1I, Simon Peter, am a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ. I write this to you whose experience with God is as life-changing as ours, all due to our God's straight dealing and the intervention of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ.
2Grace and peace to you many times over as you deepen in your experience with God and Jesus, our Master.
3Everything that goes into a life of pleasing God has been miraculously given to us by getting to know, personally and intimately, the One who invited us to God. The best invitation we ever received!
4We were also given absolutely terrific promises to pass on to you—your tickets to participation in the life of God after you turned your back on a world corrupted by lust.
5So don't lose a minute in building on what you've been given, complementing your basic faith with good character, spiritual understanding,
6alert discipline, passionate patience, reverent wonder,
7warm friendliness, and generous love, each dimension fitting into and developing the others.
8With these qualities active and growing in your lives, no grass will grow under your feet, no day will pass without its reward as you mature in your experience of our Master Jesus.
9Without these qualities you can't see what's right before you, oblivious that your old sinful life has been wiped off the books.
10So, friends, confirm God's invitation to you, his choice of you. Don't put it off; do it now. Do this, and you'll have your life on a firm footing,
11the streets paved and the way wide open into the eternal kingdom of our Master and Savior, Jesus Christ.
12Because the stakes are so high, even though you're up-to-date on all this truth and practice it inside and out, I'm not going to let up for a minute in calling you to attention before it.
13This is the post to which I've been assigned—keeping you alert with frequent reminders—and I'm sticking to it as long as I live.
14I know that I'm to die soon; the Master has made that quite clear to me.
15And so I am especially eager that you have all this down in black and white so that after I die, you'll have it for ready reference.
16We weren't, you know, just wishing on a star when we laid the facts out before you regarding the powerful return of our Master, Jesus Christ. We were there for the preview! We saw it with our own eyes:
17Jesus resplendent with light from God the Father as the voice of Majestic Glory spoke: "This is my Son, marked by my love, focus of all my delight."
18We were there on the holy mountain with him. We heard the voice out of heaven with our very own ears.
19We couldn't be more sure of what we saw and heard—God's glory, God's voice. The prophetic Word was confirmed to us. You'll do well to keep focusing on it. It's the one light you have in a dark time as you wait for daybreak and the rising of the Morning Star in your hearts.
20The main thing to keep in mind here is that no prophecy of Scripture is a matter of private opinion.
21And why? Because it's not something concocted in the human heart. Prophecy resulted when the Holy Spirit prompted men and women to speak God's Word.