¹From Paul, Silas, and Timothy.

To the church of the Thessalonians in God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.

²May God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ give you grace and peace.

Paul Prays and Gives Thanks

³We should always thank God for you, brothers and sisters. That’s only right, because your faith is growing more and more and your love for one another is increasing.

⁴We’ve been bragging to the rest of God’s churches about your endurance and faith in all the suffering and testing you’re going through.

⁵Your endurance is a clear sign that God judges fairly. You’ll be considered worthy of the kingdom of God for which you’re suffering.

⁶And God will do what’s fair in the end by paying those who are troubling you back with trouble of their own,

⁷and he’ll give relief to you who are troubled and to us as well. All this will happen when the Lord Jesus appears from heaven in blazing fire with his powerful angels.

⁸He’ll punish those who don’t know God and who don’t obey the good news about our Lord Jesus.

⁹They’ll be destroyed forever and be shut out of heaven, and they’ll never see the glory of the Lord’s strength.

¹⁰All these things will happen when he comes to be glorified in his holy people. Everyone who has believed will be amazed when they see him. This includes you, because you have believed our testimony to you.

¹¹Keeping this in mind, we pray for you constantly. We pray that God will make you worthy of his calling and, by his power, make every good thing you want to do come true. We pray that he will make perfect everything you’ve done by faith.

¹²We pray all this so that the name of our Lord Jesus will receive glory through what you’ve done and so that you’ll receive glory through what he has done, in keeping with the grace of our God and the Lord Jesus Christ.