2 Corinthians 6:1-13 - Afflictions Of God's Servants

¹ As God's fellow-worker I beg you too not to accept God's favor and throw it away. ² For He says: "At a welcome time I have listened to you, and on a day of salvation I have helped you." Right now the time of welcome is here; right now it is the day of salvation.

³ To keep my ministry from being found fault with, I am trying not to put a single hindrance in anybody's way. ⁴ On the contrary, I am trying in everything to prove to people that I am a true servant of God: by my tremendous endurance in sorrows, distresses, difficulties; ⁵ in floggings, imprisonments, riots, labors, sleepless nights, and hunger; ⁶ through my personal purity, my knowledge, my patience, my kindness; through the Holy Spirit, my genuine love, ⁷ my message of truth, and the power of God; with the weapons of right-doing in my right hand and my left; ⁸ in honor or dishonor, in slander or praise; considered a deceiver and yet true, ⁹ obscure and yet well-known, on the point of dying and yet I go on living, punished and yet not put to death, ¹⁰ sad but always glad, poor but making many people rich, penniless but really possessing everything.

¹¹ O Corinthians, my tongue is telling you everything; my heart is stretched with love for you. ¹² You are not squeezed into a tiny corner in my heart, but you are in your own affections. ¹³ To pay me back, I tell you, my children, you too must stretch your hearts with love for me.