Matthew 5:25

⁵⁸For when you are going with your adversary before the magistrate, try diligently on the way to be released from him, lest perhaps he drag you to the judge, and the judge deliver you to the officer, and the officer throw you into prison. ⁵⁹I tell you, you will by no means get out of there until you have paid the very last penny.”

⁸Don’t be hasty in bringing charges to court. What will you do in the end when your neighbor shames you?

¹³but exhort one another day by day, so long as it is called “today”, lest any one of you be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.

⁶Seek the LORD while he may be found. Call on him while he is near. ⁷Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. Let him return to the LORD, and he will have mercy on him, to our God, for he will freely pardon.

³¹Or what king, as he goes to encounter another king in war, will not sit down first and consider whether he is able with ten thousand to meet him who comes against him with twenty thousand? ³²Or else, while the other is yet a great way off, he sends an envoy and asks for conditions of peace.

⁷Therefore, even as the Holy Spirit says, “Today if you will hear his voice,

²⁴“Strive to enter in by the narrow door, for many, I tell you, will seek to enter in and will not be able. ²⁵When once the master of the house has risen up and has shut the door, and you begin to stand outside and to knock at the door, saying, ‘Lord, Lord, open to us!’ then he will answer and tell you, ‘I don’t know you or where you come from.’

¹⁷For you know that even when he afterward desired to inherit the blessing, he was rejected, for he found no place for a change of mind though he sought it diligently with tears.

¹My son, if you have become collateral for your neighbor, if you have struck your hands in pledge for a stranger, ²you are trapped by the words of your mouth; you are ensnared with the words of your mouth. ³Do this now, my son, and deliver yourself, since you have come into the hand of your neighbor. Go, humble yourself. Press your plea with your neighbor. ⁴Give no sleep to your eyes, nor slumber to your eyelids. ⁵Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter, like a bird from the snare of the fowler.

²⁶The king of Israel said, “Take Micaiah, and carry him back to Amon the governor of the city and to Joash the king’s son. ²⁷Say, ‘The king says, “Put this fellow in the prison, and feed him with bread of affliction and with water of affliction, until I come in peace.”’”