002:007 On the contrary, in our relations to you we showed ourselves as gentle as a mother is when she tenderly nurses her own children. 002:008 Seeing that we were thus drawn affectionately towards you, it would have been a joy to us to have imparted to you not only God's Good News, but to have given our very lives also, because you had become very dear to us. 002:009 For you remember, brethren, our labour and toil: how, working night and day so as not to become a burden to any one of you, we came and proclaimed among you God's Good News. 002:010 You yourselves are witnesses--and God is witness--how holy and upright and blameless our dealings with you believers were. 002:011 For you know that we acted towards every one of you as a father does towards his own children, encouraging and cheering you, 002:012 and imploring you to live lives worthy of fellowship with God who is inviting you to share His own Kingship and glory. 002:013 And for this further reason we render unceasing thanks to God, that when you received God's Message from our lips, it was as no mere message from men that you embraced it, but as-- what it really is--God's Message, which also does its work in the hearts of you who believe. 002:014 For you, brethren, followed the example of the Churches of God in Christ Jesus which are in Judaea; seeing that you endured the same ill-treatment at the hands of your countrymen, as they did at the hands of the Jews. 002:015 Those Jewish persecutors killed both the Lord Jesus and the Prophets, and drove us out of their midst. They are displeasing to God, and are the enemies of all mankind; 002:016 for they still try to prevent our preaching to the Gentiles so that they may find salvation. They thus continually fill up the measure of their own sins, and God's anger in its severest form has overtaken them. 002:017 But we, brethren, having been for a short time separated from you in bodily presence, though not in heart, endeavoured all the more earnestly, with intense longing, to see you face to face. 002:018 On this account we wanted to come to you--at least I Paul wanted again and again to do so--but Satan hindered us. 002:019 For what is our hope or joy, or the crown of which we boast? Is it not you yourselves in the presence of our Lord Jesus at His Coming? 002:020 Yes, you are our glory and our joy. 003:001 So when we could endure it no longer, we decided to remain behind in Athens alone; 003:002 and sent Timothy our brother and God's minister in the service of Christ's Good News, that he might help you spiritually and encourage you in your faith; 003:003 that none of you might be unnerved by your present trials: for you yourselves know that they are our appointed lot.