Unlocked: Daily Devotions for Teens Keys for Kids Ministries

READ: MARK 2:13-17; JOHN 6:37



It’s common sense that showers are for the dirty, hospitals are for the sick, and life preservers are for the drowning. So why is it so hard for some of us to accept that we don’t have to fix up our lives before coming to the very One who promises to clean us, heal us, and save us?



We may resist coming to God for help because we think we’re too far gone. We are correct in seeing that our sin separates us from a Holy God; we were all once totally lost in spiritual darkness (Ephesians 2:1-10).



But God didn’t leave us there! Jesus Christ’s death on the cross and resurrection from the dead paid for all of our sins and made the way for us to be with Him forever (Colossians 1:12-14). If we think we’ve sinned too much to be forgiven, we are severely underestimating the power of God’s grace and perhaps even missing the point of the gospel.



Sometimes those of us who know we’re forgiven still struggle to come to God because we feel like we’ve wandered too far. We think that since we’ve been straying into different sins, or haven’t been keeping up with our devotions, or haven’t been praying enough…that God doesn’t want anything to do with us. But God always wants us to draw near to Him!



I think it makes God sad when His children try to live apart from Him. He has called us to live in pursuit of Him, and once we have been redeemed by Christ, we can do so with the Holy Spirit’s help. But God’s love doesn’t require our obedience in order to reach us (Romans 5:8). God’s love has no strings attached.



Whether you’ve never asked God for forgiveness before, or you’ve recently wandered, don’t wait to come to Him. There is true forgiveness for all of us in Christ’s work on the cross, and Christ promises to never cast you out (John 6:37). • Katherine Billingsley



• Have you ever felt too far gone? If you know Jesus, all your sins are forgiven—past, present, and future.



When God looks at you, He sees His Son’s perfect righteousness. And He loves you more than you could ever imagine. You can come to Him in prayer anytime, asking Him to help you draw near to Him once again. If you’ve never come to Jesus, find out more on our "Know Jesus" page.



• In John 6:37, Jesus promises that He will never cast out those who come to Him. How can this truth comfort us when we have doubts about our salvation?



When Jesus heard this, he told them, “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick. I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.” Mark 2:17 (CSB) 

READ: JEREMIAH 42:1–43:7; EPHESIANS 2:1-10



“Rhode, tell us what to do. We will die here on the planet Yavorah! The Kuvil Regime took the rest of our people to their planet, and they won’t let us live here peacefully. It’s been years since Juro’s old dynasty held us in slavery— maybe if we go back, their new rulers will help us.”



The desperate shouts and worried exclamations filled their meeting space, a hollowed-out tree trunk aglow with jars of lightening bugs. Rhode closed his eyes for just a moment, resting in Yahweh’s presence despite the contentious atmosphere. After generations of sin and idolatry, Yahweh’s judgment had come to pass. Kuvil had conquered Rhode’s people, the Yavorians. Now, only a remnant was left on their home planet under the Kuvil Regime. Their ships swarmed the sky, as numerous as the bugs, blocking the two Yavorian suns, slowly killing the planet’s lush greenery. Soon, their livelihoods would be upended, and they’d starve.



Bora, the Yavorian army captain, stepped closer and shook Rhode’s shoulders. “Go, ask Yahweh for mercy. Ask Him to show us the way, and we swear we will follow it— whether that means we stay here as captives of Kuvil or we return to Juro for refuge.”



Rhode was appalled at the idea of returning to the very planet Yahweh had delivered them from. He wanted to be compassionate and hopeful, but he could only be suspicious of Bora’s plea. Of course now they wanted to hear from Yahweh, after generations of ignoring Yahweh’s commands. Were they merely desperate to avoid destruction, or were they sincere in their desire for repentance? “I will pray,” Rhode decided. “Whatever Yahweh says, I will tell you.”



The moment Rhode was alone, he collapsed with exhaustion. A few glimmers of light shown in the sky through the dense canopy. As Rhode stared up at them, he wondered if they were stars or impending spaceships. Sighing, he prayed, “Help me be faithful. Please, reveal Your will to me.” For ten days, Rhode remained silent before Yahweh, until He spoke.



Rhode called the commanders together, but the cold and determined look on Captain Bora’s face made him hesitate. Gathering himself, Rhode said, “If we remain on this planet, the one Yahweh promised to us, and trust in His protection, He will be gracious and we will prosper. We can trust that He will be merciful to us.”



Everyone was silent, but Bora’s eyes were ablaze with anger. “You lie! Your words are treasonous! If we stay, Kuvil will destroy us all.”



