Your Kingdom Come: Jesus Is King Right Now—and He’s Coming Back

Your Kingdom Come: What This Prayer Is Asking God to Do

Most of us can pray “Your kingdom come” while quietly asking God to help our kingdom succeed. We want the title, the control, the name people remember, and the final word. Jesus gives us a different prayer: King Jesus, rule me now. Extend Your saving reign around me. Come finish what You started.

Pastor Rajiv Khatri continues the Kingdom-Centered Prayer series at Belvedere Church, a Christ-centered West Palm Beach church, by opening Matthew 6:10. The kingdom Jesus describes is not a castle or a place we build. It is the reign of God breaking into lives that sin, fear, pride, addiction, and despair once ruled.

The Bible’s story begins with God crowning humanity with glory and honor under His good authority. Adam reached for God’s throne and ended in the dirt. Jesus took Adam’s thorns on His own head, carried the curse to the cross, rose from the grave, and now holds all authority in heaven and on earth.

That means the crown is not missing. Jesus wears it now. His kingdom shows up when a man walks free from addiction, a nurse tells the truth at 3:00 in the morning, a teacher refuses to give up on a child, and ordinary believers use what God gave them for His glory. One day the King will return, wipe every tear, and finish the restoration He began.

Key Takeaways

• “Your kingdom come” means “King Jesus, rule me now.” We ask God to extend His saving reign around us and finish what He started.

• The kingdom is God’s reign, not a castle. Jesus teaches us to pray for His rule to reach real people, real homes, and real wounds.

• You were made to carry responsibility under God’s authority. Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 describe humanity as crowned with glory and honor, ruling under the true King.

• Sin did not offer Adam a crown. He already had one. The serpent offered him God’s job, and Adam lost what he had when he tried to remove God from the throne.

• Despair and control reject the same good rule. One voice says nothing will change. The other says nobody is coming, so everything depends on me.

• The Bible admits that we do not yet see everything restored. Hebrews 2 names the wreckage, then turns our eyes to Jesus, crowned with glory and honor.

• Jesus wore Adam’s curse as a crown. Thorns grew from the cursed ground in Genesis 3. Jesus took those thorns so His people could receive the crown again.

• Jesus is King right now. He is not campaigning or waiting to be voted in. All authority in heaven and on earth belongs to Him.

• Ordinary faithfulness is kingdom work. Honest work, costly generosity, gospel courage, and refusing to give up on people all matter under the reign of Christ.

• Pray three words and one name. Each morning say “Your kingdom come,” then name one person who still lives under a rival king.

Closing Application

What would it cost you to get off the throne today and let Jesus have it? Name the place where despair has been giving you orders or control has been exhausting you. The King who holds your life is not distant from suffering. The hands running the cosmos still carry nail scars.

Every morning this week, before you ask God for anything else, pray three words: “Your kingdom come.” Then say one name. Your brother. The person at the shop. Your daughter who will not take your calls. Ask Jesus to bring that person joyfully under His saving reign.

Use the crown God has entrusted to you. Tell the truth when nobody is watching. Refuse to give up on the person everyone else has written off. Give when it costs you. Speak the gospel when silence would protect your reputation. Do not waste your gifts on a comfortable Christian life.

If you have never trusted Jesus, bow now while the King’s invitation is open. The soldiers mocked Him, crowned Him with thorns, and nailed “King of the Jews” over His head. Every part of their joke was true. He died for sinners and rose again. Repent and trust Him.

When the wreckage of this world confronts you tomorrow morning, do not surrender to despair and do not seize for control. Look at the rider on the white horse. Look at the scars in His hands. Jesus is King right now, and He is coming back.

• Transcript: Pastor Rajiv Khatri

Your Kingdom Come

Matthew 6:10 | Edited Transcript with Section Subtitles

West Palm Beach, FL Church

We Have Been Telling Stories About Crowns Since Childhood

This morning we are going to recite a prayer that Jesus gave His disciples. It comes from His Word. I want you to hold a Bible in your hand to remind yourself that it comes from God’s Word. It is His authoritative Word. Amen. Let us not forget that. When we pray this, we are praying God’s Word.

Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come, Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven. Give us today our daily bread and forgive us our debts, as we have also forgiven our debtors. Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil one. Amen. You may be seated.

By the end of this series, I hope those of you who do not have it memorized will have it memorized.

My daughter Elena has gotten into Disney princess movies. She has princess dresses and crowns. She prances around the house, dances, and twirls. A few weeks ago, she found out there is a Disney series with a princess who has her name: Princess Elena of Avalor. She got so excited you would have thought we told her we were moving to Disney World.

I was sitting on the couch watching it with her for the second or third time, because with little kids you watch the same movies again and again. Somewhere in there, I stopped watching her watch the movie and started watching the movie. I realized that almost every one of these Disney movies ends the same way. Somebody gets a crown.

We have been telling our kids stories about kings and queens since before they could read. It is not only kids. We do not have a king in this country because we did not want one. Then Prince Harry gets married in England at seven in the morning our time, and 29 million people in the United States get up early to watch. The Crown has nearly 200 million viewing hours. We say we do not do kings, but we called Elvis the King of Rock and Roll. “Best singer” was not good enough. We called him the King.

Elena is not sitting there wondering who ought to run that kingdom. She puts on the princess dress. She does not only want the princess. She wants to be the princess. Sarah and I are commanded to walk around calling her Princess Elena. She rules a little kingdom.

That never goes away as we get older. It only gets quieter. She will stop wearing the princess dress, but she will start wanting a title, a promotion, or her name on something. We all want to matter, and most of us spend our whole lives feeling like we do not. We watch it instead in a movie or a royal wedding because we are not satisfied with a good king over us. If we are honest, we want a crown.

The Kingdom Is a Reign, Not a Castle

Matthew 6 tells us that Jesus is teaching His disciples how to pray: “Our Father in heaven, hallowed be Your name. Your kingdom come.” When we hear kingdom, most of us picture a castle, some massive, beautiful place we have to go. That is not what this word means here.

The word Jesus uses means a reign. I am not talking about rain that falls from the sky. I mean reign, R-E-I-G-N. We are talking about sovereignty, somebody ruling and actually running things.

Jesus is teaching us to pray, “God, bring Your rule here. King Jesus, rule me now. Extend Your saving rule around me, and come finish what You started.” To understand why this is such a big prayer, we have to go back to page one.

God Crowned Humanity to Rule Under His Rule

In Genesis 1, God makes a man and a woman and gives them a job. The job description is to rule over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, and every living thing that moves on the ground. That was not some menial job. That is kingship. It is kingly rule.

Psalm 8 turns it into a song. The psalmist looks back at creation and writes about human beings: “You made them a little lower than the angels and crowned them with glory and honor. You put everything under their feet.” Crowned them.

That is the divine verdict on human beings. Before there was sin, before anything went wrong, God looked at a human being and put a crown on his head. You were made in God’s image. You were made to carry real responsibility under His rule.

The longing for your life to matter is not wrong. Sin takes that good longing and twists it into, “I want to matter on my terms, with my name on it and nobody over me.”

If you work in healthcare, you know what a charge nurse is. A charge nurse runs that floor. Somebody codes at three in the morning and you do not stand there saying, “I am just a nurse.” You move. You take action. You exercise authority. But your authority is delegated from above. There are orders and standards above you. You are not weaker because you work under authority. Your authority means something because it came from somewhere.

The same is true of a foreman on a job site or a teacher in a classroom. This is real responsibility and real authority, but authority under authority. God made us to rule under His rule.

Some of you will punch a clock tomorrow, and you have told yourself for years that what you do does not matter. Maybe you clean rooms, drive a truck, watch somebody else’s children, or sit in a room with your mother while she forgets your name again. Church, that is a crown. God handed you something to rule and care for, and He gave you room to rule it. That is what you were made for.

Adam Reached for God’s Job and Lost His Crown

Then Genesis 3 happens. The serpent shows up and makes Adam an offer. We usually think he offered Adam a crown. Not quite. Adam already had one. God had already crowned him.

