Children Are Gifts

From http://stmaryspearland.org/news/children-gifts-from-god

Because I cannot boast of announcing the Gospel:  I am bound to do it.  Woe to me if I do not preach the Gospel!  If a preached voluntarily, I could expect my reward, but I have been trusted this office against my will.  How can I, then, deserve a reward?  In announcing the Gospel, I will do it freely without making use of the rights given to me by the Gospel.

So, feeling free with everybody, I have become everybody's slave in order to gain a greater number.

To the weak I made myself weak, to win the weak.  So I made myself all things to all people in order to save, by all possible means, some of them.  This I do for the Gospel, so that I too have a share of it.

Have you not learned anything from the stadium?  Many run, but only one gets the prize.  Run, therefore, intending to win it, as athletes who impose upon themselves a rigorous discipline.  Yet for them the wreath is of laurels which wither, while for us, it does not wither.

So, then, I run knowing where I go.  I box but not aimlessly in the air.  I punish my body and control it, lest after preaching to others, I myself should be rejected.

1 Corinthians 9:16-19,22-27

"Lord, teach us to delight You in all our ways."

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