“As the Father has loved me, so have I loved you. Abide in my love. If you keep my commandments, you will abide in my love, just as I have kept my Father's commandments and abide in his love. These things I have spoken to you, that my joy may be in you, and that your joy may be full.” – John 15:9-11, ESV

“I’ve loved you the way my Father has loved me. Make yourselves at home in my love. If you keep my commands, you’ll remain intimately at home in my love. That’s what I’ve done—kept my Father’s commands and made myself at home in his love.

I’ve told you these things for a purpose: that my joy might be your joy, and your joy wholly mature.” – John 15:9-11, MSG paraphrase

“Christ’s love to us is unaffected by our changeableness, but our enjoyment of His love depends upon our continuance in it. By this continuance in His love or our abiding… is meant our actual assurance of it our reposing in it. No matter how mysterious His dispensations be, no matter how severe the trials through which He causes us to pass, we must never doubt His immeasurable love for us and to us. The measure of His love for us was told out at he Cross, and as He is the same to-day as yesterday, therefore He loves us just as dearly now, every moment, as when He laid down His life for us. To abide in His love then is to be occupied with it, to count upon it, to be persuaded that nothing shall ever be able to separate us from it. Dwelling upon our poor, fluctuating love for Him, will make us miserable; but having the heart fixed upon His wonderous love, that love which, ‘passeth knowledge,’ will fill us with praise and thanksgiving. Very blessed and very searching is this. To abide in Christ is to abide in His love.” – A. W. Pink

Rather than give you even more words on John 15:9-11, I want to give you a few songs that have been helping me to obey Jesus’ command, “Abide in my love.” I realize the danger in this because, not all of our musical preferences are the same. Nonetheless, I provide these as starting points so that you can find something that fits you well but allows you to enter into that beautiful space where you aren’t holding on but, being held in the love Jesus has for you.

Abide With Me (hymn)/Audrey Assad version

Abide With Me (modern rework)/Maher/Ingram/Redman/Crowder version

Completely Known, Completely Loved/Papa/Boswell

The Sower’s Song/Andrew Peterson