The serpent offered him God’s job. “You will be like God. You decide what is good. You decide what is evil. Nobody tells you anything. Nobody is over you.” Adam took it. He was not reaching for a crown. He was reaching to get God off the throne above him.

Adam did not get more. He lost what he had. God tells him the ground is cursed now. It will fight him. Thorns will come out of the same dirt he was placed there to rule, and one day that ground will take his body back. Adam was made to rule the ground. Now the ground rules him. He wanted to be like God, and he ended up in the dirt.

We have been doing the same thing ever since. Think about a house. You buy a house because you finally get to rule something. Then the mortgage payment rules you. You want a bigger and better house, so you get one. Now there are more rooms to clean, and the air conditioner goes out in August because of course it goes out during one of the hottest months in Florida. You bought the house to rule it. Now you get up on Saturday and work for it.

The fall of humanity, our desire to rule ourselves, wrecked our world. We see Genesis 3 everywhere: war, exploitation, addiction, homes and marriages torn apart. The human race keeps saying, “We do not want God over us.” It did not stay on the world stage. It came into our community, into our families, and all the way down into me and you.

Despair and Control Are Two Rival Kingdoms

The fall often shows up in our lives in at least two ways. Some of you have given up. You decided long ago that nothing will ever change. You call it realism, but despair has been controlling you and giving you orders ever since. Maybe you have prayed, “Your kingdom come,” for years, but somewhere along the way you stopped believing God’s reign could reach this part of your life.

Others went the other direction and reached the same conclusion: nobody is coming, so it is up to me. You became competent. You took control. You are the person everyone calls when everything falls apart. That is how you run your own soul.

One person lets despair rule. The other tries to be the ruler. Neither rests under the good rule of God.

I am not immune. Do you want to see my kingdom? It has a small border, a short budget, and a very unreliable ruler: this guy. Some mornings I cannot govern my own temper before breakfast. I have a kingdom in my head where everybody does what I say. Then I walk into the actual house and my citizens have opinions. Strong opinions.

I was in a conversation about another church and how well that church was doing. I will tell you what crept up inside me: envy and pride. I thought, “I am going to show them.” I pray “Your kingdom come” every week, but that day I found what was underneath it: my kingdom come, bigger than theirs, with my name on it.

In Christ, God already gave me a name I did not earn. He made me royalty. He gave me honor in spite of the ways I dishonored Him. He calls me son, and yet I am still trying to build a kingdom so somebody else will know my name. It is foolishness.

Most of us are not building a church, but all of us run our own little kingdoms: a house, a family, a business, our own life. We try to do it without God. Most of us would never say that out loud. We would say we are ruling with Him. But some of us know we are not, and we are drowning. The stress, anxiety, fear, anger, and quiet depression often grow because we are trying to be kings and queens without our true King.

What would it cost you to get off that throne today and let Jesus have it?

We Do Not Yet See Everything, but We See Jesus

I know surrender can feel scary. If I come down from the throne, let go of control, and surrender my authority, who will hold my life? The world is a mess. My world is a mess, and I do not see hope.

Hebrews 2 helps answer that. The writer quotes Psalm 8: crowned with glory and honor, everything under his feet. Then he says something we might not expect the Bible to say: “At present, we do not see everything under him.”

The Bible looked at the same world you drove through to get into the parking lot this morning and said, “It is not here. We do not see anybody’s crown.” The kids still are not talking to you. The marriage still ended. People still live on the streets. I do not see the kingdom.

That is not a skeptic outside throwing rocks at the church. It is Holy Scripture. God put that sentence in the Bible on purpose. If you walked in thinking, “I do not know if I believe any of this. Look around. Does it look like there is a kingdom here?” the Bible says you are reading the room correctly. Almost.

The crown from Genesis 1 and Psalm 8 seems to be missing. Adam’s crown is not on anyone’s head. The Bible says it out loud: “We do not see it.” But the next words are, “But we do see Jesus crowned with glory and honor.”

