Chapter One

ALL YOU WHO HAVE COME TO HIM

"Come unto me." - Matthew 11:28 | "Abide in me." - John 15:4

If you've heard and responded to the call "Come unto me," this new invitation "Abide in me" is for you. The message comes from the same loving Savior. You've never regretted coming at His call. You experienced that His word was truth, all His promises He fulfilled. He made you a partaker of the blessings and joy of His love. Wasn't His welcome most heartfelt, His pardon full and free, His love most sweet and precious? More than once, at your first coming to Him, you had reason to say, "The half was not told me."

And yet you've had to complain of disappointment. As time went on, your expectations weren't realized. The blessings you once enjoyed were lost. The love and joy of your first meeting with your Savior, instead of deepening, have become faint and feeble. Often you've wondered what the reason could be that with such a Savior, so mighty and so loving, your experience of salvation hasn't been a fuller one.

The answer is very simple: You wandered from Him. The blessings He gives are all connected with His "Come to ME," and can only be enjoyed in close fellowship with Himself. You either didn't fully understand, or didn't properly remember, that the call meant "Come to me to stay with me." This was His real purpose when first He called you to Himself.

It wasn't to refresh you for a few short hours after your conversion with the joy of His love and deliverance, and then to send you forth to wander in sadness and sin. He had destined you to something better than short-lived blessedness, to be enjoyed only in times of special earnestness and prayer, and then to pass away as you had to return to those duties where most of your life must be spent.

No, He had prepared for you an abiding dwelling with Himself, where your whole life and every moment could be spent, where the work of your daily life might be done, and where all the while you might be enjoying unbroken communion with Himself. It was even to this that He added the word "Abide in me."

As earnest and faithful, as loving and tender, as the compassion that breathed in that blessed "Come" was the grace that added this no less blessed "Abide." As mighty as the attraction with which that first word drew you were the bonds with which this second word, had you but listened to it, would have kept you. And as great were the blessings with which that coming was rewarded, so large, yes, and much greater, were the treasures to which that abiding would have given you access.

Notice especially: He didn't say "Come to me and abide with me," but "Abide IN me." The relationship wasn't only to be unbroken, but most intimate and complete. He opened His arms to press you to His heart. He opened His heart to welcome you there. He opened up all His divine fullness of life and love, and offered to take you up into its fellowship, to make you wholly one with Himself.

There was a depth of meaning you cannot yet fully realize in His words: "Abide IN ME."

And with no less earnestness than He had cried "Come to me" did He plead, had you but noticed it, "Abide in me." By every reason that had induced you to come, did He ask you to abide. Was it the fear of sin and its curse that first drew you? The pardon you received on first coming could, with all the blessings flowing from it, only be confirmed and fully enjoyed by abiding in Him.

Was it the longing to know and enjoy the Infinite Love that was calling you? The first coming gave only single drops to taste, it's only the abiding that can really satisfy the thirsty soul and give you to drink of the rivers of pleasure that are at His right hand.

Was it the weary longing to be made free from the bondage of sin, to become pure and holy, and so to find rest, the rest of God for the soul? This too can only be realized as you abide in Him. Only abiding in Jesus gives rest in Him.

Or if it was the hope of an inheritance in glory, and an everlasting home in the presence of the Infinite One, the true preparation for this, as well as its blessed foretaste in this life, are granted only to those who abide in Him.

In truth, there is nothing that moved you to come that doesn't plead with a thousandfold greater force: "Abide in Him." You did well to come. Who would, after entering the King's palace, be content to stand in the door when he's invited to dwell in the King's presence and share with Him all the glory of His royal life? Oh, let us enter in and abide, and enjoy to the full all the rich supply His wondrous love has prepared for us!

And yet I fear there are many who have indeed come to Jesus, and who yet have mournfully to confess that they know little of this blessed abiding in Him. Some never fully understood that this was the meaning of the Savior's call. Others, though they heard the word, didn't know that such a life of abiding fellowship was possible, and indeed within their reach.

Others will say that though they did believe such a life was possible and sought after it, they've never yet succeeded in discovering the secret of its attainment. And others, again, will confess that it's their own unfaithfulness that has kept them from the enjoyment of the blessing.

When the Savior would have kept them, they weren't ready to stay. They weren't prepared to give up everything and always, wholly, to abide in Jesus.

To all such I come now in the name of Jesus, their Redeemer and mine, with the blessed message: "Abide in me." In His name I invite them to come and meditate with me daily on its meaning, its lessons, its claims, and its promises.

I know how many difficulties and questions arise for many believers, especially young ones. There's especially the question, with its various aspects, about the possibility in the midst of exhausting work and continual distraction of keeping up, or rather being kept in, the abiding communion.

I don't pretend to remove all difficulties. Jesus Christ Himself alone must do that by His Holy Spirit. But what I would gladly do by the grace of God is repeat day by day the Master's blessed command "Abide in me" until it enters the heart and finds a place there, no more to be forgotten or neglected.

I would gladly, in the light of Holy Scripture, meditate on its meaning until the understanding opens to grasp something of what it offers and expects. So we'll discover the means of its attainment and learn to know what keeps us from it and what can help us to it. So we'll feel its claims and be compelled to acknowledge that there can be no true allegiance to our King without simply and heartily accepting this command and gazing on its blessedness until desire be inflamed and the will with all its energies be roused to claim and possess the unspeakable blessing.

Come, friends, and let us day by day set ourselves at His feet and meditate on this word of His, with our eyes fixed on Him alone. Let us set ourselves in quiet trust before Him, waiting to hear His holy voice, the still small voice that is mightier than the storm that rends the rocks, breathing its quickening spirit within us as He speaks: "Abide in me."

The soul that truly hears Jesus Himself speak the word receives with the word the power to accept and hold the blessing He offers.

And it may please You, blessed Savior, indeed to speak to us. Let each of us hear Your blessed voice. May the feeling of our deep need, and the faith of Your wondrous love, combined with the sight of the wonderfully blessed life You're waiting to bestow upon us, constrain us to listen and to obey as often as You speak: "Abide in me."

Let day by day the answer from our heart be clearer and fuller: "Blessed Savior, I do abide in You."

Originally written in 1865 by Andrew Murray. This modernized adaptation © 2026 by Father Media Group, LLC. Based on the public domain work by Andrew Murray.