Unlocked: Daily Devotions for Teens

READ: GALATIANS 6:1-10; EPHESIANS 4:11-16 Do you know what a symbiotic relationship is? It’s when two beings interact, live near each other, and have a relationship that benefits both of them. The animal kingdom is filled with these kinds of relationships. The clown fish lives in an anemone, and it scares away the butterfly fish, one of the anemone’s enemies. The anemone has sting cells that will...

READ: JOHN 11:1-44; HEBREWS 4:14-16; REVELATION 21:1-5 I closed the book and pondered what I had just read. Jesus weeps for me? The novel I was reading explained it in such a way that I just had to stop for a moment and think. The book said Jesus is there with us in our suffering. His heart breaks over human pain, and He mourns with us. But He doesn’t mourn because all is lost. Christ will come ba...

READ: PSALM 19:7-11; 2 TIMOTHY 3:16-17; HEBREWS 4:12 Martin Frobisher, an English explorer, once discovered a huge hoard of gold on Baffin Island in Canada. He sent three ships, carrying 160 tons of gold-containing ore, back to Queen Elizabeth I in England. Unfortunately, the ore contained nothing more than a pile of yellow mica or iron pyrite—otherwise known as fool’s gold. Fool’s gold looks exac...

READ: ROMANS 5:6-11 Jesus Christ died for your sins. Does this sentence amaze you every time you read it? For many of us (especially those of us who have grown up going to church), this amazing statement has become so normal in our lives that we often glance over it. But that’s just what this truth is—amazing. Something that inspires awe, admiration, or wonder. Jesus’s death on the cross was amazi...

READ: PSALM 139; LUKE 12:6-7 Any other “middle kids” out there? I’m a middle child. Not the exact middle, but I’m number three out of four kids. My older two siblings were very outgoing when we were young, and my little brother was the baby of the family, so all three of them received a lot of attention. And then there was me, somewhere in the middle. I was a really quiet kid, and it wasn’t uncomm...

READ: PROVERBS 16:3-9; ROMANS 8:28-29; PHILIPPIANS 4:4-7 When I was seventeen, my second choice for a summer activity rose to become my first. Early in the year, I auditioned for the all-state marching band, which would travel and perform during the summer. However, I didn’t get selected for that honor, so I set my sights on something different. I decided to work with a group called the Youth Cons...

READ: GALATIANS 1:6-12; 2:14–3:6; 5:1, 16-26 Imagine you’re standing in a burning building. Everything is on fire. Smoke fills the air, and it’s hard to see or breathe. But you, quick thinker that you are, hold your breath. You get down low. You bob and weave between burning furniture and crumbling walls. You dodge the pieces of ceiling that crash to the floor around you. You tuck and roll out the...

READ: GENESIS 1:26–2:3; MATTHEW 11:28-30; LUKE 10:38-42 Alistair hefted his saw and adjusted his vision screen over his eyes. As he made the final cut, the virtual gift box opened in the corner of his vision screen and a few digitized fireworks exploded. Though he knew the praise was only automatic, it still felt good. A banner floated across the screen: “Congratulations! You have earned one Silve...

READ: ROMANS 8:18, 23-25; REVELATION 21 If you were a character in a book, it would be nice to know that your story has a happy ending. When we’re the ones reading a book, usually we try to avoid spoilers, but sometimes we can’t help ourselves. As a kid, I can remember the suspense surrounding the fate of favorite characters. Unable to take the tension any longer, I would peek a few chapters ahead...

READ: MARK 16:19-20; LUKE 24:50-53; ACTS 1:4-11; REVELATION 1:7 Recently I noticed Ascension Day on the calendar of a religious publication. In my faith tradition, little attention is given to this monumental event. However, the fact that Jesus ascended into heaven is vital to our understanding of His birth, death, and resurrection. Scripture reveals that Christ ascended into heaven forty days aft...

READ: ISAIAH 49:13-17; JOHN 10:1-30 I have a bad habit of losing umbrellas. As a little girl, I flipped through a catalog one day and spotted an umbrella I desperately wanted. It featured an array of soft, pastel colors—baby blue, mint green, and lavender. I begged my parents for it and later unwrapped this present with glee. I was in umbrella heaven! Then one day, after shielding myself from pour...

READ: ESTHER 4:1-17; EPHESIANS 2:1-10 Do you ever wish you had been born during a different time? I sometimes wish I was living earlier in history. I read books about knights, ladies, and castles, and I think I would like to have lived during the Middle Ages. Or I wish we could go back to when people worked harder for themselves and didn’t have to rely so much on technology. Maybe you wish the sam...

READ: DEUTERONOMY 31:8; PSALMS 8:1-9; 139:1-14; EPHESIANS 2:13   I step into the night, surrendering my eyes, enveloped in darkness like plunging into water.   Desperate for light, I look up.   A few brave stars gleam, unafraid of night’s unknowing. Silhouetted black pines rise and frame the gray sky.   Leaves tumble and wrestle, keeping me alert. I can’t tell if I’m alone or being watched.   But...

