… For we do not know how we ought to pray, but the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groans too deep for words.

Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall trouble or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or danger or sword?

As it is written: “For Your sake we face death all day long; we are considered as sheep to be slaughtered.”

For I am convinced that neither death nor life, neither angels nor principalities, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers,

neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord.

For I could wish that I myself were cursed and cut off from Christ for the sake of my brothers, my own flesh and blood,

Be joyful in hope, patient in affliction, persistent in prayer.

Rejoice with those who rejoice; weep with those who weep.

If your brother is distressed by what you eat, you are no longer acting in love. Do not by your eating destroy your brother, for whom Christ died.

For everything that was written in the past was written for our instruction, so that through endurance and the encouragement of the Scriptures, we might have hope.

For Christ did not send me to baptize, but to preach the gospel, not with words of wisdom, lest the cross of Christ be emptied of its power.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.

but we preach Christ crucified, a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles,

but to those who are called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.

We work hard with our own hands. When we are vilified, we bless; when we are persecuted, we endure it;

when we are slandered, we answer gently. Up to this moment we have become the scum of the earth, the refuse of the world.

So this weak brother, for whom Christ died, is destroyed by your knowledge.

Nevertheless, God was not pleased with most of them, for they were struck down in the wilderness.

But when we are judged by the Lord, we are being disciplined so that we will not be condemned with the world.

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.

We do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the hardships we encountered in the province of Asia. We were under a …

Indeed, we felt we were under the sentence of death, in order that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God, who raises the dead.

Now we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this surpassingly great power is from God and not from us.

We are hard pressed on all sides, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair;