You will need to start praying to God. Jesus prayed to God the Father who we tend to address as our Heavenly Father in prayer, or God, or Lord, or Lord God. You should feel remorse for your past sins and ask God for forgiveness of all of your sins, and with commitment, He will forgive you. If you ask forgiveness for a sexual sin, adultery, and then a week later you commit adultery again, your forgiveness from the week prior will be undone because you sinned in that way again. So you’ve got to repent again, and ask for forgiveness again, see. God expects us to learn to overcome temptation and stop sinning. God allows us to be tempted to be tested, and He expects us to (at least someday) get it right and get ourselves right. Choosing to be good can be hard, but it’s important to not just be forgiven, but to figure it out.
Always love and respect God, though you may not understand why things go the way they do. He wants us all to be good and follow His ways that He has prescribed for us in the Bible with the Ten Commandments and the examples of the Lord Jesus.
God is omnipresent, so He is always seeing what is going on with you in your life. He knows all and loves all to the degree that He sees through our own eyes. You can’t hide anything from God anywhere in the galaxy. Our disobedience of sin damages our relationship with God, so the change to turn to good is crucial.
These days there are various phone apps to guide you to help you pray, such as Hallow [Android, iOS] and Amen [Android]. Some are a free trial and then it’s a pay subscription. They may be useful to you if you develop a schedule and stick with it. You still need church, so find a church to start attending first.
Children were once taught to kneel on their knees at their bedside and pray before going to bed. This is a good practice for people of all ages, where you can close your eyes and in prayer, thank God for your day. You can speak out loud, mouth the words, or think it. They’re about the same, and God sees your intentions. (In some cases confessing with your mouth conceivably can carry more weight — example.) Maybe rather than thanking God for your day, you might express regret for what you did, or evil thoughts that crossed your mind, or regret for rudeness, or negative reactions, or regret for what you saw or heard. In either case, it’s important to work on your conscience and start, rekindle, or maintain the relationship with God.
In respectful conversation, confess to God your sins and ask for forgiveness early in the prayer. Give thanks. Tell God what you’re thankful for – whatever comes to mind. That is honoring God. Express your needs and things you would like help with. It’s good to pray for good things and outcomes for other people, too. Pray for family members, friends, and co-workers that they would have Christian blessings. It’s kind of a catch-all way of asking that they find Christianity and are in that way blessed.
At the end of your prayer, sign off with “In Jesus’ name, Amen.” Particularly with requests, we pray in the name of Jesus in faith that if our request is in God’s will, it will be done. Amen basically means “so be it”, or “may it be”, or “I believe”. Sometimes out in the world you hear somebody strongly say “Amen!” in response to something as a way of saying they agree.
Praying before bed is a good start. Pray in church on Sunday, too. Pray anytime you think to. Thank God for a beautiful sunrise or a beautiful day. Pray when in danger. Pray for safety when a bad storm is imminent. Start praying before every meal, even if you just think it, even if you don’t close your eyes, to give God thanks for your food.
Some suggest to set aside some time in the morning before the day really starts to read the Bible and pray some. Different people develop different habits. Be curious for Christian learning. You should seek to take your newfound faith seriously, and allow God to take you to new levels of depth.
Sometimes God or Jesus will answer you with what some describe as “a still, small voice”. God’s voice is a touch deeper. Some may hear it audibly, some hear it “internally”. Don’t worry about some supposed correlation with “hearing voices” and mental illness. Mental illness is caused by particular sins, so with a rational mind you should be A-OK.
I would suggest to pray the Lord’s Prayer at least every Sunday after having given some thought to how you have been behaving and if and how you’ve sinned recently. What we call the Lord’s Prayer was taught by Jesus Christ to His disciples in His earthly ministry, and it is really powerful.
The first commandment is “Love the Lord your God above all things”, and praying the Lord’s prayer is good to put you on that path of finding a relationship with God. It’s called piety, or being pious. That means a person loves God – they’re religious-minded. If we’re supposed to be “born again” then it’s the right way to be.
It’s okay that maybe this is all new – all of this Christian religion stuff – and maybe you don’t know what to entirely make of the new reality that you have to face of God and Jesus — things that you might have dismissed or outright rejected before. What’s important is that now you are at least aware of the truth of reality, and your eyes have been opened to the truth that God loves Humanity very specially, and that He has a plan for your salvation. All’s well that ends well. God Bless!
Next: Saying Grace