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Paul sent Timothy to the Christians at Thessalonica
1-2 But back at the time just after we left you, we worried about you for a while. We didn’t know if you kept on trusting Jesus or not. We tried to go back to find out about you, but we couldn’t do it. And we couldn’t wait to get some news about you. So we reckoned, “We’ll send Timothy by himself, and we’ll stay here in this city called Athens and wait for him to come back.” Timothy is like our brother. He works with us for God, telling people the good news about Jesus Christ.
We sent Timothy to you so that he could help you to be strong and to trust Jesus better.
3 We knew that people would give you trouble, and we didn’t want any of you to stop following Jesus. You yourselves know that you get trouble for following Jesus.
4 This is what we told you when we were still with you, we said, “Some people will give you trouble.” And soon that happened, just like we said.
5 And I really worried about you. I thought, “You Christians in Thessalonica are very new Christians. Maybe the boss over the bad spirits gave you too much trouble. Maybe he tricked you, so that you don’t trust Jesus any more. Maybe we worked for nothing there in Thessalonica.” That’s what I was thinking, but I didn’t really know the true story. And when I couldn’t wait any longer, I had to send Timothy to find out the true story about you.
Timothy came back with good news
6 And now Timothy has just come back to us, and he brought us good news about you. He told us that you still believe in Jesus Christ, and you still love God, and you still love other people. He said that every time you remember us, it makes you happy, and you want to see us again, just as much as we want to see you again. That is the story Timothy told us.
7 We heard that news about you, our Christian friends, and we were very happy. After we heard it, we got braver and stronger for God. It doesn’t matter to us if people give us trouble and hit us. You still trust Jesus, so we are happy.
8 We heard that you strongly believe in our leader, Jesus, and now we feel properly alive again.
9 You make us so happy that we pray to God and thank him for you. We can’t thank him enough.
10 We are always praying to God, both in the day time and at night time, and we are strongly asking him to let us visit you again. There are still some things we need to tell you about Jesus so that you can trust him even more.
Paul wanted God to help the Christians at Thessalonica
11 Yes, we want God, our father, and Jesus, our leader, to help us come to you.
12 And we want Jesus to get you to love each other and to love other people, even more than you do now. We want you to love people just as much as we love you.
13 We want Jesus to make you properly good and clean inside. You see, one day Jesus, our leader, will come back, and all his people will be with him. And then we will all meet God our father, and God will see that we are properly good and clean inside, so he will be happy with us, and he will not have to blame us for doing anything wrong.