Unlocked: Daily Devotions for Teens

READ: PSALM 61:1-5; ISAIAH 41:10 What should I do? What if this doesn’t turn out? What will I do next? These questions are overwhelming. It’s easy to start overthinking everything and become stressed out about the decisions we have to make, both big and small. It’s easy to be worried about the future and how each decision is going to affect our lives. When I begin to feel overwhelmed, I try to tak...

READ: MATTHEW 7:13-14; JOHN 10:7-10 Spelunking. The official yet admittedly odd term for cave-exploring. Fun to say, but not so fun when your spelunking gets you hopelessly lost in a complex cave system where the darkness is absolute and you doubt you’ll ever see the light of day again. Which is exactly the point I’m at right now—hopeless and lost. Every tunnel I try spits me out in the same place...

READ: 1 SAMUEL 18:1-5; 20:1-42; MATTHEW 11:19; ROMANS 5:9-11 “My father tried to kill me yesterday,” the one in royal attire said. “You were right—he wants to kill you too. You must go.” The other, armed with a sword, only nodded. They had sworn friendship with each other in the name of the Lord, and this terrible turn of events could not change that. Tears streamed down the faces of the two young...

READ: GENESIS 3:1-10; PSALM 34:5; LUKE 15 One day on a walk through my neighborhood, I spotted an injured duck. As I neared the lake behind a row of houses, other ducks flew away at my approach. Unable to fly, the wounded one hobbled around a tree trunk to hide. It seemed desperate to escape on only one functioning leg. I called Animal Control services in hopes that they could collect the duck and...

READ: GENESIS 21:22-34; ISAIAH 40:28 In the book of Genesis, the author uses several different names for God. One of those names is the “Eternal God.” And the context in which this name is first used may appear strange. Abraham calls upon the Eternal God...after he plants a tree! There are a few essential things to notice about this passage. First, notice the kind of tree Abraham plants is a tamar...

READ: JOHN 4:1-30, 39-42; 17:3 Did you know the first time Jesus revealed Himself as the Messiah was to a woman? Jewish Rabbis weren’t even supposed to speak to women, and especially not to Samaritans like the woman at the well (John 4). On top of that, Jesus knew all about her disreputable lifestyle, but He offered her everlasting life. Jesus knows us inside and out, and His love for us is undaun...

READ: PSALM 136:1-9, 23-26; MATTHEW 6:28-33 Thanks be to God for His innumerable, indescribable gifts. God is wondrous! He continually provides more than enough; He sustains us. He is good. He gives us many gifts: The tools to sustain our material needs. The support of people around us. The blessing of each new day. And, greatest of all, the gift of His Son (John 3:16). He gives us His beautiful c...

READ: EXODUS 14:14; JUDGES 5:21-22; PSALM 20:7 O soul, march on in strength Fear not the pounding steeds Behold the King of Glory The fulfills your needs. O soul march on in strength Though in horses some do trust Though chariots are mighty, The Lord will fight for us. I love horses, and I wrote these stanzas based on Judges 5:21-22 and Psalm 20:7. They both talk about horses, and they both talk a...

READ: 1 KINGS 19; MATTHEW 11:28-30 Elijah is arguably one of the fiercest, most epic prophets of the Old Testament. God worked through him in so many ways. Called fire out of the sky? Yep. Raised the dead? Yep. Repeatedly matched wits with the evilest king in the historical nation of Israel? You know it. But after a particularly public—and victorious—confrontation with idolatry, when he was direct...

READ: 2 CORINTHIANS 4:1-10; 1 PETER 3:15 How do we speak the truth of the gospel when the world doesn’t always value truth? When I consider the changes my country has made in the name of tolerance toward various beliefs and ideas, fear casts a shadow over my heart. Can you be both truthful and tolerant at the same time? How do you show love, yet also stand for what you know to be truth? Is there a...

READ: NAHUM 1:7; ROMANS 8:28-39; JAMES 1:17 “God is good. All the time.” Have you ever heard Christians say this phrase to each other? Sometimes one person will say, “God is good.” And the other will respond, “All the time.” But what do these words really mean? God’s goodness means He is both generous and merciful. The problem is, we don’t always feel like He is being good to us. Problem after pro...

READ: PSALMS 13:1-6; 46:1-11 Have you ever felt stuck between two phases of life? I know I have. The “in-between times,” as I like to call them, can be really difficult to navigate. Maybe you’re moving from middle to high school. Maybe your parents are splitting up, and you have to live in two households. Maybe you’re moving between schools, churches, cities, or states. No matter what, times of tr...

READ: ROMANS 3:19-28; 5:6-11 With pounding heart, Riley leapt off the platform for the umpteenth time. Dodging fireballs, she jumped from foothold to foothold, as heat rose from the lava below. She was almost there! Ahead was that final jump—that final expanse of lava. She could see the cool, grassy paradise at the end of the course. Her companion, Julius, watched her dart across the expanse, fiel...