“But Yahweh promises He will preserve a remnant of our people,” Rhode said. The leaders began filing out of the tree, casting dirty glares and muttering “traitor” in his direction. Rhode hollered after them, “Fleeing to Juro would just be another idolatrous response. Yahweh is giving us another opportunity to put our trust in Him!” No one listened.



Before the suns had even set, Rhode was corralled onto a shuttle with a hoard of other Yavorians. They slipped through Kuvil’s blockade with a cloaking device. Rhode pressed his face against the window and watched as the green planet’s surface grew dim. Yavorah was a gift from Yahweh, a place for prosperity after slavery. And now, instead of leaning into His mercies, Rhode was taken with the rest of his people back to Juro. But Yavorah was his home, their home.



“I am with you, and I still give my mercy to my people,” Yahweh said to Rhode as Yavorah faded from sight. “One day, I will bring you home. I am making all things new, and I will dwell with you forever.” • Zoe Brickner



• Today’s story is an allegory of Jeremiah 42–43. Israel sought Egypt’s help when Babylon attacked them, desp

READ: GENESIS 1:26-31; PSALMS 119:73; 139:14; EPHESIANS 2:1-10



Who am I? This question is one we wrestle with throughout our lives. And it’s an important question to ask, because much of what we do flows from who we believe we are. Here’s the thing though—we can’t answer this question without God. And thankfully, He provides the answer in His Word. Take a look.



God created human beings, and He did so out of love. Genesis 1:26-31 says that God made us in His image, and He entrusted us with the important job of caring for His creation. Furthermore, if we are in Christ, Ephesians 2:10 says we are God’s masterpiece—we are created anew in Christ Jesus, and God has given us good and purposeful work to do.



Have you ever thought of yourself as God’s masterpiece? How amazing to think that God created each of us, purposefully crafting us to be unique and wonderful (Psalms 119:73; 139:14). Yet, oftentimes we don’t realize how valuable we truly are. As we go through life in a world broken by sin, we are bombarded with lies about ourselves, lies that say we’re not worthwhile, not capable, not lovable. As we’re confronted with our own sins and shortcomings, we may even start to believe our very existence is a mistake.



But God knows the truth about us. He made us, and so He’s the only one qualified to tell us who we are and what we’re worth. The fact is, we are so precious to God that He came to be with us. The second person of the Trinity, the Father’s only begotten Son, became human and lived among us. It was worth it to Him to pay the ultimate price to save us from sin—Jesus was willing to lay down His life so that we could be forgiven, brought near to God, and made new. And God the Father is glorified in all of this (John 17:1-3; Galatians 1:3-5; Philippians 2:11).



So now, as people who’ve put our faith in Jesus, we can rest in God’s love for us. And, because the Holy Spirit fills our hearts with His love (Romans 5:5), we can rejoice in the ways He has made us, using both the natural abilities and the spiritual gifts He has given us to express our love for God and for the people around us. And whenever we find ourselves struggling with lies about who we are and what we’re worth, we can turn to Jesus. He will remind us that we are His priceless work of art. God doesn’t make mistakes, He makes masterpieces! • Hannah Howe



• When you struggle to see yourself as God sees you, who are trusted Christians who can remind you of what God says about you in His Word? How could you be this kind of friend to others?



For we are God’s masterpiece. He has created us anew in Christ Jesus, so we can do the good things he planned for us long ago. Ephesians 2:10 (NLT) 

READ: NUMBERS 13–14



Numbers—funny name for a book, don’t you think? Five of its thirty-six chapters contain lists of people. But most of this book records the story of a people on the move. The best part of Numbers? We find God’s loving intervention in the lives of His people, over and over again.



Numbers not only includes records of people and lists of ceremonial regulations, it also contains stories. Have you ever heard the story of a flashing sword, a shining angel, and a talking donkey? It’s in chapters 22-25, and it involves blessings and curses, bribes and greed. In this passage, and throughout the whole book of Numbers, we discover the underlying theme of God’s unceasing goodness, His personal interaction, and His abiding care for His people. He plans good things for them, even when they are ungrateful, stubborn, and faithless.



God’s plan for His people, the Israelites, was to give them a home—the Promised Land. And this was crucial. For from this nation would arise His Son—the Savior, Jesus. And Jesus would be the perfect Israel that the Israelites could never be— faithful, loving, and sinless. God’s strategy all along was ultimately to provide the way of salvation for His people through Jesus’s death and resurrection. And the book of Numbers is part of His rescue plan.



It’s in Numbers that we get the inside story of how God’s people responded to Him in defiance, faithlessness, and fear right on the borders of their Promised Land. We learn how that broke God’s heart, and then we see how He directed His people back into the desert to wander for forty years, until that faithless generation had died out.



