to you not only God's good news, but
also our very lives.

Brothers, you remember our hard labor and toil, how we worked at our
trade night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, while we
told you God's good news. You are witnesses, and so is God, that our
dealings with you who believe in Christ were pure, just, and beyond
reproach, and that we treated each of you as a father treats his own
children, persuading and encouraging you, and appealing to you to live
so that you would be worthy of the God who calls you to his own Kingdom
and glory.

We thank God constantly for this also, that when you received God's
message from us you accepted it not as a mere word of man but for what
it really is, the message of God, which even now is doing its work in
the hearts of you who believe. You have begun to follow the example of
the churches of God in Judea which are united with Jesus Christ, for you
have suffered the same things from your own countrymen as they have
suffered from the Jews who killed the Lord Jesus.

Brothers, when we were torn away from you for a little time (out of
sight but not out of mind!), we were exceedingly eager to see you face
to face. We did want to come to you--I, Paul, did more than once, but
Satan put difficulties in our way. For who is "our hope, our joy, our
crown" of which we have a right to be proud? Is it not you? For you are
our glory and our joy!

So when I could stand it no longer, I decided that it was best to remain
alone at Athens and send Timothy, our brother and God's servant in
telling the good news about Christ, to strengthen your faith and so to
encourage you that none of you might be disturbed by the troubles
through which you are passing, for you know that we must have them.

But now that Timothy has just come back and brought me the good news of
your faith and love and how you always remember me lovingly, longing to
see me as I long to see you, I have been comforted, brothers, in all my
distress and trouble by your faith.

How can we thank God enough for all the joy that comes to us through
you? Night and day we pray most earnestly that we may see your faces and
supply whatever is lacking in your faith. May our God and Father himself
and our Lord Jesus direct our way to you, and may the Lord make your
love for one another and for all men grow ever greater, even as does our
love for you, so as to make your hearts strong and your characters
without fault in the sight o