The crown is not missing. It is on a head right now, just not yours.The Soldiers Mocked a King and Crowned One

Jesus did not get the crown the way you would think. In Matthew 27, He has been arrested. Roman soldiers take Him into the courtyard and decide to have fun with the prisoner. They strip Him and throw a scarlet robe on Him because that is what kings wear.

They take thorn branches, twist them into a jagged circle, and press them into His scalp because a king needs a crown. They shove a stick into His right hand because a king needs something that says he is in charge. Then they get on their knees and mock Him: “Hail, King of the Jews.”

They walk Him up a hill and nail Him to a piece of wood. Over His head they put the criminal charge that tells the public what He did to get executed: “This is Jesus, the King of the Jews.”

The robe, the kneeling, and the sign were a punchline to them. Every single piece of it was true. They thought they were making fun of a king. They were crowning one.

Pay attention to what the crown was made of: thorns. When Adam reached for a crown that was not his in Genesis, God cursed the ground and thorns came out of the dirt. The thorns are the curse growing out of the ground. They took that curse, twisted it into a ring, and pressed it onto Jesus’ head until He bled.

Adam reached for a crown and got thorns. Jesus took the thorns so that you and I could get the crown back.

Jesus Is King Right Now

Three days later, the grave is empty. Jesus stands before His disciples with a status report: “All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Me.” All authority. Not some. Not only authority over church buildings and Sunday mornings. All of it.

He is not campaigning. He is not waiting to be voted in. He rules and reigns now, this morning, while you sit in your seat.

The One on the throne of the universe is the God-man, Jesus Christ. He knows hunger and exhaustion. He cried beside a grave, and He still bears the scars. The hands running the cosmos this morning are the hands they drove nails through.

Church, Jesus is King right now. The kingdom of God has already begun. His kingdom has broken into this world and continues to break into this city. It appears every time Jesus takes the throne of a life that something else once ruled.

Jesus said, “If I am driving out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.” There is a man in this room who has been clean for a year. Something used to own his body and his mornings, but it does not own him anymore because Somebody else does. Someone in this room prayed for that man by name before any of it happened. That is the kingdom of God showing up.

People in this room might never have shared a sidewalk outside these doors. Here they come together and sing to the same King. That is the future kingdom showing up in the already.

When we pray, “Your kingdom come,” we are not asking God to become sovereign King. He already is. We ask His saving reign to spread, for more rebels to become sons and daughters, and for more lives to come joyfully under the rule of our true King until every enemy is gone.

The King Changes Your Monday Morning

Jesus on the throne changes your morning. Nobody else gets the final word in your life. Your boss gets a say, and we honor rightful authority, but your boss does not get the last word. A frightening diagnosis may tell the truth about your body, but it does not tell the truth about your future.

The crown God handed humanity in Genesis 1 has been given back in Christ, so use it. The nurse who charts honestly at three in the morning when nobody is watching is doing kingdom work. The teacher who refuses to give up on the child everyone else threw away is doing kingdom work.

The man who does not have much but gives generously to someone in need is doing kingdom work. The college student who proclaims the gospel at the risk of losing friends is doing kingdom work.

God is not finished with you. You are not sitting around waiting for heaven. You are on duty.

Some of you are not in open rebellion. You are coasting. You built a comfortable Christian life where you never do anything explicitly bad, but you are not doing much for the kingdom. That is a wasted crown.

If you are in Jesus Christ, God gave you good gifts for the purposes of His kingdom. Use what He gave you for His kingdom, His glory, and your good.

Bow Now While It Is a Beautiful Invitation

The King will not leave this world half done. He started the rescue on a cross. He is coming back to finish it on the throne.

When the Bible says every knee will bow, it means every knee: those who love Him and those who wanted nothing to do with Him. The only question is whether you bow now, while it is still a beautiful invitation, or bow later when it is not.

Bow now. If you have never done it, do it where you are sitting. Look at the cross. Men mocked Him as King. They spit on Him and crowned Him with thorns, and He still went to the cross for sinners like us. Repent and trust Him. Come to Christ. Bow to the King who died for you and rose again.