Then, we learn about how Joshua and Caleb finally led the people into the Promised Land, and we see God’s undying faithfulness through it all. We learn how trustworthy God is, and how important it is for us to trust Him. His ways are good, and trusting and following Him is the best thing we can do. Today, if we know Jesus, He lives inside us through the Holy Spirit, helping us to faithfully follow our loving God. This treasure of a book has much to offer the student of the Word. May He reveal Himself to you as you read it! • Kristen Merrill



• Which of the stories mentioned above sounds the most interesting to you? What questions do you have about them?



• How could remembering the ways God has been faithful in the past (either in our own lives or in the lives of people in the Bible) help us trust Him to be faithful in the future?



“Do not rebel against the Lord, and don’t be afraid… the Lord is with us!” Numbers 14:9 (NLT) 

READ: PSALM 104:10-28; MATTHEW 6:19-34; 10:29-31



There is a lot of nature outside my window. I hear birds singing their morning songs and talking to each other all day long. Occasionally I see rabbits and even a few deer. I hear coyotes howl at night, and I’ve seen turkeys strut across the yard. All of these animals have a home out there. They know how to survive in the forest and get what they need to make it through each day. And God is the One who made all of them. He gave them the ability to make a home in the wild and survive.



When I think about all the animals and what God has given them, I know that He will take care of me. After all, Jesus said, “Do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” (Matthew 6:25-26).



Humans are God’s most precious creation. We are the ones He came to seek and to save (Luke 19:10). It was for our sins that Jesus died on the cross. And just as He rose from the grave, He promises to raise us when He returns. We are the ones He loves.



God cares so much for us, even more than He does for all the animals in the wild (Matthew 10:29-31). When I am afraid or wonder about what to do with my life, I can remember that. I can know that God will help me and show me what to do. He takes care of all the animals, and He will do even more for me. • Bethany Acker



• What kinds of animals can you see where you live? Consider taking some time this week to pause and watch them and be reminded of how God is taking care of them and you.



• Because our world has been broken by sin, sometimes animals hurt each other and compete for what they need to survive, and humans do too. But one day, Jesus promises to return and make all things new. Then “the wolf will live with the lamb...and the lion will eat straw like the ox. The infant will play near the cobra’s den, and the young child will put its hand into the viper’s nest. They will neither harm nor destroy” (Isaiah 11:6-9). How can the hope of the new creation Jesus is bringing free us to trust Him, and to love others the way He calls us to, instead of hurting other people for fear that we won’t have enough? (2 Corinthians 5:17; Galatians 5:13-14)



“Look at the birds of the air; they do not sow or reap or store away in barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not much more valuable than they?” Matthew 6:26 (NIV) 

READ: PSALM 107:21-24, 31; COLOSSIANS 1:16; REVELATION 4:11



Have you been to an art gallery or installation recently? It’s amazing to see the way artists create memorable and beautiful works of art using paint, pencils, clay, stone, fabric, metal, wood, glass…the possibilities are nearly infinite! And just think about how our ability to create art reflects the Creator who made us—He is the greatest artist.



Have you ever thought of God as an artist? Have you noticed how creative He is? Both the cold winter snow and the warm summer sunshine were His idea. He made oceans, and He also made deserts. He made plants and animals, some that live in oceans, others that live in deserts, each perfectly suited to their environment. He made stars and galaxies, atoms and photons…And He wasn’t content to make everything in grayscale—He painted the universe in more colors than we can count! God created everything there is as an expression of love. And that includes us.



God didn’t create the universe because He was lonely or bored or because He needed anything. God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit have always existed in perfect love and joy. No, He created because it delighted Him to do so!



God has boundless creativity. He has made so many wondrous things, each one just the right color, just the right shape, and just the right size. And even though sin brought brokenness into God’s good creation, He has promised to redeem it. Through Jesus’s death and resurrection, He is making all things new. And if we put our trust in Jesus, we get to take part in His wonderful work. Because Christians have the Holy Spirit living in us, we can use the creativity He has given us to glorify Him and bless others, both today and in the age to come.



And, as we behold God’s beautiful creation, we can remember how awesome He is and how much He loves us. He’s the greatest artist, and He invites us to enjoy His creation with Him! • A. W. Smith



• What is one of your favorite things in all of nature? Why? Consider taking a moment to thank God for this and tell Him what you like about it!



• In what ways do you like to be creative? How do you like to take what God has made an arrange it in a purposeful way—such as through painting, sculpting, building, designing, cooking, etc.? Is there something new you’d like to try but haven’t yet?



The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands. Psalm 19:1 (NIV)