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God wants Christians to live the right way
1 There is one more thing we want to tell you, our Christian friends. You know, we taught you about the right way to live, to make God happy. And you have been living that way. That’s good. But we want you to live like that even more.
2 You know the things that we told you to do. Our leader, Jesus, got us to tell you those things.
3 This is what God wants. He wants you to be properly good and to keep away from everything that is wrong. If somebody is not your own wife or husband, don’t sleep with them as if you are married to them.
4 Every one of you has to learn how to control your own body in a way that is clean and good.
5 Don’t be like people that don’t know God. They just want to sleep with anybody and do the wrong thing with them. That is what they want to do, and they are always thinking about it. They don’t try to stop themselves. Don’t be like that.
6 None of you men can ever sleep with a woman that is not your own wife. If you do that, you are doing a bad thing to her husband. He is the only person that can sleep with her, so don’t cheat him out of that. Don’t do that bad thing to another Christian, or to anyone else. God is the one that will punish you if you do that. We told you about that when we were with you, and we mean it.
7 God picked us to be his people, but he didn’t pick us to be people that do bad and dirty things, like sleeping with somebody else’s wife or husband. He picked us to be people that keep away from everything that is bad.
8 That rule doesn’t come from people, it comes from God. So anyone that doesn’t listen to that rule, is not listening to God. And remember, God is the one that gives you his Holy Spirit, and his spirit is really good.
9 I don’t need to write to you about how you have to love other Christians. God himself taught you to love each other.
10 Yes, you love all the Christians in every place in your country, called Macedonia. But we ask you strongly, friends, to love each other more and more.
11 Try to live the way we told you to when we were with you. Try to live in a quiet way, and don’t make any trouble for anyone. Don’t mess up the things that other people are doing, or try to boss them around. And don’t be lazy, but work to get enough money to buy whatever you need.
12 Then you will not have to ask other people for things. If you live like that, the people that don’t know God will see that you are good, and they will respect you.
Christians will go up to meet Jesus while he is coming back
13 Christian friends, we are going to tell you now about people that have already died. We don’t want you to be sad when you think about them. Other people, that don’t believe in Jesus, they don’t know what will happen to them after they die. So when their friends die, they get really sad. But if our Christian friends die, we don’t have to be really sad like those other people. Listen, we want you to understand this properly.
14 You see, we believe that Jesus died, and after that, God made him alive again. So we also believe that when Jesus comes back to this earth, all the Christians that already died will come back with him. Jesus will bring them all back with him.
15 You see, this is the message that Jesus, our leader, told us, and we tell this same message to you. Those of us that are still alive when Jesus comes back, we will not go and meet him before the Christians that already died.
16 It will happen like this. Our leader, Jesus himself, will come down from heaven, and while he is coming, everyone will hear him call out, and they will hear the voice of the boss angel, and they will hear the sound of God’s trumpet. Then, first of all, those people that belonged to Jesus Christ and already died, they will come back to life.
17 After that, God will get those of us Christians that are still alive at that time, and he will take us up into the clouds with the Christians that already died, and we will all meet Jesus, our leader, way up in the air. And so, after that, we will be with Jesus all the time, for ever.
18 So think about this message, and talk to each other about it, and help each other to stay strong, so that you are not sad when your Christian friends die.