Why Love1614? The Story Behind the Name

I have four numbers tattooed on the inside of my left wrist. 1614.

Not a cross. Not a fish. Not a dove. Just four numbers, small enough that you might not notice them in a normal conversation. Visible enough that I can see them every time I look down at my hands.

I look down at my hands a lot.

Those four numbers are a reference to 1 Corinthians 16:14: "Let all that you do be done in love." And they are the reason this brand exists, the reason you are reading this, and the reason I get up every morning and walk the boardwalk in Long Beach, New York before the world wakes up, trying to figure out how to live a life that actually means something.

But before I tell you about the verse, I need to tell you about the man who needed it.

The Man Before the Verse

I spent my twenties on the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. If you have never been on that floor, it is not a quiet place. It is loud, physical, fast, and organized around one question: what is in it for me?

The deal was simple. The bosses handed you a credit card. They sent a limo. You went everywhere, and your job was to make sure everyone around you was taken care of. Drinks, dinners, all of it. The next day you came back and traded. From the outside, it looked like the best life anyone could have. You are 22, 23 years old, and you are living like a rock star. You think you have figured something out that other people have not.

Here is what I know now that I did not know then: between the booze and the drugs, I did not even know myself. And if you do not know yourself, how are you going to have a real relationship with anyone? How can you love someone when you cannot even locate yourself?

I cursed God. I am not proud of that. But there was a season when I looked up at whatever I thought was up there and said things that were not prayers. I was angry and empty and convinced that if God existed, He had either made a mistake with me or was not paying attention.

I was wrong about that. But I did not know it yet.

The Stranger on the Boardwalk

One day I was sitting on my deck in Long Beach. Guitar in my lap, the ocean straight ahead, the boardwalk doing its thing below me. From the outside I probably looked like a man who had it all figured out. Relaxed. Settled.

I was not fine.

And a guy came up to me. Not a neighbor. Not someone I knew. Just a guy who wandered over from the boardwalk. A burnout type. Probably a stoner. The kind of guy you do not immediately think of as a messenger from God.

He did not move on quickly. He just started talking. Easy, relaxed, no agenda. And somewhere in the conversation, without any buildup or ceremony, he said: hey man, I know a really cool church. You should check it out.

That was the whole pitch. No theological argument. No pamphlet. Just a guy who wandered up to a man sitting on his deck on one of his worst days and said he knew a cool church.

I was sitting in my own space. In my own chair. On my own deck. And God sent someone up the steps anyway.

That church was Centerpoint. And what happened there changed everything.

The Verse That Changed Everything

1 Corinthians 16:14 sits at the very end of Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth, one of the most broken communities in the ancient world. A church full of factions, selfishness, competition, and people who had all the right spiritual tools and none of the love.

Paul spent fifteen chapters diagnosing every problem in that church. And then, at the very end, he stepped back and wrote the prescription in five words: do everything in love.

Not "do the important things in love." Not "do the church things in love." Everything. The Greek word is panta. All things. No exceptions.

Your business dealings. Your emails at eleven at night. Your parenting on the hard days. Your driving. The way you handle conflict. The way you talk about people who are not in the room. Your silence when you should speak. Your words when you should be silent.

Everything.

That verse found me at a time when I was running on the exact opposite operating system. Accumulate. Display. Dominate. Perform. And it asked me to change everything. Not just to be nicer. To rebuild from the foundation.

I put it on my wrist because I needed to see it. Not once. Every day. Every board meeting where I want to snap back. Every moment in the car when someone cuts me off. Every decision I make for this brand. 1614 is not decorative. It is a question I ask myself all day long: is this being done in love?

Why Love1614 Exists

Love1614 is not a business I built for myself. It is a mission I am building because of what that verse cost me to understand.

Every shirt, every mug, every book, every piece of content we put into the world is supposed to point people toward a personal relationship with Jesus and through that relationship into a community of believers where more people can find what I found. Where more people can hear what I heard over the book of Amos in a Tuesday night life group when the Holy Spirit opened the Word to me for the first time. Where more people can feel what I felt when God sent a stranger off the boardwalk to find me on one of my worst days.

That is the mission. Not the revenue. The mission.

My left wrist says 1614. Do everything in love. It is the hand that wraps around the neck of a guitar, that presses down the strings, that makes the music. The love hand. The one that reaches toward people.

My right wrist says Psalm 118:8. It is better to take refuge in the Lord than to trust in man. It is the hand I extend when I walk into a room. The handshake hand. The one the world sees first.

Love people fully. Trust God completely. Everything I need to know about life is written on my wrists.

What You Will Find Here

This blog is where the mission lives between the products. Devotions rooted in Scripture. Stories from the journey. Practical faith for real life. Gift guides for the people you love. Content from our books. All of it built on the same foundation: let all that you do be done in love.

Whatever you did, it does not matter. You are a child of the King. God loves you. He is waiting for you. He is looking down the road. He is already running toward you.

Welcome to Love1614.

"Let all that you do be done in love.", 1 Corinthians 16:14