How I wish I were with you now, so that I could take a different attitude toward you. I am so worried about you!

I am jealous for you, just as God is; you are like a pure virgin whom I have promised in marriage to one man only, Christ himself.

I am afraid that your minds will be corrupted and that you will abandon your full and pure devotion to Christ---in the same way that Eve was deceived by the snake's clever lies.

I am afraid that when I get there I will find you different from what I would like you to be and you will find me different from what you would like me to be. I am afraid that I will find quarreling and jealousy, hot tempers and selfishness, insults and gossip, pride and disorder.

I am afraid that the next time I come my God will humiliate me in your presence, and I shall weep over many who sinned in the past and have not repented of the immoral things they have done---their lust and their sexual sins.

I went because God revealed to me that I should go. In a private meeting with the leaders I explained the gospel message that I preach to the Gentiles. I did not want my work in the past or in the present to be a failure.

Listen! I, Paul, tell you that if you allow yourselves to be circumcised, it means that Christ is of no use to you at all.

Those of you who try to be put right with God by obeying the Law have cut yourselves off from Christ. You are outside God's grace.

I said, "I have worked, but how hopeless it is! I have used up my strength, but have accomplished nothing." Yet I can trust the LORD to defend my cause; he will reward me for what I do.

They traveled through the region of Phrygia and Galatia because the Holy Spirit did not let them preach the message in the province of Asia.

So then, my dear friends, stand firm and steady. Keep busy always in your work for the Lord, since you know that nothing you do in the Lord's service is ever useless.

as you offer them the message of life. If you do so, I shall have reason to be proud of you on the Day of Christ, because it will show that all my effort and work have not been wasted.

That is why I had to send Timothy. I could not bear it any longer, so I sent him to find out about your faith. Surely it could not be that the Devil had tempted you and all our work had been for nothing!

Be on your guard, then, so that you will not lose what we have worked for, but will receive your reward in full.