Three Words and One Name

Some of you already have bowed to Jesus, which means somebody in your life has not. Here is your assignment this week. Every morning, before you ask God for anything else, stop and pray three words: “Your kingdom come.”

Then say one name, one person you know who still lives under a rival king. Maybe it is your brother, the person at the shop, or your daughter who will not take your calls. Whoever it is, say the name. Three words and a name.

When you pray “Your kingdom come,” you call down the end of human history as we know it. You ask for the sky to open.

The Rider Called Faithful and True

Revelation 19 tells us how this ends. John says, “I saw heaven standing open and there before me was a white horse, whose rider is called Faithful and True. With justice He judges and wages war.”

Jesus is not coming back as a baby in a feeding trough. He is not coming back to be mocked. John says His eyes are like blazing fire, on His head are many crowns, and from His mouth comes a sharp sword to strike down the nations. On His robe and thigh is written: King of Kings and Lord of Lords.

That is the God who is coming back. When He comes, He will make all things new: a new heaven and a new earth. Everything Adam broke will be restored.

No more funerals. No more cancer. No more overdoses on Dixie Highway. No more children learning to live without a parent.

God Himself will wipe every tear from your eyes. The sovereign King of the universe will enter the room, lean down, and wipe the tears from your face with His scarred hand. Total restoration. The kingdom of God in full.

They Will Reign Forever and Ever

It gets better. Revelation 22 describes what happens to God’s people: “They will see His face, and His name will be on their foreheads, and they will reign forever and ever.”

They will reign. It is talking about us. The original calling of humanity will be restored. We will finally be what we were created to be, ruling under the rule of the King who deserves all glory. That is our future.

Church, Your Kingdom Come

For every soul in this room who still does not know Him, church: Your kingdom come.

Over our homes and marriages: Your kingdom come.

Over every hospital room, every addiction, and every place where sin and suffering still rule: God, Your kingdom come.

Death and the grave are not king. Jesus is King right now, and He is coming back. Church: Your kingdom come.

Pray with the people around you. They need encouragement. They need to hear that Jesus is King, that Jesus is coming back, and that the wreckage of this world does not have the final word. Jesus has begun the restoration, and one day He will return to finish it.

When you see the wreckage tomorrow morning, do not fall into despair. Do not exhaust yourself trying to seize control. Look at the rider on the white horse. Look at the scars in His hands. Let go of your throne today because Jesus is King right now, and He is coming back.

Closing Prayer

Father, I thank You so much that we get to call You Father. You are sovereign, all-powerful, and in control of all things. You are faithful.

Sometimes we doubt that. Sometimes we struggle with it. Help us with our unbelief. Help us realize that our sovereign God, the One who created all things, is also our Father who cares about every detail of our lives.

We do not understand every aspect of the suffering in our world or our lives. We do not understand the pain our loved ones face or the loved ones we have lost. Help us know You are faithful, You are with us, and You will make all things new. You will wipe every tear from our eyes, including the ones on me right now.

Father, thank You that through Your Son Jesus we have a King who rules and reigns right now. We trust that King Jesus will come back and finish what He started. He will restore all things in a new heaven and a new earth.

So we declare to You as our Father, our Father in heaven: Your kingdom come this morning. Amen.

West Palm Beach Church

Belvedere Church is a Christ-centered church in West Palm Beach where you can come as you are, hear the truth of God’s Word, and grow in a church family shaped by Scripture and the Spirit. In this message from Matthew 6:10, Pastor Rajiv Khatri continues the Kingdom-Centered Prayer series with Jesus’ words, “Your kingdom come.” God made humanity to rule under His good authority, but sin reached for His throne and left us under the rule of fear, pride, addiction, and death. Hebrews 2 tells the truth about the world we see, then points us to Jesus, crowned with glory and honor. At the cross, Jesus wore the thorns of Adam’s curse. At the resurrection, He declared that all authority belongs to Him. His kingdom is breaking into West Palm Beach now, and one day the King will return to make all things new. Join our West Palm Beach church Sundays at 11:00 AM at 301 Cherry Road.