Church is more than a building or Sunday morning meeting. It’s a gathering of God’s saints He’s called out of sin and the world unto Himself, to show forth His praises (1 Pet 2:9).
While we expect unbelievers to occasionally come among us (1 Cor 14:23-25), we protect our gathering as a sacred time for God’s people to worship our God through prayer, singing, reading Scripture, preaching, and taking the Lord’s Supper.
God commands that we not forsake the assembling of ourselves together, as is the manner of some, but exhorting one another, and so much the more as you see the Day approaching (Heb 10:25). Christ’s return motivates us to gather, and the Thessalonians gathered even in persecution.

I. Grace and Peace (2 Thess 1:2). Grace and peace are God’s gifts and the result of our union in the Godhead through faith in Jesus. This is the gospel: to be in God and He in us (Jn 14:20; 15:1-8; 17:3, 23; Gal 2:20).
Grace (charis) describes a relationship apart from the recipient’s work, merit, or effort which relies upon the work, merit, and effort of the gracious One. It is God giving the undeserving what he doesn’t have and can’t gain himself.
At the cross, the wrath of God was laid upon Jesus and thus fulfilled, placing the sinner in fellowship with God. This propitiation produces peace “from” God and “with” God showing that all is right between God and the believer.
Paul, Silas and Timothy were bound (opheilo, to owe and pay a debt) to give the Father and Son thanks for the Thessalonians. This debt was to God for His graciousness in saving them. It wasn’t only a debt, but it was a fitting or right response to the Father. Paul shows that preaching and seeing people saved isn’t the end of a pastor’s work, but it continues with thankful prayer.

II. Faith and Love (2 Thess 1:3). Their thankful prayer was the result of the believers’ faith growing exceedingly (beyond measure and expectation. Faith (reliance, trust) is a God-given gift of trust and reliance in God, sufficient and efficient to save and keep the believer eternally. A living, genuine faith is designed by God to grow by the Word of God and encompass trust in Him in other areas of life. Biblical faith is more than knowing truth, but living truth; the head and the heart, not one or the other.
The Thessalonians faced daily persecution. They trusted Jesus to save them from sin, but were also learning (growing) to trust Him in daily circumstances. This is what trials and testing will do (Rom 5:3-4).
Genuine love grows just like faith, and grows from genuine faith. Amazingly, Paul could write of each believer’s abounding or overflowing love for each believer in the church. It wasn’t love for the loveable, the likeable, or the important, but for each saint. This love isn’t a feeling or emotion, but a commitment to act in the welfare of the one loved (1 Thess 1:3).
A love for God always grows to include a love for His people (Mt 22:37-39). This is why the common talk about loving God but hating His church is evidence of an hypocritical and unregenerate apostate.

III. Patience (2 Thess 1:4). Growing faith and love created more than a debt of thanks, but a reason to boast. This church had patience (to remain under) in their trials, carrying on with the load graciously given by the Lord. This patience is tied to hope, a certainty of God working (1 Thess 1:3).
Trials caused by persecution and ordinary living in a sin-fallen world weighed upon the Thessalonians. Trials and persecution destroy false faith, but true faith grows in the furnace of difficulty (Job 23:8-12; Mt 13:1-9, 19-23; 1 Pet 1:7).