Actress Sierra McClain launches new devotional with Glorify app.
Actress Sierra McClain’s Hollywood career has come full-circle with her personal faith journey. In McClain’s role as Grace Ryder on FOX’s 9-1-1: Lone Star, her character left her former life and family to serve a higher calling with Mercy Ships, the global nonprofit delivering free, life-changing medical care to underserved communities via hospital ships.
And now, McClain has partnered with Mercy Ships in her real life to help write and narrate a seven-day devotional series called Moments of Purpose through the Glorify app, which launched on June 23.
“It feels unconventional,” says McClain. “My relationship with God has become something incredibly personal and very real.”
McClain and her family lived in Atlanta in her early years, where her dad worked at a church. “We went [to church] every Wednesday and Sunday, we went to Bible study and then service. It was beautiful, I loved it,” she shares.
Her family soon moved to Los Angeles, where McClain’s career was further established with roles on FOX’s series Empire, Netflix’s Mindhunter, and later her pivotal role as Grace Ryder on FOX’s 9-1-1: Lone Star in 2020. During her time on 9-1-1: Lone Star, McClain says she had a “spiritual epiphany."
“That’s what this whole journey felt like. Certain things took a backseat, and I talk about it in this devotional series. I was working on Lonestar, and everything was moving [professionally]–but spiritually, everything kind of stopped. And I realized, ‘Wait a second? What’s happening?’ And the realization hit that I had been on autopilot.”
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McClain shares it was then that that God started working in her heart as her work began slowing down. “My surroundings became a mirror through my family members and having to sit with myself–to understand what was happening in my soul. I felt stuck.”
McClain soon embarked on a healing journey that “reshaped my entire understanding and perspective and relationship with God.”
She dug deep, finally taking her pain regarding relationships and family to God. I said, ‘God I don’t know where to go from here. I’m upset, I’m in pain.’ And then He would talk to me and give me direction, or things to do in little moments.”
The journey inspired her new devotional series. McClain was approached by Mercy Ships who saw her role as Grace transpire on TV, and quickly dove into creating the devotional.
Photo of Mercy Ships vessel The Global Mercy. Mercy Ships - Photo Credit Jose Pablo
“It poured out of me,” she explains about the writing process. “I had so much to say and so much to pull from. And so much I’m actually living. It was cathartic for me.”
The devotional covers themes of calling, identity, stillness, and choosing God over performance.
“My goal was to make this as real and as personal and as connected as possible. I wanted it to speak to anybody from wherever they are in their life–whether things are spinning, whether nothing’s moving,” says McClain.
With the devotional’s release, McClain is eager for people to experience it.
“I'm excited for people to listen to it and to see how it impacts them. This devotional details my own experience of discovering what my purpose was and what it can be and what it can turn into. The possibilities are much more endless than we realize,” she says, referring to Ephesians 3:20-21: “Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power that is at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, forever and ever. Amen.”