READ: 2 CORINTHIANS 5:17; GALATIANS 5:16-18; JAMES 1:3-5 For most of my youth, being mature was all the rage. Everyone pretended to be mature. My conception of what that meant was not laughing at sexist and inappropriate jokes, portraying a cooler version of myself, and pretending not to be boy-obsessed while also knowing everything about dating, boys, sex, and love. I wanted to be admired and inc...

READ: 1 KINGS 18:20-39; PSALMS 115:1-13; 116:1-9 "Can you hear me? Hello? I’m talking…Are you even listening?” Have you ever tried and tried to get someone to listen to you, and eventually just gave up? Maybe after a while, you just couldn’t spend any more energy trying to get them to pay attention, so, you tried to convince yourself that you didn’t really care to tell your story to them anyway, i...

READ: DEUTERONOMY 31:8; PSALM 23:4; HEBREWS 13:5-6 I stood anxiously in front of the school doors, feeling as if I was glued to the spot. I had no idea what awaited me inside that building. How could I trust that it was going to be okay when it had all gone wrong before? I was tired of being an outcast. A loner. The one who sat alone at lunch. I hated not knowing what would come next. If only I co...

READ: JOHN 21:21-22; PHILIPPIANS 2:1-11; HEBREWS 12:1-3 Picture this: you’re getting ready to run a race. You stand at the starting line, stretching and nervously shifting your weight from one foot to the other. You get into position, adrenaline coursing through your veins, and wait until you hear the BANG! of the starter pistol. You burst forward as fast as you can, your feet pounding the ground,...

READ: ISAIAH 40:28-31; 1 CORINTHIANS 9:23-27; HEBREWS 12:1-3 What’s the number one thing you need to win a race? Speed, right? It seems obvious. So why isn’t that what Hebrews 12:1 says? In this passage, the author of Hebrews is encouraging the audience to run the race of faith, but the verse doesn’t say, “run with speed.” It says, “run with endurance.” This caught my attention. Honestly, I’d rath...

READ: PSALM 63:1-5; MATTHEW 11:28-30; JOHN 4:7-15; 7:37-39 Not much farther, Mai chanted to herself. Not much farther. Brittle sand attacked her eyes, blinding her, but she was so dehydrated they weren’t even watering. She’d sweat until her dusty and crusty robes were caked to her skin. Her utterly dry throat hurt when she swallowed, and the air she breathed only scratched her sand-filled nose. Wa...

READ: PHILIPPIANS 4:4-9; 1 THESSALONIANS 5:16-18 The sudden screeching from the children had me running down the stairs. I’d only left for a moment, but in that time the littlest kid in the house had taken the wrong bite out of her snack, and now the bigger kids were fearfully yelling for me. They met me with the choking toddler. I grabbed her, but inside I froze. I had had all the training on how...

READ: GENESIS 2:9; 3:1-7, 22-24; DEUTERONOMY 21:22-23; 1 PETER 2:21-25 The American poet Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. once wrote, “In fact, there’s nothing that keeps its youth, so far as I know, but a tree and truth.” Truth is eternal, and the long life of trees gives them the appearance of eternality. Perhaps it is not surprising then, that our ultimate source of truth in this world, the Bible, con...

READ: EPHESIANS 6:10-20; 1 TIMOTHY 2:1-8; JAMES 5:16 We see bad things happen all the time. We can’t help it; trouble is all around, and people are suffering. Maybe something hard is affecting your family right now, or your friends, or your community. Do you feel helpless when you see the sorrow and pain of those you care about? It often feels like there is nothing we can do. Sometimes people say,...

READ: JEREMIAH 29:1-14; PSALMS 37:1-6; 139:1-24 Are you or someone you know graduating this year? While a graduation is a momentous occasion, what follows is the question: “What are your next steps?” When I graduated from high school, it was the general expectation that you went to college. Being an adventurous non-planner, I left for a college that was located over twelve hours from home, not eve...

READ: EZEKIEL 36:16-38; PHILIPPIANS 2:5-8 Which is better: a heart of stone, or a heart of flesh? To be honest, some days I want to choose the stone. A heart of stone doesn’t feel pain, and it doesn’t have to bend to anyone else’s will. It seems strong and immovable, impervious to hardship and unchanged by anything it comes up against. But the truth is, a heart of stone is basically useless. Stone...

READ: JOHN 1:1-14; COLOSSIANS 1:15-20; REVELATION 21:1-6 In my life, there are many starts and stops. I start a new hobby, and I finish a TV show. I wake up and start my workday, and I end the day by going to bed. At the start of my life, I came into being. And eventually my days on this broken earth will end. In the last book of the Bible, Jesus calls Himself “the Alpha and the Omega—the Beginnin...