Bible Verses About Religious Zeal

For Macedonia and Achaia thought it would be good to make some contribution to the poor among God’s people in Yerushalayim.

They were pleased to do it, but the fact is that they owe it to them. For if the Gentiles have shared with the Jews in spiritual matters, then the Gentiles clearly have a duty to help the Jews in material matters.

So when I have finished this task and made certain that they have received this fruit, I will leave for Spain and visit you on my way there;

and I know that when I come to you, it will be with the full measure of the Messiah’s blessings.

And now I urge you, brothers, by our Lord Yeshua the Messiah and by the love of the Spirit, to join me in my struggle by praying to God on my behalf

that I will be rescued from the unbelievers in Y’hudah, and that my service for Yerushalayim will be acceptable to God’s people there.

Then, if it is God’s will, I will come to you with joy and have a time of rest among you.

For the Messiah did not send me to immerse but to proclaim the Good News — and to do it without relying on “wisdom” that consists of mere rhetoric, so as not to rob the Messiah’s execution-stake of its power.

we go on proclaiming a Messiah executed on a stake as a criminal! To Jews this is an obstacle, and to Greeks it is nonsense;

As for me, brothers, when I arrived among you, it was not with surpassing eloquence or wisdom that I came announcing to you the previously concealed truth about God;

for I had decided that while I was with you I would forget everything except Yeshua the Messiah, and even him only as someone who had been executed on a stake as a criminal.

Also I myself was with you as somebody weak, nervous and shaking all over from fear;

and neither the delivery nor the content of my message relied on compelling words of “wisdom” but on a demonstration of the power of the Spirit,

Yet there is a wisdom that we are speaking to those who are mature enough for it. But it is not the wisdom of this world or of this world’s leaders, who are in the process of passing away.

On the contrary, we are communicating a secret wisdom from God which has been hidden until now but which, before history began, God had decreed would bring us glory.

These are the things we are talking about when we avoid the manner of speaking that human wisdom would dictate and instead use a manner of speaking taught by the Spirit, by which we explain things of the Spirit to people who have the Spirit.

As for me, brothers, I couldn’t talk to you as spiritual people but as worldly people, as babies, so far as experience with the Messiah is concerned.

I gave you milk, not solid food, because you were not yet ready for it. But you aren’t ready for it now either!

After all, what is Apollos? What is Sha’ul? Only servants through whom you came to trust. Indeed, it was the Lord who brought you to trust through one of us or through another.

I planted the seed, and Apollos watered it, but it was God who made it grow.

So neither the planter nor the waterer is anything, only God who makes things grow —

So, you should regard us as the Messiah’s servants, as trustees of God’s secret truths.

Now the one thing that is asked of a trustee is that he be found trustworthy.

And it matters very little to me how I am evaluated by you or by any human court; in fact, I don’t even evaluate myself.

I am not aware of anything against me, but this does not make me innocent. The one who is evaluating me is the Lord.