Unlocked: Daily Devotions for Teens

READ: JOHN 8:1-11; ROMANS 3:23-24; 8:1 Unable to speak, the woman felt fear pulse through her as heavy hands pushed her toward the temple. “We’ll see what the teacher has to say about this,” one of the religious leaders jeered. Despite the scorching heat and the sun shining in her eyes, the woman was cold. Not like this, she thought. A foolish mistake, and I’m paying for it with my life. Too shock...

READ: ROMANS 6:1-23; 8:1, 11 There’s nothing worse than feeling stuck in an endless cycle of sin. These sin cycles steal our life, slowly consuming us until we don’t even recognize ourselves. Pornography is a sin that is very difficult to give up, feeding the cycle of frustration and self-hatred. Thankfully, there is one who can break that cycle. Jesus helps you break the power of pornography, or...

READ: GENESIS 1:26-27; 2:24; MATTHEW 5:27-30; 6:22-24 Most people do not realize how harmful pornography is. For many, porn consumption is considered a normal part of adolescence, and some say that it’s a healthy expression of sexuality. And God wants us to be healthy, right? Well, yes, He does. And that’s exactly why He warns us in the Bible that lust, in any context, is a sin. And sin is damagin...

READ: LUKE 15:11-32; JOHN 8:30-36 The walls of Andrew’s cell were closing in on him. Only this time, it was no figure of speech. He had heard of other prisoners being crushed by their prison cells, and it terrified him. Since he was a boy, Andrew had never known anything but the Prison of Self. He had been born there, along with everyone else who comes into this world. From ancient times, this dun...

READ: MATTHEW 11:28-30; ROMANS 8:1-2; GALATIANS 5:1 Have you ever felt weighed down by this world? Like you were a slave to the sin and pain of the past? I’ve been down that road too. And all it led to was anxiety and exhaustion, the exact opposite of what God wants for His people. Every day, I’d wake up fearful, feeling as if I still hadn’t been cleansed from some sin in my life—dragging the past...

READ: COLOSSIANS 2:6-10; 1 CORINTHIANS 2:12-16; 1 JOHN 4:1-6 One summer, I was a bored 13-year-old who needed something to do. So, I decided to offer piano lessons at my family’s home. After all, I’d had almost two years of piano instruction myself—though I wasn’t taking lessons or even practicing much at the time. My grandmother had given us her out-of-tune piano; I could teach kids to play on th...

READ: PROVERBS 27:17; 1 THESSALONIANS 5:10-18; HEBREWS 10:24-25; 1 JOHN 1:7 We serve an incredibly intentional God. Even though God alone can satisfy our needs, He still designed us to be in Christ-centered community. The most natural place to seek that community is in a local church. But what if the youth group feels exclusive or there aren’t many teens in the congregation? As a teen, church was...

READ: MATTHEW 11:28-30; 2 CORINTHIANS 6:1–7:4 One of the things I like most about autumn in New England is the county fairs. They have something for everyone. Blue ribbons for quilts and pies. Unusual poultry breeds and lop-eared bunnies. Giant pumpkins. Ferris wheels, merry-go-rounds, skateboarding, and live bands. Pigs racing for Oreo cookies. And food. Lots of food. Caramel apples and barbecued...

READ: LUKE 5:31-32; 19:1-10 Ever feel like people don’t like you? That loneliness feels horrible. Even worse? When people say you deserve that loneliness because of something you did. That’s what Zacchaeus must have felt every day. He cheated people out of money, so his whole town shunned him. When Jesus came into town, Zacchaeus didn’t stand in the crowd to watch Him. He climbed a tree to catch a...

READ: ROMANS 6:6-14; 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17-21; GALATIANS 3:26-29 Who am I? I wrestled with this question quite a bit during my teen years. I often felt lost, and I sought to define myself through lots of different things: friends, hobbies, how I dressed, my athletic ability, my looks, the size on my clothes…the list could go on and on. And, from conversations I had with friends, I knew I wasn’t the o...

READ: ISAIAH 25:8; HEBREWS 5:7; REVELATION 21:1-5   You say you keep all my tears in a bottle, keep track of them in your book. Do you write some of them small, for the tears I cry in private? Are others BOLD AND BIG for the tears that escape with intensity, with audible, soul-shaking sobs? Do you change the font, from broken-hearted to empty, from fearful to raging? Do you include each tear’s bac...

READ: ZEPHANIAH 3:14-17; EPHESIANS 2:1-9 Although my family hosted many guests in our home when I was a kid, the most memorable ones were strangers from Australia. Our house sat near a highway in a rural area. One afternoon, we spotted a young man and woman walking down the road. They wore heavy-duty backpacks and hiking boots. We said “hello” from our front yard, and my dad struck up a conversati...

