A podcast listener named Becky writes in with a level of desperation in her words to ask this, "Pastor John, when I first came to Christ I was obsessed with Him, on fire and in love with Him. Slowly that started to fade even though I wanted Him so badly. My husband deployed for six months, we had a bad marriage and it's like I never knew the Lord at all.

I committed adultery, turned to pornography, began to do drugs and drink alcohol, cut myself, stopped reading my Bible and stopped praying. God tested my faith and I failed miserably for those six months. Over a year of not feeling God's presence at all, I can't even mentally journal or pray or read my Bible anymore, I can't do it and nobody understands.

I feel that if I were truly saved my sin would have gotten smaller and less desirable as Jesus became more desirable, but it didn't. He didn't. The thing is I know I loved Jesus. Now all I feel is separation from God. I hardly even feel guilty for the things I did, if at all.

I'm terrified of God. I'm terrified for my salvation. I want Him, I miss Him, I need Him, but nobody, nobody understands me. I want to be saved and I don't think I am. I need help. Why is my heart so hardened? Why doesn't God want me back? Can you help me?" Becky, your cry for help is mingled with evidences of hope, like a want to be saved, and terrors of hopelessness, like I'm getting farther and farther away, like a ship sailing to the end of the world or a boat going over a waterfall.

Now from my distance here, I don't know you well enough to have any clear sense of whether in fact you are born again, but I want to take encouragement from your own testimony that you once loved Christ. You said so. I want to take encouragement from that, but whether or not that's true could have been fake for all I know or even you know.

That's not the issue now. I want to help you with this. That's not the issue now. The issue now is not the past. The issue is the present and the future. Don't drive yourself crazy trying to analyze the authenticity of the horrible and glorious past. You'll never figure it out.

That's just not where assurance is going to be found. Faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the Word of God. Faith comes from seeing God at work, often in the lives of others. So let me simply give you some beautiful truth from God's Word and then a few stories from God's faithfulness to people like you, and I'm praying now that God might use this to miraculously, not because you deserve it or I'm effective, but miraculously awaken new, fresh, sure faith.

So two passages of Scripture. Let me just read them to you as you listen and pray that God would make them beautiful. This is Micah, the prophet Micah. I sang a song yesterday based on this text. Who is a pardoning God like you? And who has grace so rich and free?

And who has grace so rich and free? That song that I love very much comes out of this text. It goes like this. Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over transgression? In other words, Becky, there's no God like this. He pardons iniquity. He passes over transgression for the remnant of his inheritance.

He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love. And I would add, way more than judgment. He delights in it. This is his first choice. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread down our iniquities underfoot. Do you hear that, Becky? Not tread you down.

He will tread down our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all our sins into the depths of the sea. You will show faithfulness to Jacob and steadfast love to Abraham as you have sworn to our fathers from of old. So in Christ, this promise is yours. Who is a pardoning God like thee?

And who has grace so rich and free? That's Micah 7, 18 to 20. And here's the other text, 1 Timothy 1, 15. Paul says, "The saying is trustworthy and deserving of full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am foremost." I think Paul is saying to you, Becky, there, "You're not the foremost.

I am." Don't compete with Paul here. He is trying to make a case for why mercy shown to him can be mercy shown to you, because he's the foremost. He says, "I received mercy for this reason, that in me as the foremost, Jesus Christ might display his perfect patience as an example to those like Becky who were to believe in him for eternal life, though they were sinners like me." Verse 17, "To the King of Ages, immortal, invisible, the only God be honor and glory forever and ever.

Amen." Indeed, honor and glory for such patience. So those are two passages, Micah 7, 18 to 20, 1 Timothy 1, 15 to 17. Meditate on them long and hard. Quick three stories. 1975, Munich, Germany. John Piper is sitting in a German church, learning my German. I was getting enough that I loved this story.

I've never forgotten it. A woman standing in white, ready to be baptized. She gave her testimony, and her testimony was that she lived all her life as a Jehovah's Witness, and she could never, ever be sure that she was saved. It was driving her crazy. There was no assurance of salvation, and she came to the point of deciding, "I cannot go on like this.

I'm certainly gonna take my life." Somehow, God put it in her heart that before she took her life, she would kneel down and open her Bible and read one more time the Gospel of Luke right through, and then she would take her life. And she said that as she got to the end of the book and she saw Jesus in the garden, agonizing with sweating drops of blood to be obedient for sinners and pay their complete price, God saved her soul and removed all doubt and gave her the gift that Jesus is real and he has covered her sin.

And she was standing there ready to be baptized two days later. And I thought, "What a marvelous rescue." And he can do that, Becky. Here's the second story. Just this week, I was talking to a PhD in theology, asking to tell me his life story, and he told me that he grew up in a Christian home, and when he studied in the university, he threw it all away.

He became a relativist, a postmodern, no truth, and lived like it for five years. And then he read, for whatever gracious reason, who knows, God put him on to reading a book about the resurrection, and God persuaded him, "Jesus really is raised from the dead. I can't escape this, and if Christ is raised from the dead, everything changes." And it did for him.

And I said, "How do you account for that?" And he got huge tears in his eyes. I had no idea he was gonna tear up in this conversation. Didn't seem like the person who would do that. And he had no explanation except sheer intervention of divine grace. And the last story, quickly.

In 1982, when I was two years into the pastorate, I was reading in Leadership magazine, and there was an article there, it's become iconic for many people. It was called "The War Within," and it was about bondage to sexual sin by a pastor, and how for ten years he was an absolute hypocrite.

He would go to speak at spiritual retreats, and between sessions he would steal away and actually go to strip clubs. That's how serious the bondage was. And the article was about how he read a novel, and God used a novel about good and evil to open him up to the desire for purity like he'd never known, and this is the one sentence I remember, and maybe this will give some encouragement.

He wrote this, "I cannot tell you why a prayer that has been prayed for ten years is answered on the one thousandth request when God has met it for the first nine hundred and ninety-nine with silence." And so Becky, you can read that article. I mean, it's a male-oriented article, but I just googled it, "Leadership, War Within, Lust," and there it came up.

Becky, God may surprise you. I'm praying that he will surprise you stunningly that a prayer you've prayed a thousand times will be answered on the one thousand and first time. I don't know why he has delayed, Becky. I don't have an answer for your question about why does God stay far away.

I don't know why God's timing is the way it is. I just know you're not the first. You're not alone, and Jesus in fact told you a parable to the effect—this is Luke 18, 1—he told them a parable to the effect that they ought always to pray and not lose heart.

So Becky, don't give up. Your answer may be just over the horizon. That is a great word. Thank you for this hope, Pastor John, and Becky, I pray that this episode will serve your soul in these few minutes together. It's not uncommon for us to receive desperate emails like this one.

If you want to reach out to us with a question that we can air on the podcast, please email it to me at askpastorjohn@desiringgod.org. Well, tomorrow we return and we're going to talk about parents who feel that grandparents and seeking to spoil their grandkids are not serving those grandkids.

What are parents and grandparents to do? There's a better way forward, and we'll hear from Grandfather John Piper on that tomorrow. I'm your host Tony Ranke. Thanks for listening to the Ask Pastor John podcast.