He loves me. He loves me not. 

I plucked the white daisy petals, deciding the outcome of my childhood crush.

Years later during a Sunday church service, daisies on my dress stirred those memories as I waited for my pastor-husband Mike to call me to the platform. He’d asked me to share the long journey of praying for my father to come to Christ. First we watched the Billy Graham video, Hope for America—a Message of the Cross.

While I waited for my cue, the white-and-yellow daisies on a background of black seemed to blossom on my dress. The Lord put an image in my heart of plucking flower petals, representing a young girl’s hope for love. 

The image conveyed a message. Hope comes from the kind of love that went to the cross. 

Hope comes from the kind of love that went to the cross. @FridayKaren #hope #love
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He Loves Me Not

As a young girl, I longed for love—especially from a father. For a few years in childhood, my father was absent from my life, his love absent from my heart.

Starting in childhood we form beliefs about love. Beliefs about God often shape what we think about love. There may be unbelief in God’s existence. Or we may believe there’s a God but form wrong thoughts about His character and love.

God is...

• watching our every move, ready to bust us for every wrong turn and slap us with condemnation.
• like our earthly father who abandoned us physically or emotionally—perhaps both.
• a God who does not love us…a God we cannot count on.

God’s Love

You see, abandonment confused my notions on love. And I wasn’t sure what I thought about God. 

When my dad came back, I spent every other weekend with him. A self-proclaimed atheist, he often said, “People think there’s a God, but there isn’t.”

Yet, my mother introduced me and my twin sister to truths about God by taking us to a small-town church in Virginia. At sixteen, when I became a Christ-follower, I found the kind of love missing from my life. I became a daughter of the Most High God…my heavenly Father.

So, I started praying for my earthly father to not only believe in God, but to also accept Christ as Lord. Though I prayed fervently, I found it hard to visualize my father coming to Christ. He seemed unreachable with God’s love.

Sill, I knew Scripture confirmed, “Everyone who calls on the name of the Lord will be saved.” (Romans 10:13 NLT) 

And I knew, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16 ESV)

When I prayed, inserting my father’s full name into these Scriptures, they became promises of hope. Believable promises opening my faith eyes. “Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.” (Hebrews 11:1 NIV)

Finally, sixteen years later, my father accepted the message of the cross. A message of hope. He realized God existed—a God who loved him.

He Loves Me

Eight years ago my father passed away five days before Christmas. The holidays that year were bittersweet. My family would not be going to his home for our traditional Christmas night Mexican feast.

A lover of spicy food, he started the tradition knowing that by Christmas night, his kids and grandchildren were ready for a change from the usual holiday foods.

Yet, my father now celebrated with a his own feast in heaven. A sweet image.

God is not the earthly pictures we so often paint. But, there is a God. He is love. Love originated with Him and from Him. He loves us. God’s love is not conditional on anything we do or don’t do.

God's love is not conditional on anything we do or don't do. @FridayKaren #unconditional #love
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And His love is not based on some whimsical hope of the last flower petal landing on “He loves me.”

Instead, there’s a message forever ingrained on my heart. The hope of true love is found in the cross.

Plucking petals from a flower, we can never say about God, “He loves me not.”

It is always, “He loves me, He loves me. He loves me. He love me.”

He loves you!

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