Click this link to hear an audio version of the below text narrated by SOTH member Jerry Rhinehart:
John 15:10-17 (NIV)
10 If you keep my commands, you will remain in my love, just as I have kept my Father’s commands and remain in his love. 11 I have told you this so that my joy may be in you and that your joy may be complete. 12 My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you. 13 Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. 14 You are my friends if you do what I command. 15 I no longer call you servants, because a servant does not know his master’s business. Instead, I have called you friends, for everything that I learned from my Father I have made known to you. 16 You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you so that you might go and bear fruit—fruit that will last—and so that whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you. 17 This is my command: Love each other.
In his letter, John connects the three themes of loving God, loving one another, and keeping God’s commands. If you are born of God by the Spirit, you will do all three — they come as a package, and each reinforces the other. Here in John 15, Jesus himself explains this connection, but adds God’s wonderful promise of what happens when all three of these things are in our lives: we will bear much fruit and our joy will be full. In your prayer time, consider which of these three items — loving God, loving neighbor, keeping God’s commands — needs more attention in your life. Pray for the Holy Spirit to renew your life in that area.