By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go out to a place he would later receive as an inheritance, and he went out without understanding where he was going.

By faith he lived as a foreigner in the promised land as though it were a foreign country, living in tents with Isaac and Jacob, who were fellow heirs of the same promise.

These all died in faith without receiving the things promised, but they saw them in the distance and welcomed them and acknowledged that they were strangers and foreigners on the earth.

Your conduct must be free from the love of money and you must be content with what you have, for he has said, “I will never leave you and I will never abandon you.”

In the same way, wives, be subject to your own husbands. Then, even if some are disobedient to the word, they will be won over without a word by the way you live,

Do not return evil for evil or insult for insult, but instead bless others because you were called to inherit a blessing.

They went up on the broad plain of the earth and encircled the camp of the saints and the beloved city, but fire came down from heaven and devoured them completely.

He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death will not exist any more – or mourning, or crying, or pain, for the former things have ceased to exist.”

Abram believed the Lord, and the Lord considered his response of faith as proof of genuine loyalty.

It is not with you alone that I am making this covenant by oath,

They abandoned the Lord and worshiped Baal and the Ashtars.

Now the day before Saul arrived, the Lord had told Samuel:

I was blameless before him; I kept myself from sinning.

Indeed, you are my lamp, Lord. The Lord illumines the darkness around me.

He then said to him, “Come home with me and eat something.”

Look, you have instructed many; you have strengthened feeble hands.

“As for you, if you prove faithful, and if you stretch out your hands toward him,

It claps its hands at him in derision and hisses him away from his place.

Does he not see my ways and count all my steps?

I too will answer my part, I too will explain what I know.