This past Sunday morning, we continued in the "Summer Love" series focusing on verse 6 of 1st Corinthians 13, which says:

6 [Love] doesn’t revel when others grovel, takes pleasure in the flowering of truth. (the Message)

Two principles from Scripture were suggested:

1 - Love doesn't hope for wrong to come to others but rather hopes for others to find "right" even when they have done wrong.

2 - Love does not flourish in the soil of untruths but blossoms in the teachings of the One who is Truth.

While focusing on the 2nd principle, a group of thoughts was thrown up on screen. Two thoughts at a time, coupled together. The first, a lie we tend to live with. The second, the truth from the teachings of Jesus. Well, Andrew Peterson has a song that recently came out that summarizes the same principle and is worth sharing here. You should download the whole album, in my opinion, but I am a BIG Peterson fan. Nonetheless, here's the lyrics to the song "Fool with a Fancy Guitar" from Peterson's latest album, Counting Stars.

It’s so easy to cash in these chips on my shoulder
So easy to loose this old tongue like a tiger
It’s easy to let all this bitterness smolder
Just to hide it away like a cigarette lighter

It’s easy to curse and to hurt and to hinder
It’s easy to not have the heart to remember
That I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

I’ve got voices that scream in my head like a siren
Fears that I feel in the night when I sleep
Stupid choices I made when I played in the mire
Like a kid in the mud on some dirty blind street

I’ve got sorrow to spare, I’ve got loneliness too
I’ve got blood on these hands that hold on to the truth
That I am a priest and a prince in the Kindgom of God

I swore on the Bible to not tell a lie
But I’ve lied and lied
And I crossed my heart and I hoped to die
And I’ve died and died

But if it’s true that you gathered my sin in your hand
And you cast it as far as the east from the west
If it’s true that you put on the flesh of a man
And you walked in my shoes through the shadow of death

If it’s true that you dwell in the halls of my heart
Then I’m not just a fool with a fancy guitar
No, I am a priest and a prince in the Kingdom of God

Here's THE BOTTOM LINE:

The One who loves believes what the One who is love has said about His beloved. Then and only then do His beloved live out His unconditional, regardless-of-the-wrong-done, foundation-of-all-truth, always and forever love. May we love as we have been loved.

Come hang and worship with us Sunday morning if you can. We will focus in this text:

7 Puts up with anything, trusts God always, always looks for the best, never looks back, but keeps going to the end. (1st Corinthians 13:7, the Message)

Love you guys. Thankful to be learning love with and from you.

-jason