1 I’m writing now about your church meetings. The first thing I want to tell you is that you have to pray for all sorts of people. Ask God to help people that have problems. Tell him all about them, and ask him to help them. Always thank God too, for everything that he does for people. 2 Pray for the bosses over your nation, both the big bosses and those other bosses that work for them. Ask God to help them run the nation the right way, so that we can live happy and quiet lives, and so that we can respect God properly, and live his way. 3 If we pray for everybody like that, we make God happy. He is the one that saves us, 4 and he wants to save everybody. He wants everybody to know the true message about Jesus.

5 You see, there is only one God, and there is only one man that can stand between God and us people, to bring us back to God and ask him not to punish us. That man is Jesus Christ. 6 He let people kill him. When he died, he took the payback for everybody, so that now God can save anybody. He died like that at just the right time to show everybody that God really wants to save them. 7 And God has picked me to be Jesus’s special worker, to go and tell people his word. What I’m saying now is really true. I’m not lying. He picked me to go to those people that are not Jewish, and to tell them that God will save them too.[a]

8 So in your meetings at every place, I want this sort of men to pray, men that always want to make God happy. I don’t want them to be angry, or argue with others.

9 And in your meetings, I want the women to dress properly and sensibly. They can’t dress in a way that makes men look at them. They can’t think about the fancy clothes they will wear, or their fancy hairdo, or the jewels that they want to wear, like gold or pearls. Those things are not important.[b] 10 This is more important. They have to do good things for other people, so that everyone will see that they are women that really know God. 11 Women have to listen to the teacher in a meeting, and not argue with the teacher.

12 I don’t let women teach men or be men’s bosses in spiritual things. They just have to be quiet. 13 You see, God made people a long time ago, and he made the man first. His name was Adam. After that, he made the woman. Her name was Eve.[c] 14 And then that snake came to trick them, but he didn’t trick Adam. He tricked Eve, and she went wrong first.[d] 15 But God will save women from big trouble. He worked it out for them to become mothers, and that makes them important. So if they keep on believing in him, and loving people, and if they really respect God, and if they keep on being sensible, God will save them.

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