Why is it difficult for many teens to have hope in God?

Answer 1

Well for me personally (I am 16) sometimes I reach a point that I can't handle all my things anymore, and I pray and I pray and the next day it seems like everything just gets worse. So I pray harder and harder, and day by day, it just feels like things get worse and worse. And then I start to wonder if there is a God because I pray and I thought I was putting everything on Him and He just wasn't helping me. But after a while I realized that I had some doubt and that was why nothing was getting bettter. Then the next day, every stress and doubt etc.. was gone. That is just my personal experience. What I have observed with friends, is that the majority of the time, the child reflects the parent's faith, so if the parents doesn't have hope, how can the child even know how? ==new answer== Adolesence is a time when they are busy attempting to figure out a lot of different things, like looking to see how they fit in or going with the need to fit in, they are pushing to see how and why they will be limited by parents and other authority figures, how to be their own person without the authority to do so. Whatever you were able to impress upon them when they were younger is remembered even though it may not be in evidence through their actions. Remember what Mark Twain said that he was surprised how much smarter his parents became from the time he was eithteen till he was twenty one. God is not the most important thing on their mind at this time, it will come, be patient.

The best way to relate to this period of growth is to look at it as with your own experience. With each thing we learn we go through four stages. Infancy, adolesence, adulthood, old age-wisdom. Use your memory of going through the adolesence of something new you were working with learning and you will have insight into how to relate to your teen.