First Thessalonians 2, 9 through 16. Please follow along as I read.

For you recall, brethren, our labor and hardship, how working night and day so as not to be a burden to any of you, we

proclaim to you the Gospel of God. You are witnesses and so is God how devoutly and

uprightly and blamelessly we behaved toward you believers.

Just as you know how we were exhorting and encouraging and

imploring each one of you as a father would his own children

so that you may walk in a manner worthy of the God who calls you into his own kingdom

and glory. And for this reason we also constantly thank God that when you received from us the

word of God's message you accepted it not as the word of men but for what it really is the word of men, but for what it really is, the word of God, which also performs

its work in you who believe.

For you, brethren, became imitators of the churches of God in Christ Jesus that are in Judea.

For you also endured the same sufferings at the hands of your own countrymen, even as they did

from the Jews, who both killed the Lord Jesus

and the prophets and drove us out. They are not pleasing to God but hostile to all

men hindering us from speaking to the Gentiles that they might be saved, with the

result that they always fill up the measure of their sins.

But wrath has come upon them to the utmost.

Let's pray.

Not a bird falls to the ground. Let's pray.

Not a bird falls to the ground, Lord Jesus, apart from your father's will.

And I ask now, Father, that we would take heart that nothing befalls us but what the father of mercies regards as good for us as painful as it may be.

Lord this and many things we need to learn from your word which is what we want to focus on this morning. And so my heart's prayer is that we

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