1 Thessalonians 1:5Plain English VersionRemember the time when we told you the good news about Jesus. We told you the message with our words, but the Holy Spirit made us sure that we were telling the true story, and he gave us his power to show you that God was with us. And remember the sort of people we were at the time when we were with you there. We showed you the good way to live. See the chapter |
I’m writing this for you, my good friend Thiofilus. A lot of great things happened here, and the people that saw those things happen told everyone what they saw, and a lot of people wrote down those stories that they heard. After that, I read those stories, and I talked to the people that saw those things, and I checked up on everything they said, right from the start. So now I am carefully sorting out those stories, and I am writing them in this book for you.
Then God took him up into heaven. He is there now, sitting right next to God, on God’s right-hand side, the place where the most important person sits. And God gave Jesus the Holy Spirit, and today Jesus gave us the Holy Spirit, just like God promised. That’s the reason why you are seeing and hearing us talk in lots of languages today.
God sees everything that everybody does and everything that everybody thinks. Nobody can hide anything from him. One day, God will get Jesus Christ to judge everybody about these things. That is the message that I tell everybody. (The next part, 2:17—3:8, mainly talks to Jewish people, so we have not translated it yet.)
We have to thank God now. His power works in us, and he does really great things. He can do a lot more than we can ask him for. He can even do more than we can think about. And we are God’s people. We are his church. So we always have to praise God and show everyone that he is very great and good. We have to show them what Jesus Christ does, and that he is really great. And we have to keep on doing it for ever and ever. Yes, that’s right.
And remember, when I was with you, I taught you the right things to do. You agreed with me about those things. And you know the things that I said, and the things that I did when I was with you. Well, keep on doing all those things. Then God will be with you, and he will get you to feel happy and quiet inside yourselves.
And we always thank God for the way you listened to us. We told you God’s message, and you knew that it wasn’t only a message from people. You believed that we told you words from God, and that it was God’s message. And you were right. It is God’s word. And now that you believe that word, it helps you grow strong for him.
So if people make trouble for you, just remember that they made trouble for Jesus Christ. He was born into the family of David, the man that was the big boss a long time ago. But people gave Jesus a lot of trouble, and they killed him. But then God made him alive again. That is the good news that I always tell people about Jesus.
His spirit told them that the message wasn’t for themselves, but it was for you. That all happened a long time ago, and now God’s people have told you that good message about Jesus. The Holy Spirit from heaven gave them power to talk to you. This is all very wonderful. Even God’s angels in heaven don’t know all about the things that God does to save people, and they want to find out more.
God is very good to us. We went wrong, but he feels sorry for us, and he is good to us. Now he puts new life in us, like we get born all over again. Jesus died, but God brought him back to life. From that we know that God will save us too. So let us thank God, the father of our leader, Jesus, and say that he is really good.
So now we can be really sure about the messages that are in God’s book. We can be sure that they are true. A long time ago, God told his men to write those words in his book. You have to think carefully about those messages. They can help us understand the true story about God, like a light helps us see things in the night. Those messages will keep on helping you until Jesus comes back and he helps you know God properly. Then it will be like Jesus is a really bright light that shows us everything clearly, like the really bright star that shines in the morning, and then the sun comes up.