The righteous cry out, and the LORD hears; He delivers them from all their troubles.
The LORD is near to the brokenhearted; He saves the contrite in spirit.
Many are the afflictions of the righteous, but the LORD delivers him from them all.
He protects all his bones; not one of them will be broken.
Do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;
you were bought at a price. Therefore glorify God with your body.
But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is perfected in weakness.” Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest on me.
Brothers, I do not consider myself yet to have taken hold of it. But one thing I do: Forgetting what is behind and straining toward what is ahead,
I press on toward the goal to win the prize of God’s heavenly calling in Christ Jesus.
Of David, when he pretended to be insane before Abimelech, so that the king drove him away. I will bless the LORD at all times; His praise will always be on my lips.
My soul boasts in the LORD; let the oppressed hear and rejoice.
Magnify the LORD with me; let us exalt His name together.
I sought the LORD, and He answered me; He delivered me from all my fears.
Those who look to Him are radiant with joy; their faces shall never be ashamed.
. . .
But understand this: In the last days terrible times will come.
For men will be lovers of themselves, lovers of money, boastful, arrogant, abusive, disobedient to their parents, ungrateful, unholy,
I have set the LORD always before me. Because He is at my right hand, I will not be shaken.
Therefore my heart is glad and my tongue rejoices; my body also will dwell securely.
For You will not abandon my soul to Sheol, nor will You let Your Holy One see decay.
You have made known to me the path of life; You will fill me with joy in Your presence, with eternal pleasures at Your right hand.
Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and earth had passed away, and the sea was no more.
I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband.
And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying: “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man, and He will dwell with them. They will be His people, and God Himself will be with them as their God.
‘He will wipe away every tear from their eyes,’ and there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the former things have passed away.”
And the One seated on the throne said, “Behold, I make all things new.” Then He said, “Write this down, for these words are faithful and true.”
. . .
So I hated life, because the work that is done under the sun was grievous to me. For everything is futile and a pursuit of the wind.
I hated all for which I had toiled under the sun, because I must leave it to the man who comes after me.
He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ and ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ,
through whom we have gained access by faith into this grace in which we stand. And we rejoice in the hope of the glory of God.
Not only that, but we also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance;
perseverance, character; and character, hope.
And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out His love into our hearts through the Holy Spirit, whom He has given us.
. . .
What then shall we say in response to these things? If God is for us, who can be against us?
He who did not spare His own Son but gave Him up for us all, how will He not also, along with Him, freely give us all things?
Brothers, I could not address you as spiritual, but as worldly—as infants in Christ.
I gave you milk, not solid food, for you were not yet ready for solid food. In fact, you are still not ready,
for you are still worldly. For since there is jealousy and dissension among you, are you not worldly? Are you not walking in the way of man?
For when one of you says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” are you not mere men?
What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? They are servants through whom you believed, as the Lord has assigned to each his role.
. . .
Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you?
You yourselves are our letter, inscribed on our hearts, known and read by everyone.
It is clear that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
Such confidence before God is ours through Christ.
Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim that anything comes from us, but our competence comes from God.
. . .
Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the disciples of the Lord. He approached the high priest
and requested letters to the synagogues in Damascus, so that if he found any men or women belonging to the Way, he could bring them as prisoners to Jerusalem.
As Saul drew near to Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him.
He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, “Saul, Saul, why do you persecute Me?”
“Who are You, Lord?” Saul asked. “I am Jesus, whom you are persecuting,” He replied.
. . .
But because of His great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy,
made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in our trespasses. It is by grace you have been saved!
It was now just before the Passover Feast, and Jesus knew that His hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the very end.
The evening meal was underway, and the devil had already put into the heart of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, to betray Jesus.
Jesus knew that the Father had delivered all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was returning to God.
So He got up from the supper, laid aside His outer garments, and wrapped a towel around His waist.
After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and dry them with the towel that was around Him.
. . .
For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you.
But if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive yours.
Let me hear joy and gladness; let the bones You have crushed rejoice.
Hide Your face from my sins and blot out all my iniquities.
Create in me a clean heart, O God, and renew a right spirit within me.
Cast me not away from Your presence; take not Your Holy Spirit from me.
Restore to me the joy of Your salvation, and sustain me with a willing spirit.
Those who live according to the flesh set their minds on the things of the flesh; but those who live according to the Spirit set their minds on the things of the Spirit.
If anyone says, “I love God,” but hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God in Corinth, together with all the saints throughout Achaia:
Grace and peace to you from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort,
who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves have received from God.
For just as the sufferings of Christ overflow to us, so also through Christ our comfort overflows.
. . .
After this, Job opened his mouth and cursed the day of his birth.
And this is what he said:
“May the day of my birth perish, and the night it was said, ‘A boy is conceived.’
If only that day had turned to darkness! May God above disregard it; may no light shine upon it.
May darkness and gloom reclaim it, and a cloud settle over it; may the blackness of the day overwhelm it.
. . .
“To the angel of the church in Ephesus write: These are the words of Him who holds the seven stars in His right hand and walks among the seven golden lampstands.
I know your deeds, your labor, and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate those who are evil, and you have tested and exposed as liars those who falsely claim to be apostles.
Without growing weary, you have persevered and endured many things for the sake of My name.
But I have this against you: You have abandoned your first love.
Therefore, keep in mind how far you have fallen. Repent and perform the deeds you did at first. But if you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lampstand from its place.
. . .
As one of their own prophets has said, “Cretans are always liars, evil beasts, lazy gluttons.”
This testimony is true. Therefore rebuke them sternly, so that they will be sound in the faith
and will pay no attention to Jewish myths or to the commands of men who have rejected the truth.
To the pure, all things are pure; but to the defiled and unbelieving, nothing is pure. Indeed, both their minds and their consciences are defiled.