God

calling to mind before God our Father what our Lord Yeshua the Messiah has brought about in you — how your trust produces action, your love hard work, and your hope perseverance.

We know, brothers, that God has loved and chosen you;

since they themselves keep telling us about the welcome we received from you and how you turned to God from idols, to serve the true God, the one who is alive,

On the contrary, although we had already suffered and been outraged in Philippi, as you know, we had the courage, united with our God, to tell you the Good News even under great pressure.

Instead, since God has tested us and found us fit to be entrusted with Good News, this is how we speak: not to win favor with people but with God, who tests our hearts.

For, as you know, never did we employ flattering talk, nor did we put on a false front to mask greed — God is witness.

We were so devoted to you that we were glad to share with you not only God’s Good News but also our own lives, because you had become very dear to us.

For you remember, brothers, our toil and hardship, how we worked night and day not to put a burden on any of you while we were proclaiming God’s Good News to you.

You are witnesses, and so is God, of how holy, righteous and blameless our behavior was in the sight of you believers;

we encouraged you and comforted you and appealed to you to lead lives worthy of God, who calls you into his Kingdom and glory.

Another reason we regularly thank God is that when you heard the Word of God from us, you received it not merely as a human word, but as it truly is, God’s Word, which is at work in you believers.

For, brothers, you came to be imitators of God’s congregations in Y’hudah that are united with the Messiah Yeshua — you suffered the same things from your countrymen as they did from the Judeans who

both killed the Lord Yeshua and the prophets, and chased us out too. They are displeasing God and opposing all mankind

and sent Timothy, our brother and God’s fellow worker for the Good News of the Messiah, to make you solid and encourage you in your trust;

Indeed, how can we thank God enough for you or express to our God all the joy we feel because of you?

May God our Father and our Lord Yeshua direct our way to you.

so that he may give you the inner strength to be blameless, by reason of your holiness, when you stand before God our Father at the coming of our Lord Yeshua with all his angels.

Therefore, brothers, just as you learned from us how you had to live in order to please God, and just as you are living this way now, we ask you — indeed, united with the Lord Yeshua, we urge you — to keep doing so more and more.

What God wants is that you be holy, that you keep away from sexual immorality,

without giving in to lustful desires, like the pagans who don’t know God.

For God did not call us to live an unclean life but a holy one.

Therefore, whoever rejects this teaching is rejecting not a man but God, indeed, the One who gives you the Ruach HaKodesh, which is his.

Concerning love for the brothers we do not need to write you, for you yourselves have been taught by God to love each other;

do who have nothing to hope for. For since we believe that Yeshua died and rose again, we also believe that in the same way God, through Yeshua, will take with him those who have died.

For the Lord himself will come down from heaven with a rousing cry, with a call from one of the ruling angels, and with God’s shofar; those who died united with the Messiah will be the first to rise;