Does God Still Love You After You’ve Failed?
👉🏻 Have you ever looked at your life and thought, "I've messed up too much."
Maybe there are:
Decisions you regret.
Relationships that still hurt.
Chapters of your story you wish you could erase entirely.
🧐 And while you may believe that God loves other people, it's much harder to believe that He loves you.
Because you know your story:
The mistakes.
The failures.
The moments you wish you could take back.
…all the things that you feel shameful over.
Can Your Past Mistakes Separate You From God’s Love?
👉🏻 What’s lingering below the shame is this lie: My past disqualifies me from God's love.
Whether that past was 3 minutes ago or 3 years ago.
Maybe you've never said those exact words. But perhaps you've believed:
"If God really knows everything about me, He can’t want me."
"Other people deserve grace more than I do."
"God can forgive some things, but not this."
"I've made too many mistakes."
🏅 The problem with this lie is that it turns God's love into something we qualify for.
But if that were true, who would qualify?
Because every single person who comes to God comes as a sinner.
Every single person comes with wounds.
Every single person comes with a past.
⁉️ Yet shame has a way of making us believe we're the exception. That somehow everyone else can be redeemed—but not us.
What the Bible Says About God’s Love for Broken People
👉🏻 Here's what I want you to know today, friend: God specializes in redemption.
Throughout Scripture, God is constantly moving toward broken people. Not away from them.
🤔 Think about the people God chose to work through:
Mary Magdalene had a past.
She had been possessed by seven demons. Yet she was healed by Jesus and then remained in His inner circle.
Rahab had a past.
She was a prostitute, yet she and her entire family was rescued in return for her hiding the Israelite spies.
Rahab then married an Israelite and is included in the genealogy of Jesus.
The Samaritan woman at the well had a past.
She had been married five times and, when Jesus approached her, was currently living with a man who wasn’t her husband. (Something that was greatly frowned upon in that time and culture.)
Yet Jesus specifically sought her out; He told her that He was the Messiah (which was the first time He had stated that to anyone, including His disciples); and because she believed Jesus and immediately went into her town to share about her interaction with Him, Jesus and His disciples ended up staying there for two days and, as a result, many people became believers.
💯 Again and again in the Bible, we see God choose imperfect people with complicated stories.
Not because He ignored their failures.
💓 But because His love was bigger than their failures.
One of the most beautiful things about God's character is that He isn't intimidated, shocked, or repelled by brokenness.
What to Do When You Think God Loves You Less Because You Failed
👉🏻 This week, I want to invite you to try a simple exercise.
Take a piece of paper (or open your notes app) and finish this sentence: "I think God loves me less because..."
Write whatever comes to mind.
Don't censor yourself.
Don't try to sound spiritual.
Just be honest.
Then look at what you've written and ask: "What does this reveal about what I believe God's character is like?"
Do you believe He's keeping score?
Do you believe He only loves people with perfect histories?
Do you believe His grace has limits?
⛓️💥 Sometimes healing begins when we identify the beliefs we've been carrying about God.
Not to shame ourselves for them. But to bring them into the light where truth can begin to replace them.
Action Step
Many women have unknowingly built their understanding of God on messages they've received from other people rather than on who He actually is.
If that's something you've been wrestling with, I invite you to take my free quiz, What's Your First Step to Fully Experiencing God’s Love?.
It's designed to help you gain clarity on your current view of God and identify your next step forward.