³² Do not be afraid, little flock, because your Father is pleased to give you the kingdom. ³³ Sell your possessions and give to the needy. Provide money bags for yourselves that do not become old, a treasure in the heavens that will not fail, where no thief comes near and no moth destroys. ³⁴ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

Be Ready!

³⁵ “Be dressed, ready for service, and keep your lamps burning. ³⁶ Be like people waiting for their master to return from a wedding banquet, so that when he comes and knocks they can immediately open the door for him. ³⁷ Blessed are those servants, whom the master will find watching when he comes. Amen I tell you: He will dress himself and have them recline at the table, and he will come and serve them. ³⁸ Even if he comes in the second or third watch,^[a] they will be blessed if he finds them alert. ³⁹ But know this: If the master of the house had known at what hour the thief was coming, he would have watched and not allowed his house to be broken into. ⁴⁰ You also be ready, because the Son of Man is coming at an hour when you are not expecting him.”

Faith

11 Faith is being sure about what we hope for, being convinced about things we do not see. ² For by this faith the ancients were commended in Scripture.^[a]

³ By faith we know that the universe was created by God’s word, so that what is seen did not come from visible things.

⁸ By faith Abraham obeyed when he was called to go to a place that he was going to receive as an inheritance, and he left without knowing where he was going.

⁹ By faith he lived as a stranger in the Promised Land, as if it did not belong to him, dwelling in tents along with Isaac and Jacob, who were heirs with him of the same promise. ¹⁰ For he was looking forward to the city that has foundations, whose architect and builder is God.

¹¹ By faith Abraham also received the ability to conceive children, even though Sarah herself was barren and he was past the normal age, because he considered him faithful who made the promise.^{[a] 12} And so from one man, and he as good as dead, descendants were born as numerous as the stars in the sky and as countless as the sand along the seashore.

¹³ One by one, all of these died in faith, without having received the things that were promised, but they saw and welcomed them from a distance. They confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth. ¹⁴ Indeed, people who say things like that make it clear that they are looking for a land of their own. ¹⁵ And if they were remembering the land they had come from, they would have had an opportunity to return. ¹⁶ Instead, they were longing for a better land—a heavenly one. For that reason, God is not ashamed to be called their God, because he prepared a city for them.