because we recall in the presence of our God and Father your work of faith and labor of love and endurance of hope in our Lord Jesus Christ.

in that our gospel did not come to you merely in words, but in power and in the Holy Spirit and with deep conviction (surely you recall the character we displayed when we came among you to help you).

For you recall, brothers and sisters, our toil and drudgery: By working night and day so as not to impose a burden on any of you, we preached to you the gospel of God.

exhorting and encouraging you and insisting that you live in a way worthy of God who calls you to his own kingdom and his glory.

And so we too constantly thank God that when you received God’s message that you heard from us, you accepted it not as a human message, but as it truly is, God’s message, which is at work among you who believe.

We sent Timothy, our brother and fellow worker for God in the gospel of Christ, to strengthen you and encourage you about your faith,

to aspire to lead a quiet life, to attend to your own business, and to work with your hands, as we commanded you.

For we tell you this by the word of the Lord, that we who are alive, who are left until the coming of the Lord, will surely not go ahead of those who have fallen asleep.

Therefore encourage one another with these words.

and to esteem them most highly in love because of their work. Be at peace among yourselves.

And you became imitators of us and of the Lord, when you received the message with joy that comes from the Holy Spirit, despite great affliction.

For from you the message of the Lord has echoed forth not just in Macedonia and Achaia, but in every place reports of your faith in God have spread, so that we do not need to say anything.

For people everywhere report how you welcomed us and how you turned to God from idols to serve the living and true God

For we never appeared with flattering speech, as you know, nor with a pretext for greed – God is our witness –

because they hinder us from speaking to the Gentiles so that they may be saved. Thus they constantly fill up their measure of sins, but wrath has come upon them completely.

So when I could bear it no longer, I sent to find out about your faith, for fear that the tempter somehow tempted you and our toil had proven useless.

Consequently the one who rejects this is not rejecting human authority but God, who gives his Holy Spirit to you.

In this way you will live a decent life before outsiders and not be in need.

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a shout of command, with the voice of the archangel, and with the trumpet of God, and the dead in Christ will rise first.

For those who sleep, sleep at night and those who get drunk are drunk at night.