for our preaching of the good news came to you not entirely in words but with power and with the Holy Spirit and with absolute certainty (for you know the kind of men we were among you for your own sakes).

(1:7) For the message of the Lord has rung out from you, not only in Macedonia and Greece, but everywhere the report of your faith in God has been told, so that we need never mention it.

For our appeal did not originate from a delusion or an impure motive; it was not made in fraud;

for since we have been so approved by God as to be entrusted with the good news, we are now telling it, not to please men but God, who proves and finds approved our hearts.

Because we were yearning for you so tenderly, we were willing, not only to share with you God's good news, but to lay down our very lives too for you, all because you were so dearly loved by us.

You remember, brothers, our hard labor and toil. We kept up our habit of working night and day, in order not to be a burden to any of you when we preached to you.

For another reason too, we, as far as we are concerned, are constantly giving thanks to God; that is, when you received the message you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the message of men but as the message of God, as it really is, which keeps on working in you who believe.

Now we, brothers, on our part, when we were separated from you for a little while -- in person but not in heart -- were extremely eager and intensely longing to see you.

So when I could not bear it any longer, I decided to be left behind in Athens alone,

as night and day I continue to pray with deepest earnestness and keenest eagerness that I may see your faces and round out to completeness what is lacking in your faith?

not out of evil passions as the heathen do who do not know God;

For God did not call us to a life of immorality, but to one of personal purity.

So whoever rejects this teaching is rejecting not man but God who continues to put His Spirit in you.

Now as to brotherly love, you have no need of anyone's writing you, for you have yourselves been taught by God to love one another,

so that you may live influentially with the outsiders, and not be dependent on anybody.

Also we do not want you to have any misunderstanding, brothers, about those who are falling asleep, so as to keep you from grieving over them as others do who have no hope.

But as to times and dates, brothers, you have no need of anyone's writing you,

for you yourselves know perfectly well that the day of the Lord is coming like a thief in the night.

When people say, "Such peace and security!" then suddenly destruction falls upon them, like birth pains upon a woman who is about to become a mother, but they shall not escape, no, not at all.

But you, brothers, are not in darkness, so that that day, like a thief, should take you by surprise;

for you are all sons of the light and sons of the day. We do not belong to the night or the darkness.

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

For God appointed us not to reap His wrath but to gain salvation through our Lord Jesus Christ,