1 Thessalonians 1:5

⁷For you know how you ought to imitate us. For we didn’t behave ourselves rebelliously among you, ⁸neither did we eat bread from anyone’s hand without paying for it, but in labor and travail worked night and day, that we might not burden any of you. ⁹This was not because we don’t have the right, but to make ourselves an example to you, that you should imitate us.

²⁰They went out and preached everywhere, the Lord working with them and confirming the word by the signs that followed. Amen.

²For I determined not to know anything among you except Jesus Christ and him crucified. ³I was with you in weakness, in fear, and in much trembling. ⁴My speech and my preaching were not in persuasive words of human wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power, ⁵that your faith wouldn’t stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.

¹³For this cause we also thank God without ceasing that when you received from us the word of the message of God, you accepted it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, God’s word, which also works in you who believe.

¹⁴to which he called you through our Good News, for the obtaining of the glory of our Lord Jesus Christ.

¹²To them it was revealed that they served not themselves, but you, in these things, which now have been announced to you through those who preached the Good News to you by the Holy Spirit sent out from heaven; which things angels desire to look into.

²I just want to learn this from you: Did you receive the Spirit by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith? ³Are you so foolish? Having begun in the Spirit, are you now completed in the flesh? ⁴Did you suffer so many things in vain, if it is indeed in vain? ⁵He therefore who supplies the Spirit to you and does miracles among you, does he do it by the works of the law, or by hearing of faith?

¹⁸that by two immutable things, in which it is impossible for God to lie, we may have a strong encouragement, who have fled for refuge to take hold of the hope set before us. ¹⁹This hope we have as an anchor of the soul, a hope both sure and steadfast and entering into that which is within the veil,

²that their hearts may be comforted, they being knit together in love, and gaining all riches of the full assurance of understanding, that they may know the mystery of God, both of the Father and of Christ,

²⁰For God’s Kingdom is not in word, but in power.