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 20: Resurrection — Blessed Are Those Who Believe and Do Not See, John 20:19-31
Jesus rose from the dead and demonstrated to his apostles that the Father raised him from the dead through present and sufficient encounters to his apostles and their company. The resurrection of Jesus is a historical fact and an eschatological certainty; it does not merely reassure the discouraged — it radically reorients them toward mission, empowerment, and worship. Christ’s gift of peace is inseparable from his call to go, and his breath of the Spirit equips what his commission demands. We are invited, like Thomas, to move beyond our doubts and misgivings, even our secondhand faith into a living, personal encounter with the risen Lord that compels our own wholehearted confession.

Our Focus Today
The Breath of the Spirit: New Creation and Divine Commissioning, John 20:21-23
Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in a deliberate echo of Genesis 2:7, inaugurating a new creation community empowered to extend his mission and declare the forgiveness or retention of sins. 

Invocation
Lord Jesus, you are the Last Adam and Lord of new creation! You breathed your Spirit upon the trembling disciples and sent them forth into the world with the Father’s own authority. Have mercy on us and breathe upon us today! Fill what is empty, animate what is lifeless, and commission what fear has held back. Let my walk with you become a fresh receiving of your Spirit, that I can know his power and may go as those who are truly sent by you. 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: Pss. 75-78

Psalms and Proverbs for Today
These Scriptures allow us to read through the Psalms and Proverbs each month.
Thursday: Psalm 16, 46, 76, 106, 136 and Proverbs 16  

The Breath of the Spirit: New Creation and Divine Commissioning, John 20:21-23
Jesus breathes the Holy Spirit upon the disciples in a deliberate echo of Genesis 2:7, inaugurating a new creation community empowered to extend his mission and declare the forgiveness or retention of sins.

Reflection
The risen Christ does not send his people into the world to bear witness of his Kingdom without resources — he breathes onto them the same Spirit who filled him and who hovered over creation, equipping them for a mission as vast as new creation itself. The authority to declare forgiveness is the gospel community’s most urgent and transforming gift to a sin-burdened world. The Gospel speaks forth hope, forgiveness, and reconciliation for all who believe its message. As believers today we must receive the Spirit afresh each day as the breath that can sustain us, both in our lives as disciples and in our witness of proclamation.

Engaging God’s Word Today
Have you embraced the reality that the same breath that led Jesus in his mission and that animated his first disciples for new-creation mission has been given to you as well? In what specific relationship or context is the Spirit calling you to declare, with both courage and compassion, the forgiveness that Christ alone has made possible?

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
Thank you for the gift, eternal Father, of your Holy Spirit. You gave your Son as a sacrifice that we might never be alone again. Likewise, the gift of the Comforter is all we need to please you and to fulfill your will in this world. Help us all to go forward today in his power and strength. Let me be one of your people who have been breathed upon by the risen Lord — we who are to be carriers of new creation life in a world still groaning under the weight of the old. You have sent us as you were sent, empowered us as you were empowered. You have entrusted us with the most liberating declaration a human voice can speak: that sins are forgiven in the name of Jesus Christ! Help us to never be ashamed but to go and declare your forgiveness to this lost world. Amen.

Scripture Memory for this season
Mark 8:31-38 (ESV): The Messiah’s Predicted Suffering: The Kingdom’s Path 
³¹ And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed, and after three days rise again. ³² And he said this plainly. And Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. ³³ But turning and seeing his disciples, he rebuked Peter and said, “Get behind me, Satan! For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man.” 

³⁴ And calling the crowd to him with his disciples, he said to them, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. ³⁵ For whoever would save his life[a] will lose it, but whoever loses his life for my sake and the gospel’s will save it. ³⁶ For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul? ³⁷ For what can a man give in return for his soul? ³⁸ For whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him will the Son of Man also be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.” 

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)
• Thy Kingdom Come, Rev. Terry Cornett and Dr. Don Davis (during season of Ascension)
• Kingdom, Church and World, Howard Snyder (during seasons of the Coming of the Holy Spirit, Headship and Harvest)
• The Gospel of the Kingdom, George Eldon Ladd (during the seasons of Hope and Remembering the Saints, Exalting the King)

Book Reading Reflection: Destined for the Throne
(Reading “The Presence of the Future,” during season of Lent, Holy Week, and Resurrection)

THE KINGDOM COMES IN THIS AGE

“There is however another element in Jesus’ teaching which sets it in contrast to Judaism. We have seen that Jesus taught that before the eschatological consummation, an actual fulfillment of the Old Testament hope was occurring in his own person and mission. This same note of present fulfillment is found in sayings about a present coming and working of the Kingdom in the world. This brings us to our central thesis: that before the eschatological appearing of God’s Kingdom at the end of the age, God’s Kingdom has become dynamically active among men in Jesus’ person and mission. The Kingdom in this age is not merely the abstract concept of God’s universal rule to which men must submit; it is rather a dynamic power at work among men. This is not only the element which sets our Lord’s teaching most distinctively apart from Judaism; it is the heart of his proclamation and the key to his entire mission.

Before the apocalyptic coming of God’s Kingdom and the final manifestation of his rule to bring in the new age, God has manifested his rule, his Kingdom, to bring to men in advance of the eschatological era the blessings of his redemptive reign. There is no philological or historical or exegetical reason why God’s Kingdom, God’s rule, cannot manifest itself in two different ways at two different times to accomplish the same ultimate redemptive end. The rabbis had such a twofold concept of God’s malkuth. God’s reign could be accepted in this age, and it would appear dynamically at the end of the age. Jesus followed this basic pattern but went beyond the rabbis by teaching that God’s kingly reign was manifesting itself dynamically in this age in his own person and mission before its eschatological appearing.”

~ Ladd, George. The Presence of the Future: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism. William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, Grand Rapids: MI, 1974. Electronic Edition.

On Eagles Wings Prayer Focus: A Long Time Comin’ 
On the Road to Emmaus, Luke 24:13-35 

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