Before we came to you, people in Philippi abused us with insults and made us suffer. You know all about that. And then, when we came to you, many people there caused trouble for us. But our God gave us the courage we needed to tell you his Good News.
No, it was God who gave us this work, but only after he tested us and saw that we could be trusted to do it. So when we speak, we are not trying to please people. We are only trying to please God. He is the one who can see what is in our hearts.
You know that we never tried to influence you by saying nice things about you. We were not trying to get your money. We had no greed to hide from you. God knows that this is true.
When we were with you, as apostles of Christ we could have used our authority to make you help us. But we were very gentle with you. We were like a mother caring for her little children.
We loved you very much, so we were happy to share God's Good News with you. But not only that—we were also happy to share even our own lives with you.
Brothers and sisters, I know that you remember how hard we worked. We worked night and day to support ourselves, so that we would not be a burden to anyone while we did the work of telling you God's Good News.
Also, we always thank God because of the way you accepted his message. You heard it and accepted it as God's message, not our own. And it really is God's message. And it works in you who believe.
Brothers and sisters, you are like God's churches in Christ Jesus that are in Judea. You were treated badly by your own people, just as God's people in Judea were treated badly by the other Jews there.
Those Jews killed the Lord Jesus and the prophets. And they forced us to leave their country. They are not pleasing to God, and they are against everyone else.
And they are trying to stop us from teaching those who are not Jews. They don't want them to be saved. But they are just adding more and more sins to the ones they already have. Now the time has come for them to suffer God's anger.
Brothers and sisters, we were separated from you for a short time. But even though we were not there, our thoughts were still with you. We wanted very much to see you, and we tried very hard to do this.