1  I, Paul, am writing this letter. Silas and Timothy are with me. We are sending this letter to you. You are the congregation of God’s people in Thessalonica city. You belong to God our Father, and you belong to Jesus Christ our Lord. 2  We pray that God our Father, and Jesus Christ our Lord, will continue to act kindly toward you and will continue to cause you to have inner peace.

3  Our fellow believers, we thank God very frequently [HYP] for you because we believers ought to thank God for each other, and specifically it is appropriate/right that we should thank God for you. We thank him that you are trusting in the Lord Jesus more and more, and that each one of you is loving each of the others more and more. 4 As a result, we keep proudly telling about you to other congregations who worship God. Specifically, we tell them that you are being steadfast and that you continue believing in the Lord Jesus, even though you are frequently suffering [DOU] as a result of people causing you trouble.

5  Your being steadfast ◄shows/indicates to► us clearly that God will judge all people justly. Specifically, he will publicly declare that you are worthy as his people to be in that place where he will rule forever, because you also are suffering as a result of telling others about letting God rule your lives. 6  God will certainly cause trouble for those people who are troubling you, because he considers that it is just that he should punish such people for doing that to you. 7 He also considers that it is the right thing to do to reward you who are being troubled, by ◄giving you relief/causing your suffering to end►. He will do that for both you and us when our Lord Jesus will descend from heaven, together with his powerful angels and with blazing fire. 8  Then he will punish those people who do not want to know him and those who refuse to heed the message about our Lord Jesus. 9  Our Lord Jesus will forbid them from ever coming near to him and near to the glory which he has because he is so powerful (OR, the glory that is manifested by his power). He will cause those people to suffer forever. 10  The Lord Jesus will do this when he comes back from heaven at the time that God has decided. As a result, all we who are his people will praise him because of what he has done for his own people, and all we believers will marvel at our Lord because of what he has done. And you will be there, too, because you believed what we testified to you.

11 In order that you might praise Jesus like this, we are also praying very frequently [HYP] for you. We pray that you will be able to show our God that you are worthy to receive that which he chose you to receive. We pray also that he would powerfully enable you to do good in every way that you desire, and that he would also enable you to do powerfully every good thing that you do because you believe in Jesus Christ. 12  We pray this because we want you to praise our Lord Jesus, and we want him to honor you. This will happen because God, whom we worship/serve, and our Lord Jesus Christ will keep acting kindly toward you in ways that you do not deserve.