From Miletus he sent a message to Ephesus, asking the elders of the church to meet him.
When they came to him, he said to them: ‘You yourselves know how I lived among you the entire time from the first day that I set foot in Asia,
serving the Lord with all humility and with tears, enduring the trials that came to me through the plots of the Jews.
I did not shrink from doing anything helpful, proclaiming the message to you and teaching you publicly and from house to house,
as I testified to both Jews and Greeks about repentance towards God and faith towards our Lord Jesus.
And now, as a captive to the Spirit, I am on my way to Jerusalem, not knowing what will happen to me there,
except that the Holy Spirit testifies to me in every city that imprisonment and persecutions are waiting for me.
But I do not count my life of any value to myself, if only I may finish my course and the ministry that I received from the Lord Jesus, to testify to the good news of God’s grace.
Keep watch over yourselves and over all the flock, of which the Holy Spirit has made you overseers, to shepherd the church of God that he obtained with the blood of his own Son.
And now I commend you to God and to the message of his grace, a message that is able to build you up and to give you the inheritance among all who are sanctified.
In all this I have given you an example that by such work we must support the weak, remembering the words of the Lord Jesus, for he himself said, "It is more blessed to give than to receive." ’
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