Changed by Love

Featured song: A Love Song by Love Song, from the 1972 compilation album Jesus Sound Explosion.

I mentioned last time about the mind-set in the early to mid 1970s amongst some who had gone through the 1960s and who were disillusioned with how things actually turned out. So many groups had been speaking of love — love-ins, the “Summer of Love”, and “love is the way”, but what did they really get out of it? More sex did not result in more love; it just led to a continued search for that perfect experience, and still had the emptiness afterwards of the non-relationship. Even if they didn’t catch some STD, it still didn’t fill that empty hole in the heart.

Drugs were no better. “One pill makes you larger, and one pill makes you small,” sang the Jefferson Airplane. The expanded mind, whether using LSD or peyote or marijuana, was fine while the experience lasted. After it was over, life was just the way it was before.

And then we had this phenomenon appear, these people at coffe houses or concerts who were singing about … Jesus? What did religion have to do with the real, nitty-gritty, down-to-earth life anyway? As it turned out, quite a lot. The search for the perfect experience was actually a search for the Creator and the life He could provide. The search for “love” was the same thing — a longing for a real love that could accept me, regardless of who I was or what I had done.

For a week in June, 1972, an event was held in Dallas, Texas that had a profound effect on a large number of people, and re-directed many lives. Explo ’72 was organized by Campus Crusade for Christ, and was a conference with speakers who motivitated attendees to learn how to reach the world for Jesus. The week culminated in an outdoor Christian music festival held on June 17. The crowd in attendance has been estimated to be between 100,000 and 200,000, and the concert lasted eight hours, featuring many of the early musicians of the Jesus movement, including Randy Matthews, Armageddon Experience, Larry Norman, Danny Lee & The Children Of Truth, and even more famous performers, such as Johnny Cash. This music festival was a factor that ignited further interest in the whole genre of Jesus music (what later was labeled as Contemporary Christian Music), and launched some of the groups who performed there to national prominence. It also had a profound affect on many who attended, motivating them to spend their lives in Christian ministry.

One of the new Christian groups that performed at Explo ’72 was Love Song. The performance of their signature song was unique in the recitation of 1 Corinthians 13, the famous “love chapter” in the Bible. When I heard this recording, several years after the event, I was most struck by hearing this chapter, read from the Living Bible paraphrase. Hearing it in this unfamiliar form made the words have all the more impact to me, helping to nail down that this was what love was about, this was the love that everyone had been looking for. The perfect love that was described was a love that could only be obtained with a relationship with God through Jesus Christ.

Lend an ear to a love song
Ooh, a love song
Let it take you
Let it start

What can you hear in a love song
If you can feel it
Then you’re feeling
From the heart

All the emotion, true feelings of life
Is what music of love is about
If you are listening with peace in your heart
And no doubt

So listen now
To a love song
Ooh, a love song
Let it take you
Let it start

[spoken]
If I had the gift
of being able to speak in other languages
without learning them,
and could speak in every language there is
in all of heaven and earth,
but didn’t love others,
I would only be making noise.

If I had the gift of prophecy,
and knew all about what is going to happen
in the future,
knew everything
about everything,
but didn’t love others,
what good would it do?

Even if I had the gift of faith,
so that I could speak to a mountain
and make it move,
I would still be worth nothing at all
without love.

If I gave everything I had to poor people,
if I were burned alive for preaching the gospel,
but didn’t love others,
it would be of no value whatever.

Love is very patient
and kind,
never jealous
or envious,
never boastful
or proud,
never haughty
or selfish
or rude.

Love does not demand its own way,
it is not irritable or touchy,
it does not hold grudges,
and will hardly even notice
when others do it wrong.

It is never glad about injustice,
but rather rejoices
whenever the truth wins out.

If you love someone,
you’ll be loyal to him,
no matter what the cost.
You will always believe in him,
you will always expect the best of him,
and always stand your ground
in defending him.

All the special gifts and powers from God
will someday come to an end,
but love goes on forever.
Someday prophecy,
and speaking in unknown languages,
and special knowledge,
these gifts will disappear.

Now, we know so little,
even with our special gifts,
and the preaching of those most gifted
is still so poor.
But when we have been made
perfect and complete,
then the need for these inadequate special gifts
will come to an end,
and they will disappear.

It’s like this:
When I was a child,
I spoke
and thought
and reasoned
as a child does.
But when I became a man,
my thoughts grew far beyond
those of my childhood,
and now I have put away
the childish things.

In the same way,
we can see
and understand
only a little about God now,
as if we were peering
into a reflection
of a poor mirror.
But some day
we are going to see Him
in His completeness,
face to face.

Now, all that I know
is hazy
and blurred,
but then
I will see everything clearly,
just as clearly
as God sees into my heart
right now.

There are three things that remain:
Faith,
hope,
and love.
And the greatest of these
is love

[sung]
So listen now
To a love song
If you can hear it
We will never be apart.