1: Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don't squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us.
2: God reminds us, I heard your call in the nick of time; The day you needed me, I was there to help. Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped.
3: Don't put it off; don't frustrate God's work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we're doing.
4: Our work as God's servants gets validated--or not--in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly... in hard times, tough times, bad times;
5: when we're beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating;
6: with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love;
7: when we're telling the truth, and when God's showing his power; when we're doing our best setting things right;
8: when we're praised, and when we're blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted;
9: ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die;
10: immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.
11: Dear, dear Corinthians, I can't tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life.
12: We didn't fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren't small, but you're living them in a small way.
13: I'm speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively! [JC]
14: Don't become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That's not partnership; that's war. Is light best friends with dark?
15: Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands?
16: Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God's holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way: "I'll live in them, move into them; I'll be their God and they'll be my people.
17: So leave the corruption and compromise; leave it for good," says God. "Don't link up with those who will pollute you. I want you all for myself.
18: I'll be a Father to you; you'll be sons and daughters to me." The Word of the Master, God.