1 Corinthians 9:26

¹⁰Therefore, brothers,^[+] be more diligent to make your calling and election sure. For if you do these things, you will never stumble.

⁵Also, if anyone competes in athletics, he isn’t crowned unless he has competed by the rules.

²¹For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.

²⁹for which I also labor, striving according to his working, which works in me mightily.

¹²For this cause I also suffer these things. Yet I am not ashamed, for I know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he is able to guard that which I have committed to him against that day.

²⁴“Strive to enter in by the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will seek to enter in and will not be able.

¹Therefore I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, and who will also share in the glory that will be revealed:

¹²For our wrestling is not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, against the powers, against the world’s rulers of the darkness of this age, and against the spiritual forces of wickedness in the heavenly places.

¹For we know that if the earthly house of our tent is dissolved, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens.

⁸We are courageous, I say, and are willing rather to be absent from the body and to be at home with the Lord.