READ: MATTHEW 6:25-34; PHILIPPIANS 4:4-12; 1 PETER 5:7 Maybe you’re like me. If you grew up in church, it might be second nature to pray about everything. After all, you want to share whatever is going on in your life with your best friend Jesus. So you ask God to help you face the challenges at school. Will you be able to pass the algebra test? What about physics? English literature? You pray abo...

READ: ROMANS 8:26-27, 31-34 Every time I called the dog’s name, my family laughed. Now that I’m older, I understand why. I grew up near my uncle Andy, who had a dog named Shep. I adored Uncle Andy and liked his dog too. But—as a child—I couldn’t pronounce “Shep.” Try as I might, the dog’s name sounded like “Botch” every time I spoke it. I understood the name Shep; I just couldn’t get the word out...

READ: MATTHEW 18:21-22; EPHESIANS 4:32; COLOSSIANS 3:13 Dear Unforgiveness, I nurtured you after someone hurt me. You grew in the soil of my misery, and I watered you each day with anger and frustration. Like ice, you crept into my heart, teaching me to shut people out, afraid of future disappointments. You are a storm twisting within, causing confusion. Like fire, you flare up and draw pictures o...

READ: MICAH 7:19; 1 JOHN 1:9–2:1 Do you still feel guilty about it? That thing you did. Maybe it happened yesterday, maybe it happened eight years ago. No matter what it was, you may be holding on to unnecessary guilt. Guilt does have a purpose. It leads us to repentance and encourages us not to do evil again…but that purpose can be twisted by Satan. God wants us to feel sorry for our sins so we c...

READ: ISAIAH 64:6; EZEKIEL 36:25-27; MATTHEW 23:23-28; 1 PETER 1:18-23 “You wear the pink wig; I’ll wear the silver one!” My friend Bridget and I laughed as we dressed in costumes. Playing around with Bridget’s keyboard that day, we decided to put on a show for my grandma, who had stopped by for a visit. My grandma didn’t know about the tunes the keyboard had been programmed to play with just the...

READ: PSALM 103:1-8; EPHESIANS 1:3-6; COLOSSIANS 3:1-2 Ever wonder why we have to go through so much hard stuff in this life? If you do, you’re in good company! All of us prefer the sweet and easy moments, free from the burdens of grief and pain. God created us for wholeness, but humanity’s sin brought brokenness. Yet God made the way for wholeness again through Jesus, who died on the cross and ro...

READ: EPHESIANS 2:1-10 My skin is cold. Though I can’t know for sure how cold—since corpses can’t feel anything. They can’t do anything at all, really. If I had the ability to touch, I’d feel the icy, rough dirt that holds my stiff body in place. I’d feel the maggots wriggling their muculent bodies around the tips of my fingers, inside my ears, around my mouth, at the corners of my eyes. If my sen...

READ: LUKE 22:19; 24:13-36 The mall food courts in Guatemala City are very different than those I visited in the US. When I came back from four years away from my country, one of the first outings we had was to the mall. Mall runs and window-shopping are common practices among most city folk in Guatemala. We especially like doing this on Sunday afternoons. Food courts get packed—to the point that...

READ: JOHN 20:24-31; 1 PETER 1:8 I’m just gonna say it—I think Thomas the disciple, commonly known as “Doubting Thomas,” gets a bad rap. When the other disciples witnessed the risen Christ, Thomas was absent. Thomas said he wanted visible, tangible proof of Jesus’s resurrection, saying, “If I don’t see the mark of the nails in his hands…and put my hand into his side, I will never believe” (John 20...

READ: 1 CORINTHIANS 15:3-20 In 1 Corinthians 15:17, Paul writes that if Jesus Christ has not been raised from the dead, then our faith is worthless because we are still in our sins. Jesus’s victory over the grave is what secures forgiveness for our sins and guarantees that we will have eternal life with Him. So how can we be certain that Jesus rose from the dead? Here is some of the best evidence...

READ: ISAIAH 53:1-5; 2 CORINTHIANS 4:8-18; 1 PETER 5:6-11 The pastor spoke through the laptop sitting on a TV tray in my living room. It wasn’t the typical way I spent Easter Sunday. I took a few steps and opened the blinds, mimicking how the shades opened during service at my home church. My mom laughed, and I returned to the couch to listen to the Easter message. Several days earlier, I had an o...

READ: ISAIAH 52:13–53:12; JOHN 16:33; HEBREWS 4:14-16 Long before Jesus was born, many prophets foretold His coming. Isaiah was one of these prophets. And his words (found in the book of Isaiah in the Old Testament) use powerful imagery to convey God’s glorious redemption story. Isaiah had a lot of incredible things to say about Jesus, even before He was born. One of Isaiah’s most gripping word-pi...