Book of Common Prayer

He thanks God for their faith and love, and prays for the increase of the same.

1 Paul, Sylvanus, and Timothy.

To the congregation of the Thessalonians who are in God our Father and in the Lord Jesus Christ.

² Grace be with you and peace from God our Father and from the Lord Jesus Christ.

³ We are bound to thank God always for you, brethren, as it is meet, because your faith grows exceedingly, and every one of you swims in love toward another between yourselves, ⁴ so that we ourselves rejoice over you in the congregations of God – over your patience and faith in all the persecutions and tribulations that you suffer, ⁵ which is a sign of the righteous judgment of God, that you are counted worthy of the kingdom of God, for which you also suffer.

⁶ It is surely a righteous thing with God to recompense tribulation to those who trouble you; ⁷ and to you who are troubled, rest with us when the Lord Jesus shows himself from heaven with his mighty angels, ⁸ in flaming fire, rendering vengeance to those who do not know God, and to those who will not heed the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ. ⁹ These shall be punished with everlasting damnation, separated from the presence of the Lord and from the glory of his power, ¹⁰ when he comes to be glorified in his saints and to be made marvelous in all who believe, because our testimony to you was believed even the same day that we preached it.

¹¹ Therefore we pray always for you, that our God would make you worthy of the calling, and would fulfil all pleasure in goodness and the work of faith with power, ¹² so that the name of our Lord Jesus Christ may be glorified in you, and you in him, through the grace of our God and of the Lord Jesus Christ.

²⁵ Therefore I say to you, do not be anxious about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink, nor yet for your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? ²⁶ Behold the birds of the air. They do not sow or reap or gather into barns, and yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of much more value than they?

²⁷ Which of you, though he took thought for it, could add one cubit to his stature? ²⁸ Why worry then about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow. They do not labour or spin. ²⁹ And yet for all that, I say to you that even Solomon in all his royalty was not arrayed like one of these. ³⁰ Therefore if God so clothes the grass, which is today in the field and tomorrow will be cast into the furnace, will he not much more do the same for you, O ye of little faith?

³¹ Therefore do not be anxious, saying, What will we eat? or, What will we drink? or, How will we be clothed? ³² After all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you have need of all these things. ³³ But rather seek ye first the kingdom of heaven and its righteousness, and all these things will be ministered unto you.

³⁴ Care not then for the morrow, but let the morrow care for itself. For the present day has ever enough of its own trouble.