• You sense your teen is avoiding you.

• Your teen often turns away in your presence.

• Your teen shows a lack of respect for your advice.

• Your teen becomes highly critical of you.

• Warm feelings that used to exist between you and your teen seem to have disappeared.

• Your teen begins to indulge in sex, alcohol, or drugs.

The simplest explanation of why a teenager's heart closes lies written on their hearts. Things can be written on our hearts. The Scriptures are very clear about that:

Keep my commands and you will live; guard my teachings as the apple of your eye. Bind them on your fingers; write them on the tablet of your heart. (Prov. 7:2-3)

Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart. (Prov. 3:3)

"Judah's sin is engraved with an iron tool, inscribed with a flint point, on the tablets of their hearts and on the horns of their altars. (Jer. 17:1)

Throughout our sons and daughters life, their hearts have learned many things. Some of what they've learned is true; much of it is not. Think about all of the negative things that you learned about you as you were growing up. Think about your parents, siblings, teachers, friends, schoolmates, grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, neighborhood bullies, etc. Can you hear them? You're lazy; stupid, ugly, bad, not good enough, short, fat, skinny, dorky, ridiculous, irritating, goofy, irresponsible, and so on. All sorts of damage has been done to your heart and to the hearts of our children over the years. All sorts of terrible things taken in — by those who should have known better, and by our Enemy, who seeks to steal and kill and destroy. When we hear these things said to us, this creates a massive wound in our heart.

This is exactly what happened to King David when he was a teenager. David's oldest brother said, "Why have you come down here? And with whom did you leave those few sheep in the desert? I know how conceited you are and how wicked your heart is" (1 Sam 17:28). On that day, David learned that he was conceited and that he had a wicked heart. Lies! Greg's son, Garrison's favorite movie is about an ogre named Shrek. In the movie there is one scene where Shrek is talking to his sidekick, Donkey, about why we doesn't like to be around people: "I don't have a problem with people. It's people who seem to have a problem with me. They take one look at me and yell, 'stupid, ugly ogre'." Our teenagers have experienced the same thing as King David and Shrek — our hearts are under attack.