Our series during Ordinary time will explore the revelation of God’s Kingdom through his Son. We will look specifically how the incarnation—the ministry, passion, death, resurrection, and ascension of Jesus Christ—reveals the long-promised Kingdom of God breaking into human history demonstrating God’s love, destroying the powers that ravaged creation, and displaying the Messiah’s promise (to continue reading this essay, click on image above).
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YOUR KINGDOM COME
Pastoral Resources | 2025-26 Themes At-A-Glance
Week 42 — Harvest: The Messiah’s Transfiguration: The Kingdom’s Glory Revealed, Mark 9:2-10; 2 Peter 1:16-18
The Transfiguration is the moment God revealed the Messiah-King’s hidden glory, divinely certifying that Jesus of Nazareth is the true Sovereign of the Kingdom to come. Now through His manifestation on the mount, the Father’s own direct witness confirms everything the Gospel claims about Christ’s identity and His coming reign, a confirmation that rests on the eyewitness testimony of the apostles, not imaginary or invented accounts. We must allow our lives and ministries to proclaim a Messiah-King whose glory was seen and sworn to, which grounds our promise, hope, and preaching in credible eyewitness authority rather than religious sentiment and steadies us as disciples as we follow Him holding to the certainty of the Kingdom that is to come in fullness.
Our Focus Today
The Sovereign Voice of the Father, Mark 9:7; 2 Peter 1:17–18
From the overshadowing cloud the Father declared, “This is my beloved Son: hear him” — the very voice Peter testifies he heard “in the holy mount.” The Father declares directly to the apostles and to us Christ’s supreme and final authority as the One to whom we should listen to. Above every honored voice, tradition, and experience, God charges His people to hear and heed His Son, that His Words may become the final and governing authority for all life and ministry.
Invocation
Father, overshadow us afresh with Your holy presence, and let Your voice fall upon our hearing: This is My beloved Son — hear Him. Silence within us every rival voice that would rise above His Word. Grant us ears to heed the Son alone, that His teaching may govern our lives and our ministry as the final and sovereign authority. Speak, Lord. Amen.
Gloria Patri
Glory be to the Father,
And to the Son and to the Holy Spirit:
As it was in the beginning,
Is now, and ever shall be,
World without end. Amen, amen.
Chronological Scripture Readings for Today
These Scriptures allow us to read through the entire Bible in one year in chronological order.
Thursday: Luke 14.25-17.10; John 11.1-37
Psalms and Proverb for Today
These Scriptures allow us to read through the Psalms and Proverbs each month.
Thursday: Psalm 17, 47, 77, 107, 137 and Proverbs 17
The Sovereign Voice of the Father, Mark 9:7; 2 Peter 1:17–18
From the overshadowing cloud the Father declared, “This is my beloved Son: hear him” — the very voice Peter testifies he heard “in the holy mount.” The Father declares directly to the apostles and to us Christ’s supreme and final authority as the One to whom we should listen to. Above every honored voice, tradition, and experience, God charges His people to hear and heed His Son, that His words may become the final and governing authority for all life and ministry.
Reflection
From the glory-cloud the Father Himself certified Jesus of Nazareth as His beloved Son and commanded the apostles to “Listen to Him.” The Father’s testimony and His voice, heard by Peter on the holy mount, exalts Christ above Moses, Elijah, and every other rival authority. Therefore, as disciples of Jesus let His Words become the final and governing authority for all things spiritual and life-related, helping us to obey His teaching above every other honored voice, tradition, or experience.
Engaging God’s Word Today
The Father’s command was singular and direct: He pronounced regarding Christ, “Listen to Him!” This statement placed His Son above every other voice. What competing authorities, cherished traditions, or valued experiences have quietly risen to rival Christ’s Word in your personal life? What would it look like for His voice to truly govern above them all?
Nicene Creed
We believe in one God, The Father Almighty,
Maker of heaven and earth and of all things visible and invisible.
We believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only Begotten Son of God,
Begotten of the Father before all ages,
God from God, Light from Light, True God from True God,
Begotten not created, of the same essence as the Father,
through Whom all things were made.
Who for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven
and was incarnate by the Holy Spirit and the virgin Mary and became human.
Who for us too, was crucified under Pontius Pilate, suffered and was buried.
The third day He rose again according to the Scriptures, ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory to judge the living and the dead,
and His kingdom will have no end.
We believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord and life-giver,
Who proceeds from the Father and the Son.
Who together with the Father and Son is worshiped and glorified.
Who spoke by the prophets.
We believe in one holy, catholic, and apostolic church.
We acknowledge one baptism for the forgiveness of sin,
and we look for the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the age to come. Amen.
The Lord’s Prayer
Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name. Thy Kingdom come, thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil. For thine is the Kingdom, and the power, and the glory for ever. Amen.
Doxology
Praise God from whom all blessings flow;
Praise Him all creatures here below;
Praise Him above ye heavenly host;
Praise Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Amen.
Benediction
Father, You testified that Your Son’s Word should be final. Of all the voices that we could listen to, You charged us to listen to Your beloved Son. I surrender myself to Your charge, committing myself to listen to Your beloved Son above every other voice. Let His Word be my final authority, His teaching my governing rule, His command my aspiration along my daily path. You are the God who spoke from the cloud; so now, dear Father, keep my ears tuned to Your Son alone, that I might, like Him, follow You into everything You have for my life. Amen.
Scripture Memory for this season
1 Peter 2:9-10, The Church as Visible Sign: Locus and Agent of the Kingdom
9 But you are a chosen race, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people for his own possession, that you may proclaim the excellencies of him who called you out of darkness into his marvelous light. 10 Once you were not a people, but now you are God’s people; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.
Scripture Engagement
As disciples of Jesus, the Churches of Christ the King strongly seek to engage the Scriptures to discover the centrality of Christ and his Kingdom in the prophetic and apostolic writings. You will find a rich treasure of resources on engaging Scripture at the Center for Scripture Engagement of Taylor University.
Books We Are Reading this Church Year, and When
• The Most Amazing Story Ever Told, Dr. Don Davis (during season of Advent)
• Get Your Pretense On, Dr. Don Davis (during season of Christmas)
• Destined for the Throne, Paul Billheimer (during season of Epiphany)
• The Presence of the Future, George Eldon Ladd (during seasons of Lent, Holy Week, Easter and Ascension)
• Who Gets to Narrate the World?, Robert E. Webber (during seasons of the Coming of the Holy Spirit, and Headship)
• Kingdom, Church and World: Biblical Themes for Today, Howard Snyder (during season of Harvest)
• The Gospel of the Kingdom, George Eldon Ladd (during the seasons of Hope and Remembering the Saints, Exalting the King)
Book Reading Reflection: Kingdom, Church and World: Biblical Themes for Today
In Jesus Christ peace becomes not only visible; it becomes specific. Watching Jesus, we see what peace really means: Martha and Mary, John and the disciples, blind Bartimaeus, Zacchaeus, and Cyrus. Clearly, peace is relational. It is always a pattern of peace with, or peace between, or peace among, as these examples show. Since the Bible sees the world ecologically, with all aspects of creation linked to all others, peace in the kingdom sense necessarily reaches to the “harmonizing” of every reality and relationship under God’s authority.
The peace passages in the New Testament underscore this concreteness. In Ephesians 2, Paul says Jesus has destroyed the “dividing wall of hostility” between Jew and Gentile. Peace here is specific: Jesus creates a new reconciled community where Jews and Gentiles meet as sisters and brothers in one new peaceable family. Throughout his writings Paul carefully notes that it is not just the Jew-Gentile hostility but all hostility, which has been overcome by Jesus. So now “there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus” (Galatians 3:28). This is the great practical application of peace in the New Testament, the key link between kingdom and church. The kingdom breaks in now through a community of believers where peace is the trademark. In God’s kingdom plan peace is both the final goal of the kingdom and the present experience of the community of Jesus’s disciples.
Jesus is the key. He has brought peace between God and humankind. He reconciles through life, death, and resurrection. “Therefore, since we have been justified through faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ” (Romans 5:1). Through repentance and faith, men and women are born again into a restored fellowship with God and with sisters and brothers in Christ. Having been reconciled, they are called to work out and live a life of peace. They are to be a reconciled and reconciling fellowship.
~ Snyder, Howard. Kingdom, Church, and World: Biblical Themes for Today. Wipf and Stock Publishers, Eugene, OR: 2001. Electronic Edition. Location 21-22.
On Eagles Wings Prayer Focus: A Long Time Comin‘
The Messiah’s Call to Discipleship: The Kingdom’s Demands (rich young ruler), Mark 10:17-27, Luke 18:18-30
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