2 Corinthians 10 in plain modern English. New Ground English Translation.

Now I, Paul, am making a personal appeal to you through the gentleness and consideration of The One — I who am supposedly "timid" when I'm with you face to face, but "bold" when I'm far away.

I'm asking you: please don't force me to be as bold in person as I'm fully prepared to be against certain people who think we operate by purely human standards.

Yes, we live in ordinary human bodies, but we don't fight our battles using ordinary human tactics.

The weapons we use are not the kind the world uses. Instead, they carry God's power to demolish fortified positions.

We tear down arguments and every arrogant idea that sets itself up against knowing God, and we take every thought captive to make it submit to The One.

And we're ready to hold accountable every act of defiance — once your own loyalty is fully in order.

Look at what's right in front of you! If anyone is convinced they belong to The One, they need to think again and realize that we belong to The One just as much as they do.

Even if I were to take my boasting a bit further about the authority the Lord gave us — authority for building you up, not tearing you down — I wouldn't be embarrassed by it.

I don't want to seem like I'm trying to scare you with my letters.

Because some people are saying, "His letters are heavy-hitting and powerful, but in person he's unimpressive, and his public speaking is terrible."

People like that should understand this: what we say through letters when we're away is exactly what we'll do when we're there in person.

We wouldn't dare put ourselves in the same category or even compare ourselves with certain people who are busy promoting themselves. When they measure themselves by their own standards and compare themselves to each other, they show a complete lack of understanding.

We, on the other hand, won't boast beyond proper limits. Instead, we'll stay within the boundaries of the assignment God measured out for us — an assignment that brought us all the way to you.

We aren't overstepping our limits by reaching out to you — after all, we were the first ones to come all the way to you with the good news about The One.

We don't boast about work done beyond our limits — work that other people did. Instead, our hope is that as your trust grows, our influence among you will expand greatly within our proper boundaries.

Then we can bring the good news to the regions beyond you, rather than boasting about work already done in someone else's territory.

But "if anyone is going to boast, let them boast in the Lord."

Because it's not the person who promotes themselves who is proven genuine — it's the person the Lord promotes.