Paul has served God among the Thessalonian Christians
1 Our Christian friends, you yourselves know that our visit to you had good results. 2 You know what happened to us before we came to you. The people at Philippi had done bad things to us. They had caused us to suffer. When we came to you, our God helped us to be brave. We were not afraid to tell you his good news. Many people tried to stop us, but we told you God's message.
2:2See Acts 16:12-40. Philippi was a city in Macedonia. It was about 115 kilometres (72 miles) east of Thessalonica. Paul and his friends had been at Philippi before they came to Thessalonica. Some people at Philippi had put Paul and Silas in prison. 3 When we tell people to obey God's message, we are not saying anything that is not true. We do not have a wrong purpose. We are not trying to deceive anyone. 4 Instead, we say what God wants us to say. He has chosen us to tell his good news to people. So we are not trying to please people. God is the one that we want to please. He knows all our thoughts.
5 When we came to you, we did not say nice things only to please you. You know that we never did that. We did not try to make you give things to us. We never had a secret purpose like that. God knows that this is true. 6 We did not want you, or anyone else, to praise us. 7 We could have used our authority over you, because we are Christ's apostles. But instead, we chose to be kind to you and to help you. We took care of you, like a mother takes care of her little children. 8 We loved you very much, so we wanted to tell you God's good news. We wanted to share our lives with you too.
2:8Paul was explaining that he only wanted to do what was best for the believers at Thessalonica.
9 Our Christian friends, remember how we worked so hard when we were with you. We worked during the day and even during the night. We did not want to cause any problems for you. So we taught you God's good news and we did not ask you to give us anything in return.
2:9While Paul, Silas and Timothy were at Thessalonica, they worked to get some money. Paul knew how to make tents. See Acts 18:3. 