at the last day.”
25 Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. The one who believes in me, even if he dies, will live.
26Everyone who lives and believes in me will never die. Do you believe this?”
27 “Yes, Lord,” she told him, “I believe you are the Messiah, the Son of God, who comes into the world.”
28 Having said this, she went back and called her sister Mary, saying in private, “The Teacher is here and is calling for you.”
29 As soon as Mary heard this, she got up quickly and went to him.
30 Jesus had not yet come into the village but was still in the place where Martha had met him.
31 The Jews who were with her in the house consoling her saw that Mary got up quickly and went out. They followed her, supposing that she was going to the tomb to cry there.
32 As soon as Mary came to where Jesus was and saw him, she fell at his feet and told him, “Lord, if you had been here, my brother wouldn’t have died!”
33 When Jesus saw her crying, and the Jews who had come with her crying, he was deeply moved in his spirit and troubled.
34“Where have you put him?” he asked. “Lord,” they told him, “come and see.”
35 Jesus wept.
36 So the Jews said, “See how he loved him!”
37 But some of them said, “Couldn’t he who opened the blind man’s eyes also have kept this man from dying?”
38 Then Jesus, deeply moved again, came to the tomb. It was a cave, and a stone was lying against it.
39“Remove the stone,” Jesus said. Martha, the dead man’s sister, told him, “Lord, there is already a stench because he has been dead four days.”
40 Jesus said to her, “Didn’t I tell you that if you believed you would see the glory of God?”
41 So they removed the stone. Then Jesus raised his eyes and said, “Father, I thank you that you heard me.
42I know that you always hear me, but because of the crowd standing here I said this, so that they may believe you sent me.”
43 After he said this, he shouted with a loud voice, “Lazarus, come out!”
44 The dead man came out bound hand and foot with linen strips and with his face wrapped in a cloth. Jesus said to them, “Unwrap him and let him go.”