Acts 18:3

¹²We toil, working with our own hands. When people curse us, we bless. Being persecuted, we endure.

⁹For you remember, brothers, our labor and travail; for working night and day, that we might not burden any of you, we preached to you the Good News of God.

⁸neither did we eat bread from anyone’s hand without paying for it, but in labor and travail worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you. ⁹This was not because we don’t have the right, but to make ourselves an example to you, that you should imitate us.

⁷Or did I commit a sin in humbling myself that you might be exalted, because I preached to you God’s Good News free of charge?

⁹When I was present with you and was in need, I wasn’t a burden on anyone, for the brothers, when they came from Macedonia, supplied the measure of my need. In everything I kept myself from being burdensome to you, and I will continue to do so.

¹³For what is there in which you were made inferior to the rest of the assemblies, unless it is that I myself was not a burden to you? Forgive me this wrong!

⁶Or have only Barnabas and I no right to not work? ⁷What soldier ever serves at his own expense? Who plants a vineyard, and doesn’t eat of its fruit? Or who feeds a flock, and doesn’t drink from the flock’s milk?

⁸Do I speak these things according to the ways of men? Or doesn’t the law also say the same thing? ⁹For it is written in the law of Moses, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it treads out the grain.”Is it for the oxen that God cares, ¹⁰or does he say it assuredly for our sake? Yes, it was written for our sake, because he who plows ought to plow in hope, and he who threshes in hope should partake of his hope. ¹¹If we sowed to you spiritual things, is it a great thing if we reap your fleshly things? ¹²If others partake of this right over you, don’t we yet more? Nevertheless we didn’t use this right, but we bear all things, that we may cause no hindrance to the Good News of Christ.

³⁴You yourselves know that these hands served my necessities, and those who were with me. ³⁵In all things I gave you an example, that so laboring you ought to help the weak, and to remember the words of the Lord Jesus, that he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”