Hey Bible readers, I'm Tara Lee Cobble and I'm your host for the Bible recap.

If you're doing our New Testament plan, today we finished our 7th and 8th books.

And if you're doing the whole Bible, we finished our 46th and 47th books.

These two books are Paul's letters to the Church at Thessalonica.

We met them yesterday in Act 17.

Paul, Silas and Timothy spent a lot of time with them until the local Jews who were jealous

of their ministry, formed a mob and basically drove them out of town.

Paul really loves the people of this church, so he writes them this letter to speak words

of encouragement and love.

He starts out by telling them a few of the ways their lives demonstrate that God has chosen

them to be a part of his family.

First of all, they've received the gospel wholeheartedly and the Holy Spirit came to them

as well.

Second, they started spreading the word to other people.

They received and lived out and shared the gospel.

Paul says he and the guys mentored them and then they started mentoring others.

They took what they learned from Paul and made Macedonian mentees.

Third, they've turned from their idolatry and worshiped the one true God.

We also see here that there is wrath coming, but Jesus is the one who delivers us from

it because God's kids will never experience his wrath.

Then Paul recounts the story of how they met.

He had just been beaten up and imprisoned in Philippi, but he didn't stop preaching.

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