here's why...

Just as young people need relationships, they need prayer. Young people are ripe for prayer because the core human struggles are so apparent in adolescence. Teenagers stand at the threshold of adult desires, with hearts that are soft and awake. Questions of identity and feelings of longing and suffering are breaking open in young people for the first time. They cry more often. They fall in love easily. They crave and seek friendships. They're inclined towards the ecstatic. We teach young people to pray so they'll know they're not alone; so they might find the source and endpoint of their restless desires; so they might find comfort and healing within an increasingly heartless and destructive world. To invite youth into prayer is to invite them to discover God within the heart of human experience.

Mark Yaconelli
Helping Teenagers to Pray