READ: LEVITICUS 27:30-34; MATTHEW 6:19-34; 2 CORINTHIANS 9:7 Have you ever looked at someone, maybe in youth group, and thought, “I wish I believed like they do” or “I wish I loved God and church as much as they do”? First of all, comparing our walk with Jesus to someone else’s is rarely helpful because we can never know what is going on in another person’s heart or relationship with God. However,...

READ: MATTHEW 22:36-40; JOHN 14:15-27; 2 JOHN 1:5-6 If you often go to church or read the Bible, you’ve probably been told over and over again, “Love the Lord your God.” But what does that mean? How do we do that? Should we just try to create positive emotions toward God and maintain that happy feeling for Him all the time? No, of course not! While feelings are an important part of love—and we wil...

READ: RUTH 2:12; PSALMS 46:1; 57:1 In the summer, she knew God. Basking under burning sunrises, she knew His warmth. Dreaming in fields of wildflowers, she knew His freedom. Walking through forests while sunlight danced around her, she knew His joy. She reveled in her God of summer, who breathed life from His lungs and bled beauty from His veins. But autumn came, and she could not find Him. Leaves...

READ: 1 CORINTHIANS 3:1-9 When I was in middle school, I made friends with a girl name Mackenzie. We were complete opposites—I was pretty reserved and she was super outgoing—but we were immediate friends. We were in most of the same classes and extracurriculars together, and we hung out a lot. We were besties. But there was one thing that bothered me in our friendship: Mackenzie wasn’t a Christian...

READ: PSALMS 19:1-14; 119:11-16 How many times have you been told to read the Bible? Imagine sitting down in church and hearing the pastor say, “Don’t you dare read the Bible! Unless you’re a church leader, you are unworthy to study God’s Word.” And what if, on top of that, the only copies of the Bible you could find were written in a language you didn’t understand? That was the world John Wycliff...

READ: COLOSSIANS 3:1-3, 16-17 Few Christians throughout history have taken Jesus’s call to drop everything and follow Him as literally as St. Francis of Assisi. His faithful service to God was so influential that his way of living is still followed by one order of monks, the Franciscans, almost 800 years after his death. St. Francis was born in Italy around 1181 AD. The son of a wealthy merchant,...

READ: GENESIS 1; MATTHEW 6:26-33 As the trees start to change colors each year, I am in awe of all that God has created. Why did He choose to make the leaves turn different shades of orange, yellow, and red? Why didn’t He just make all of them turn a single color? Why did He choose to make maple trees, oaks, and palm? Why not just make a single type of tree? I think of old-school video games where...

READ: LUKE 11:1-13; ROMANS 8:26-27; EPHESIANS 3:14-21 Have you ever tried to pray, but couldn’t seem to find the right words? Perhaps a friend was hurting, or you were going through a difficult season, or maybe you wanted to thank God—but for some reason, you couldn’t figure out how to express what you wanted to say. Prayer is essential in our walk with God. He calls us to pray at all times (1 The...

READ: PSALM 139:1-12; MATTHEW 1:23; 28:20 Ava sat in her room all alone. She tried to ignore the voices from the party downstairs. No one had sent Ava to her room, but the room called to her. She felt too worn out to deal with everyone tonight. Then her dad opened her bedroom door. “Aren’t you going to come downstairs? Your grandpa’s asking about you.” “I’m tired,” Ava said. “I think I’ll just sta...

READ: PSALM 46:10; MATTHEW 11:28-29; PHILIPPIANS 4:6-7   Anxiety A tidal wave Pain showing through the cracks of my heart Can’t think, can’t breathe yet breathing too much Can’t speak, yet speaking incessantly Grasping for sanity, for peace, for air My heart pounding like a bass drum Can’t catch my breath, fix myself, calm these nerves Yet through the chaos, tears, torrential fear, He whispers: BE...

READ: PSALM 139; MATTHEW 28:20; COLOSSIANS 1:22-23 Every Christian has a different testimony, or story of how they came to put their trust in Jesus. For some people, it could be really dramatic. For others, it may be really simple. Yet God works in each and every person’s life. This is the personal story of how God worked in my life. My parents were missionaries in Japan, so I grew up learning abo...

READ: MATTHEW 9:9-13; LUKE 7:34-50; 1 PETER 3:15-16 Have you ever noticed how Jesus often spent time with people who were doing some pretty bad stuff? You may have wondered, “If that’s how Jesus acted, what should I do—especially if I’m supposed to avoid sin?” Sometimes Christians even ask, “Can I be friends with non-Christians?” The answer is, “Of course!” In fact, one of the ways people come to...

READ: JOHN 15:9-17; ROMANS 5:6-11; 1 JOHN 4:11 Relationships of any kind—with family or friends—are important to God. From the beginning, God made us to live in community. Shortly after He created Adam, the first human, God said, “It is not good for the man to be alone. I will make a helper who is just right for him” (Genesis 2:18). So God made Eve, Adam’s wife and the first human friend in histor...