Rejoice in the Lord always- delight, gladden yourselves in Him: again I say, rejoice! – Philippians 4:4

This Bible verse talks about rejoicing always which means all the time. And in all circumstances. That means rejoicing when you feel like it and when you don’t. Rejoicing when your brother is driving you crazy, and when you get a promotion at your job. Regardless of circumstances, we are encouraged to rejoice in the Lord.

Why are we told to rejoice? It seems really strange. When you’re feeling down, you just want to mope around, stay in bed all day or have a good cry. Yet the Bible tells us to rejoice. Why?

The key to our strength is found in rejoicing. Rejoicing can help change your feelings. When you rejoice it begins to change your sadness into joy. It changes your feelings of hopelessness into hope. There is power in rejoicing in what God has done for you. Take time today to rejoice!

Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up. – Galatians 6:9 (NIV)

In high school, each year I went out for tennis. I remember getting up early in the morning to lift weights. I did running drills and lots of hours of practice. It was a lot of work and a lot of free time I was giving up to play this sport. There were times when I wondered if all the early morning weight lifting was worth it.

However, once the season began, I was glad I had put in the effort. When I went to play other teams from other schools I was glad that I had practiced and was conditioned to keep up with them during the meets.

That’s a bit like what today’s Bible verse is telling us. If we keep on doing good, following after God, making the right choices, we will be glad we did. Because at the proper time, when we’re faced with a test or trial, we’ll be glad that we stuck with it and didn’t give up.

So if you’re discouraged, take comfort in the fact that if you keep with it, all the hard work and standing will be worth it in the end. Don’t give up or quit. Stay the course and finish strong!

Trust in the LORD with all your heart; do not depend on your own understanding. – Proverbs 3:5

We often get wrapped up in the pursuit of happiness. Its easy to think that if you could just do or be better that you’d have it made. So we work and work, trying to get more friends, or improve our grades to get into a better college. We do things like getting a job after school so we can get a car. And we think that if we can do enough, be enough or have enough, we will be happy.

The problem with doing more, being more, or having more is that these things are empty. There’s no amount of good grades that will truly make you happy in the long run. No amount of friends, or money will complete you. You can try and work to fill your life with stuff, and still feel empty.

Today’s Bible verse addresses these issues. The last part of the verse talks about not depending on your own understanding. What that means is don’t depend on what you think seems good. Don’t depend on what you see on TV or what you hear in the halls at school from your friends to tell you what will make you happy.

True happiness comes from a relationship with Jesus Christ. When you let Jesus into your life, He will show you how He sees you. Its when you get to know and trust Jesus that you’ll find true happiness. If you want to be happy and live your life to the fullest, you need to choose to do what this verse says. You need to trust the Lord with all your heart. This isn’t always easy, but if you’ll spend some time getting to know God you’ll see that trusting Him brings you true happiness.

So choose today to trust in the Lord. Don’t get caught up in all the things of life and let them steal your happiness. Trust in God and look to Him for answers.

Remember your leaders who taught you the word of God. Think of all the good that has come from their lives, and follow the example of their faith. – Hebrews 13:7 (NLT)

Do you have someone you love to watch on social media? Maybe you watch what your favorite singer does, or favorite athlete. You know who they’re dating, what they eat and all of their friends. Maybe their clothing styles influence what you wear and how they talk influences what you say.

There’s nothing wrong with following celebrities on social media, but they shouldn’t be the only people that you’re looking up to.  In this verse, it encourages us to look up to those who teach us the word of God. Whether it’s a youth pastor, pastor, teacher or someone else, we should be looking up to the people that teach us God’s word.

So if you don’t already, take some time to find someone you can look up to who is godly. Spend some time watching their habits and imitate what they do. Their faith can help challenge you in your walk with God.

Bring the full tenth into the storehouse so that there may be food in My house. Test Me in this way,” says the LORD of Hosts. “See if I will not open the floodgates of heaven and pour out a blessing for you without measure. – Mal 3:10 (HSCB)

I remember when I met my best friend. There were things that he said that I didn’t get. He’d laugh at certain jokes and I just didn’t understand what made them funny. At first there were things about him that bugged me. I didn’t understand why he did things the way he did. But the funny thing is, the more I got to know him, the more I got why he did things the way he did. As I spent more time with him, I began to get his sense of humor better and I began to laugh at the same jokes he did.

When you get to know someone better, you start to understand why they do things the way they do them. You begin to understand how they think and why they feel they way they do about certain things.

This is true with God too. See as we get to know God better, we begin to understand how he thinks. We begin to understand why He asks us to do the things He does. And instead of sounding crazy, they begin to make sense. In today’s Bible verse we see that God challenges us to bring ten percent of what we earn to the storehouse, which is the church.

If we don’t know God well, we might think that God is crazy when he’s asking us to give up ten percent of our paycheck to Him. However, if we’ve taken the time to get to know God, we realize that God is just wanting to see us blessed. He wants us to look to Him as our source for the money we need, not to our job. He’s just trying to get us to trust Him and He sees that we’re blessed in return.

[Tweet “God wants us to trust Him, and He sees that we are blessed in return – @studentdevos”]

This morning I was riding my bike, and while I was riding I saw a dog. As I rode past the yard where the dog lived he began growling, barking, and snarling at me. He was putting all his effort into scaring me. The funny thing was the dog was really tiny. I could easily take that dog down and not even break a sweat. The dog was growling, but he didn’t have any power to hurt me because he was so small.

That’s a lot like the devil. The devil often will growl at you, bring thoughts to you that make you think its hopeless, and make you want to give up. However, the truth is the devil is powerless against Christ in you. The devil is a lot like that little dog on my bike ride. He is noisy and tries to scare you, but in reality, there’s nothing he can do to hurt you. He’s a powerless little thing.

Submit yourselves, then, to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you. – James 4:7

That’s what today’s Bible verse is talking about. It tells us to resist the devil, and when we do, the devil will flee from us. The devil has no power over our lives. He’s been defeated by Jesus. So the next time the devil begins growling at you, making you feel like you’re worthless, or that you can’t make it, realize that he’s nothing more than a little dog making a lot of noise. He has no real power in your life!