Does God still want me after I have failed?

Underneath most of the reasons people give for staying away from God, I have found one fear wearing all the coats: if I am ever fully known, I will be finally cast away. Perhaps you have never said it aloud. The woman at Jacob’s well never said it either; she just arranged her whole day around the faces she could not bear to meet, drawing water at noon when no one comes.

So watch carefully what happened to her, because she is the test case for your question. Jesus told her all things that ever she did: five marriages, and the man at home now not her husband. She was fully known, in full daylight, by the holiest person who ever lived. And the exposure did not scorch her. Being fully known by Him became, that same afternoon, the best news she had ever carried; she left her waterpot and ran to tell the town she had been avoiding.

Now set beside her story the sentence this whole book leans on, spoken by Jesus with no conditions attached:

In no wise. The old words are strong on purpose: in no case, by no means, under no telling of the story. He did not say, him that cometh early. He did not say, him that cometh for the first time, or him that cometh with a clean record since last time. He said, him that cometh. The only person that promise cannot reach is the one who will not come.

I know what shame answers back: but I keep failing the same way. Hear this, then. The prodigal in the far country rehearsed a servant’s speech, and his father ran to him while he was yet a great way off, and the speech was smothered in the embrace (Luke 15:20). The father was not waiting with folded arms to review the record. He was watching the road.

So the practical answer to your question is a direction, not a feeling: come back. Come back today, come back tomorrow, come back the day you fail worst and the day you are applauded most, until coming back is simply the way you walk. Grace exposes in order to turn a person toward the truth, never to drive them from the door. The door has one sentence carved over it, and it is His, not mine.

You asked whether God still wants you. The cross is His answer in full, and it has not changed its mind this week. Your part is one step long: the coming.