Since I blamed God for my miserable childhood and left God, is it possible to return and be saved?
Question:
I've had a lot of anger toward God. When I was a child I was molested by a family member who lived in our house. My father was an alcoholic (he got help when I was in high school) who would abuse my mother, threaten to kill her and try to kill my mother in front of me and my siblings every week of my entire childhood. My siblings used to abuse me -- it wasn't sibling rivalry like people claimed. I have vivid memories of my brother taking weights for bar-lifting and beating me with it. Kids at school would bully me. I felt like He let this all happen to me, and I have had a lot of anger.
I won't shy away from the sins I have committed. I own up to them, I stopped being a Christian, I joined other faiths, I lied, slept with men, cheated, and committed countless other sins. I turned my back on God. Looking back, I feel like I did all of that because I was trying to hurt Him like I was hurt, but I didn't realize I was only hurting myself.
I met a good Christian man who caused me to look at what I was doing in my life and to change. Now that I've been changing and becoming a better person, I want to be who I once was. I know I can't undo my past, but I want to right my wrongs and have been doing so. I want to be a Christian again, but I'm scared because someone told me that God doesn't forgive those who stop believing in Him and believed in another god instead and turn to another faith -- you can never be a Christian or be saved again. Another person told me, it is only if I never care and never want to be saved that I can't be, but if I want to be saved, I always can be no matter the sin.
Am I too far gone to be saved? Or is it possible to return back to the flock?
Answer:
Instead of asking people, why don't you look to see what God said about the matter?
"But if the wicked man turns from all his sins which he has committed and observes all My statutes and practices justice and righteousness, he shall surely live; he shall not die. All his transgressions which he has committed will not be remembered against him; because of his righteousness which he has practiced, he will live. Do I have any pleasure in the death of the wicked," declares the Lord GOD, "rather than that he should turn from his ways and live?" (Ezekiel 18:21-23).
God doesn't view matters the way we do. He invites us to leave our sins and come up to His level of living.
"Seek the LORD while He may be found; call upon Him while He is near. Let the wicked forsake his way and the unrighteous man his thoughts; and let him return to the LORD, and He will have compassion on him, and to our God, For He will abundantly pardon. "For My thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are your ways My ways," declares the LORD. "For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts"" (Isaiah 55:6-9).
The only person stopping you from going back to the Father who loves you is you. Just as God wasn't the cause of all the misery in your childhood. God teaches that these sorts of things are wrong, evil, and should be punished. He promises to judge the wicked and to punish them if they don't leave their sins behind. So blaming Him for things done by people who have ignored God is not fair to God. And you can't blame God for your unwillingness to return when He is waiting for you to do just that. That is one of the points in Jesus' story about the prodigal son (Luke 15:11-32).
