Hymns: In Heavenly Love Abiding

I’ve been exploring some of the very modern worship songs as an old guy 😀. But now, I’ve decided to alternate between very modern hymns, old hymns, and in-between hymns, namely the worship songs from the 60s to the 90s that feature in hymnbooks such as Mission Praise. Today it’s the turn of the old hymns.

Today’s song is In Heavenly Love Abiding from 1850.

I remember first hearing this on a Friday night Bible study in Westminster Chapel, London, back in 1983. Perhaps I sang it back in Cork Baptist Church, because it did sound familiar. But whenever I hear it now, I think of Westminster Chapel. At the time, the minister, R.T. Kendall was going through Hebrews 3 and 4. I absolutely loved the series – where Kendall emphasized entering God’s rest. He saw it as a time, sometimes after committing your life to Christ, when you draw particularly close to God. For some, it can be an amazing experience. His predecessor, Martin Lloyd Jones saw that as being baptized in the Holy Spirit. Sometimes, in Pentecostal and charismatic circles, being baptised in the Holy Spirit became a little like a ritual – something that you’d have to go through or claim to have gone through to be accepted as a “proper” believer. But for Martin Lloyd Jones, he sought the real thing. But a really powerful genuine experience of the Holy Spirit can be rare. Yet, the Holy Spirit is active at all times. Everyone’s experience is different.

It’s the sort of thing that caused much debate and division. But R.T. Kendall has always impressed me. Many in my circles saw him as being a little too open to what some deem as the silly or sinister side of evangelicalism. An example of that was the “Toronto Blessing” back in the 1990s, where people would make animal sounds in worship 😀.

I remember two books were published some years ago that took opposing approaches to modern Pentecostal/charismatic movements – one my John MacArthur, the other by R.T Kendall – bot made some valid points – I don’t entirely side with either outlook:

And Westminster Chapel has changed quite a bit from the days of Martyn Lloyd Jones. If you want an old style conservative reformed church, The Metropolitan Tabernacle at Elephant & Castle is the place to go. And I’ve enjoyed the minister of Peter Masters (it’s minister) over the years. But I don’t like to totally dimiss the more modern movements, who’ve had amazing success in spreading the gospel and often have a very high level of faith and expectancy. I have often criticized them and sneered at them. They sometimes seem silly, but maybe we’re all a bit silly in God’s sight. I would like to attend Westminster Chapel nowadays and observe how much it’s changed. Here are a couple of videos.

Anyway, I’m pleased that it hasn’t been demolished, turned into a liberal/modernist church or turned into a Wetherspoons pub – though I do like Wetherspoons 😀. And you can get all Martin Lloyd Jones‘s old sermon free online. And in heaven, everything will be as it was in 1966 – or maybe it won’t 😀.

I still see myself as conservative/reformed. But I try to like everyone and “see the cup half-full”. I didn’t mind being a grumpy young man, but I don’t like the idea of being a grumpy old man. But it’s fine to explore the strengths and weakness of each movement, but when I meet people from other churches and movements, they’re not all that different in their outlook from each other. The New Testament emphasizes both sound doctrine and unity.

Anyway, here are some other versions of the hymn. I should write more about the hymns, but I’d only be plagurising it all from AI – so I prefer to just ramble about me and my experiences 😀. But if you want to know about the hymn, open Google Gemini and ask: “list facts about the In Heavenly Love Abiding hymn”