Daily Bible GNT April 3 Verses

Shining as Lights in the World

¹²So then, dear friends, as you always obeyed me when I was with you, it is even more important that you obey me now while I am away from you. Keep on working with fear and trembling to complete your salvation, ¹³because God is always at work in you to make you willing and able to obey his own purpose.

¹⁴Do everything without complaining or arguing, ¹⁵so that you may be innocent and pure as God's perfect children, who live in a world of corrupt and sinful people. You must shine among them like stars lighting up the sky, ¹⁶as 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.

¹⁷Perhaps my life's blood is to be poured out like an offering on the sacrifice that your faith offers to God. If that is so, I am glad and share my joy with you all. ¹⁸In the same way, you too must be glad and share your joy with me.

Timothy and Epaphroditus

¹⁹If it is the Lord's will, I hope that I will be able to send Timothy to you soon, so that I may be encouraged by news about you. ²⁰He is the only one who shares my feelings and who really cares about you. ²¹Everyone else is concerned only with their own affairs, not with the cause of Jesus Christ. ²²And you yourselves know how he has proved his worth, how he and I, like a son and his father, have worked together for the sake of the gospel. ²³So I hope to send him to you as soon as I know how things are going to turn out for me. ²⁴And I trust in the Lord that I myself will be able to come to you soon.

²⁵I have thought it necessary to send to you our brother Epaphroditus, who has worked and fought by my side and who has served as your messenger in helping me. ²⁶He is anxious to see you all and is very upset because you had heard that he was sick. ²⁷Indeed he was sick and almost died. But God had pity on him, and not only on him but on me, too, and spared me an even greater sorrow. ²⁸I am all the more eager, then, to send him to you, so that you will be glad again when you see him, and my own sorrow will disappear. ²⁹Receive him, then, with joy, as a believer in the Lord. Show respect to all such people as he, ³⁰because he risked his life and nearly died for the sake of the work of Christ, in order to give me the help that you yourselves could not give.

This reading is from The Holy Bible, Today's English Version, Second Edition copyright © American Bible Society, 1992;
Old Testament copyright © American Bible Society, 1976, 1992; New Testament © American Bible Society, 1966, 1971, 1976, 1992.

These daily Bible readings from the Good News Translation (GNT), formerly the Today's English Version (TEV), are published by BibleNetUSA. The web site and BibleCard® designs are by iCreative. All BibleCard® images are copyrighted by iCreative. All rights reserved.