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📚Paul, an apostle✭ of Jesus Christ by the will of God✭, and Timothy✭ our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are in all Achaia✭: 2 📚Grace be to you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.Encouragement and comfort in trouble and suffering
3 📚✭✭Blessed be God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion✭ and the God of all encouragement✭, 4 📚who encourages us in all our trouble✭, that we may be able to encourage those who are in any trouble, with the encouragement we ourselves have from God. 5 📚For just as the sufferings of Christ✭ are in us in abundance, so our encouragement is also in abundance through Christ. 6 📚✭And if we are afflicted, it is for your encouragement and salvation, which is effective in patiently enduring the same sufferings that we also suffer. Or if we are encouraged, it is for your encouragement and salvation. 7 📚✭And our hope for you is firm, knowing that just as you are sharers in the sufferings, so you will also share in the encouragement.
8 📚For, brethren, we do not want you to be ignorant of our trouble which came to us in Asia✭. we experienced pressure✭ beyond measure, above strength, so that we even despaired of life. 9 📚But we had the sentence of death✭ in ourselves, so that we would not trust in ourselves, but in God who raises the dead. 10 📚✭He delivered us from so great a death, and continues to deliver, and we trust that he will deliver us, 11 📚✭you also helping together by prayer for us, so that many people will give thanks on our behalf for the gift of grace granted to us through the prayers of many.
Paul’s canceled journey to Corinth
12 📚✭For our boasting✭ is about this: the testimony of our conscience that in simplicity and godly sincerity, not with fleshly wisdom, but by the grace of God, we have had our behaviour in the world, and more abundantly toward you. 13 📚For we are writing nothing to you except what you read or understand. And I trust you will understand, even to the end, 14 📚as also you have understood us in part, that we are going to be your reason for boasting, just as you are going to be our reason for boasting, in the day✭ of the Lord Jesus.
15 📚✭✭And in this confidence I intended to come to you first, that you might benefit a second time, 16 📚and to come to you on the way to Macedonia, and to come again from Macedonia to you, and to be sent by you on my way to Judea. 17 📚So when I planned this, did I do so lightly? or in making plans do I plan according to the flesh, so that with me there will be “yes, yes” and “no, no”?
18 📚✭But as surely as God is faithful, our word to you was not “yes” and “no”. 19 📚For the Son of God, Jesus Christ, who was preached among you by us, by me and Silvanus and Timothy, was not “yes” and “no”, but in him was “yes”. 20 📚For all the promises of God in him are “yes”, and in him “Amen”, for the glory of God through us. 21 📚✭Now he who establishes us together with you in Christ, and has anointed✭ us, is God, 22 📚who has also sealed✭ us, and given the Spirit as a pledge✭ in our hearts.