Parallel Bible results for "1 thessalonians 2"

1 Thessalonians 2

New Living Translation NLT

1 You yourselves know, dear brothers and sisters, that our visit to you was not a failure.

2 You know how badly we had been treated at Philippi just before we came to you and how much we suffered there. Yet our God gave us the courage to declare his Good News to you boldly, in spite of great opposition.

3 So you can see we were not preaching with any deceit or impure motives or trickery.

4 For we speak as messengers approved by God to be entrusted with the Good News. Our purpose is to please God, not people. He alone examines the motives of our hearts.

5 Never once did we try to win you with flattery, as you well know. And God is our witness that we were not pretending to be your friends just to get your money!

6 As for human praise, we have never sought it from you or anyone else.

7 As apostles of Christ we certainly had a right to make some demands of you, but instead we were like children among you. Or we were like a mother feeding and caring for her own children.

8 We loved you so much that we shared with you not only God’s Good News but our own lives, too.

9 Don’t you remember, dear brothers and sisters, how hard we worked among you? Night and day we toiled to earn a living so that we would not be a burden to any of you as we preached God’s Good News to you.

10 You yourselves are our witnesses—and so is God—that we were devout and honest and faultless toward all of you believers.

11 And you know that we treated each of you as a father treats his own children.

12 We pleaded with you, encouraged you, and urged you to live your lives in a way that God would consider worthy. For he called you to share in his Kingdom and glory.

13 Therefore, we never stop thanking God that when you received his message from us, you didn’t think of our words as mere human ideas. You accepted what we said as the very word of God—which, of course, it is. And this word continues to work in you who believe.

14 And then, dear brothers and sisters, you suffered persecution from your own countrymen. In this way, you imitated the believers in God’s churches in Judea who, because of their belief in Christ Jesus, suffered from their own people, the Jews.

15 For some of the Jews killed the prophets, and some even killed the Lord Jesus. Now they have persecuted us, too. They fail to please God and work against all humanity

16 as they try to keep us from preaching the Good News of salvation to the Gentiles. By doing this, they continue to pile up their sins. But the anger of God has caught up with them at last.

17 Dear brothers and sisters, after we were separated from you for a little while (though our hearts never left you), we tried very hard to come back because of our intense longing to see you again.

18 We wanted very much to come to you, and I, Paul, tried again and again, but Satan prevented us.

19 After all, what gives us hope and joy, and what will be our proud reward and crown as we stand before our Lord Jesus when he returns? It is you!

20 Yes, you are our pride and joy.

The Message Bible MSG

1 So, friends, it's obvious that our visit to you was no waste of time.

2 We had just been given rough treatment in Philippi, as you know, but that didn't slow us down. We were sure of ourselves in God, and went right ahead and said our piece, presenting God's Message to you, defiant of the opposition.

3 God tested us thoroughly to make sure we were qualified to be trusted with this Message.

4 Be assured that when we speak to you we're not after crowd approval - only God approval. Since we've been put through that battery of tests, you're guaranteed that both we and the Message are free of error, mixed motives, or hidden agendas.

5 We never used words to butter you up. No one knows that better than you. And God knows we never used words as a smoke screen to take advantage of you.

6 Even though we had some standing as Christ's apostles, we never threw our weight around or tried to come across as important, with you or anyone else.

7 We weren't aloof with you. We took you just as you were. We were never patronizing, never condescending, but we cared for you the way a mother cares for her children.

8 We loved you dearly. Not content to just pass on the Message, we wanted to give you our hearts. And we did.

9 You remember us in those days, friends, working our fingers to the bone, up half the night, moonlighting so you wouldn't have the burden of supporting us while we proclaimed God's Message to you.

10 You saw with your own eyes how discreet and courteous we were among you, with keen sensitivity to you as fellow believers. And God knows we weren't freeloaders!

11 You experienced it all firsthand. With each of you we were like a father with his child,

12 holding your hand, whispering encouragement, showing you step-by-step how to live well before God, who called us into his own kingdom, into this delightful life.

13 And now we look back on all this and thank God, an artesian well of thanks! When you got the Message of God we preached, you didn't pass it off as just one more human opinion, but you took it to heart as God's true word to you, which it is, God himself at work in you believers!

14 Friends, do you realize that you followed in the exact footsteps of the churches of God in Judea, those who were the first to follow in the footsteps of Jesus Christ? You got the same bad treatment from your countrymen as they did from theirs, the Jews

15 who killed the Master Jesus (to say nothing of the prophets) and followed it up by running us out of town. They make themselves offensive to God and everyone else

16 by trying to keep us from telling people who've never heard of our God how to be saved. They've made a career of opposing God, and have gotten mighty good at it. But God is fed up, ready to put an end to it.

17 Do you have any idea how very homesick we became for you, dear friends? Even though it hadn't been that long and it was only our bodies that were separated from you, not our hearts, we tried our very best to get back to see you.

18 You can't imagine how much we missed you! I, Paul, tried over and over to get back, but Satan stymied us each time.

19 Who do you think we're going to be proud of when our Master Jesus appears if it's not you?

20 You're our pride and joy!