5 Blessed is the man whose strength is in thee; In whose heart are the ways of them.
6 Who passing through the valley of Baca make it a well; The rain also nfilleth the pools.
7 They go from strength to strength, Every one of them in Zion appeareth before God.
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), Psalm 84:5–7.
8 Listen, my son, to your father’s instruction, and don’t reject your mother’s teaching,
9 for they will be a garland of grace on your head and a gold chain around your neck.
The Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2009), Proverbs 1:8–9.
1 My son, pay attention to my wisdom; listen closely to my understanding
2 so that you may maintain discretion and your lips safeguard knowledge.
3 Though the lips of the forbidden woman drip honey and her words are smoother than oil,
4 in the end she’s as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a double-edged sword.
5 Her feet go down to death; her steps head straight for Sheol.
6 She doesn’t consider the path of life; she doesn’t know that her ways are unstable.
7 So now, my sons, listen to me, and don’t turn away from the words of my mouth.
8 Keep your way far from her. Don’t go near the door of her house.
9 Otherwise, you will give up your vitality to others and your years to someone cruel;
10 strangers will drain your resources, and your earnings will end up in a foreigner’s house.
11 At the end of your life, you will lament when your physical body has been consumed,
12 and you will say, “How I hated discipline, and how my heart despised correction.
13 I didn’t obey my teachers or listen closely to my mentors.
14 I am on the verge of complete ruin before the entire community.”
Enjoy Marriage
15 Drink water from your own cistern, water flowing from your own well.
16 Should your springs flow in the streets, streams of water in the public squares?
17 They should be for you alone and not for you to share with strangers.
18 Let your fountain be blessed, and take pleasure in the wife of your youth.
19 A loving doe, a graceful fawn — let her breasts always satisfy you; be lost in her love forever.
20 Why, my son, would you be infatuated with a forbidden woman or embrace the breast of a stranger?
21 For a man’s ways are before the LORD’s eyes, and He considers all his paths.
22 A wicked man’s iniquities entrap him; he is entangled in the ropes of his own sin.
23 He will die because there is no discipline, and be lost because of his great stupidity.
The Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2009), Proverbs 5:1–23.
1 Let not your heart be troubled: ye believe in God, believe also in me.
2 In my Father’s house are many mansions: if it were not so, I would have told you. I go to prepare a place for you.
3 And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye may be also.
4 And whither I go ye know, and the way ye know.
5 Thomas saith unto him, Lord, we know not whither thou goest; and how can we know the way?
6 Jesus saith unto him, I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.
7 If ye had known me, ye should have known my Father also: and from henceforth ye know him, and have seen him.
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), John 14:1–7.
14 For Christ’s love compels us, since we have reached this conclusion: If One died for all, then all died.
15 And He died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the One who died for them and was raised.
The Ministry of Reconciliation
16 From now on, then, we do not know anyone in a purely human way. Even if we have known Christ in a purely human way, yet now we no longer know Him in this way.
17 Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation; old things have passed away, and look, new things have come.
18 Everything is from God, who reconciled us to Himself through Christ and gave us the ministry of reconciliation:
19 That is, in Christ, God was reconciling the world to Himself, not counting their trespasses against them, and He has committed the message of reconciliation to us.
20 Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, certain that God is appealing through us. We plead on Christ’s behalf, “Be reconciled to God.”
21 He made the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.
The Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2009), 2 Corinthians 5:14–21.
13 I am able to do all things through Him who strengthens me.
The Holy Bible: Holman Christian Standard Version. (Nashville: Holman Bible Publishers, 2009), Philippians 4:13.
5 Ye also, as lively stones, are built up a spiritual house, an holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.
The Holy Bible: King James Version, Electronic Edition of the 1900 Authorized Version. (Bellingham, WA: Logos Research Systems, Inc., 2009), 1 Peter 2:5.