A reader asked: I am a sinner, will god ever forgive me? I don’t know where to begin and ask god for forgiveness and I’m not sure whether to ask for forgiveness or not, I am a lost soul, the holy spirit has left me, I pray but it seems like my prayer doesn’t go anywhere and that god doesn’t hear me nor my prayer. I had an abortion.
Yes, God will forgive you. You need only to confess your sin to him as indicated in 1 John 1:9.
We become Christians by believing in Jesus Christ as Savior, knowing that His death on the cross saved us from all sin (Romans 3:23, Romans 6:23, John 3:16). God then forgives us in our ETERNAL state. Then, in our daily walk as Christians, when we continue to sin, we confess those sins to God, and he forgives us in our TEMPORAL state.
I too have felt like you do from time to time. I continue to sin, and I know that I have failed God. I also sometimes feel like God is not hearing my prayers. However, His word teaches that we simply need to confess our sins. He forgives us and we can start anew. He forgives and FORGETS those sins that we have confessed, and we don’t ever need to confess that occurrence of that sin again. No matter what we have done, we simply confess it to God. We then know that He has forgiven us, and since He will never look back upon that sin again, neither should we. I sometimes even pray that God will help me to forget things, and I believe that He does.
Once we become Christians, the Holy Spirit never leaves us, although we can still feel a loneliness due to our sin. The Bible teaches the doctrine of eternal security. In Philippians 2:14, the reference to becoming “children of God” suggests the type of relationship that Christians have with God. They are His children–his sons and daughters. Furthermore, just as we are naturally born as a product of our human fathers, we are spiritually born as a product of God the Father and His grace. In both cases, the birth establishes a relationship which can never be altered. One cannot undo a physical birth, so neither can he undo a spiritual birth. The eternal security of the believer is thus demonstrated by this analogy of children. Furthermore, Hebrews 13:5 says, “… Never will I leave you; never will I forsake you.”