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 27: Holy Spirit — God’s Love, Christ’s Grace, and the Spirit’s Fellowship, 2 Cor. 13:11-14
In his closing benediction to the Corinthian church, the apostle Paul weaves together the distinct yet inseparable work of the Trinity, the three Persons of the Godhead — the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God the Father, and the fellowship (koinōnia) of the Holy Spirit — offering what is arguably the most explicit Trinitarian formula in Paul’s library. The believer’s experience of salvation is finally both relational and communal: it is initiated by the Father’s love, mediated through the Son’s self-giving grace, and made real in our lives through the Spirit’s ongoing communion that binds us to God and to one another. This affirmation grounds the church’s life together in the very life of the triune God, making the fellowship of the saints our participation in and reflection upon the eternal fellowship within the Godhead itself.
Our Focus Today
The Apostle’s Final Call to Wholeness and Unity, 2 Cor. 13:11
Paul’s closing exhortations to the Corinthian believers show how the triune God’s work in the Church serves as the foundation for our pursuit of maturity, agreement, and reconciled community life.
Invocation
Glory to the most high and undivided Trinity, whose works are inseparable, whose Kingdom without end abides, from age to age forever. Amen. Father of love and peace, I come before you acknowledging that wholeness and unity are your gifts to us before they are our strivings in our experience. Quiet my own rustling and defensiveness, soften my resistance to correction, and tune my heart to those of my fellow believers in Christ. As I open your Word, let your presence meet me where I today am most fractured and most in need of restoration. 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.
Monday: Proverbs 30-31
Psalms and Proverb for Today
These Scriptures allow us to read through the Psalms and Proverbs each month.
Monday: Psalm 1, 31, 61, 91, 121 and Proverbs 1
The Apostle’s Final Call to Wholeness and Unity, 2 Cor. 13:11
Paul’s closing exhortations to the Corinthian believers show how the triune God’s work in the Church serves as the foundation for our pursuit of maturity, agreement, and reconciled community life.
Reflection
Spiritual maturity comes from our participation in active Christian community; it is never a solitary achievement, but God forges our character and faith in the crucible of community as together we pursue restoration, mutual agreement, and peace. Paul’s imperatives to the Corinthians show us that the church’s unity is essential to our Gospel experience and witness, for the God of love and peace has bound his abiding presence to the quality of our shared life. Bound in love to God and each other, we must choose teachability over defensiveness, reconciliation over division, all the while trusting that God himself will draw near wherever his people strive together for wholeness.
Engaging God’s Word Today
Which of Paul’s five imperatives — rejoicing, pursuing restoration, heeding godly counsel, being of one mind, or living in peace — represents the area of greatest opportunity for you today? How might yielding to Christ in that very area open a door to a deeper experience of God’s presence within your community of faith?
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 Father for the amazing ways in which your Spirit teaches me how I can glorify you amid your people. Thank you for the believers that I fellowship with in my assembly, for each one of them and for how they challenge me, teach me, and bless me through who they are and what they do. I go now with the confidence that you, the God of love and peace, walks with me and with us. Let your Spirit grant us joy during struggle, teachability in the face of correction, and a relentless commitment to always be reconciled with my brothers and sisters. Show us how to pursue wholeness together, knowing that your presence will always accompany us in all we face and encounter. Amen.
Scripture Memory for this season
Colossians 2:13-15 (ESV): The Messiah on the Cross: The Kingdom’s Triumph Over Sin.
13 And you, who were dead in your trespasses and the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made alive together with him, having forgiven us all our trespasses, 14 by canceling the record of debt that stood against us with its legal demands. This he set aside, nailing it to the cross. 15 He disarmed the rulers and authorities and put them to open shame, by triumphing over them in him.
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)
• Thy Kingdom Come, Rev. Terry Cornett and Dr. Don Davis (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: Destined for the Throne
(Reading “Who Gets to Narrate the World?” during season of Coming of the Holy Spirit and Headship)
“What is that story of God—that story which so desperately needs to be recovered in all its significance and power?
First, let me make it clear that I am not saying that the average Christian cannot recite the framework of God’s story. In Sunday school, preaching, worship and small group Bible studies everyone will recognize the creation; the Fall; the patriarchs; Moses and Israel; the prophets; the incarnation, life, death and resurrection of Jesus, and the new heavens and the earth as the pieces of the story. What I am saying is that the fullness of God’s story is lost. As with a puzzle, there is too much concentration on this or that piece without seeing the whole picture. God’s story suffers from reductionism and privatism. The failure to put the whole biblical picture together is a result of the cultural accommodationism identified in the introduction.
Specifically, it is the problem of reductionism. The Christian faith has been reduced to a few doctrines of self-interest. In my own background, my dad and his pastor friends concentrated almost exclusively on five doctrines: sin, sacrificial atonement, conversion, sanctification and premillennialism. What was missing was a thoroughgoing connection between creation, incarnation and the re-creative acts of God (such as the resurrection and restoration of creation). My dad, though a devoted Christian and a passionate preacher, lost the fullness of the Christian story because he created a story around five pieces of the puzzle instead of the whole picture. The Christian faith was reduced to the problem of my sin, the work of Christ for me, the necessity of my conversion and the expectation of my faithfulness to live like a Christian. I was made the center of the story. I needed to invite Jesus into my life and my journey so he would walk with me and bless my life and my ministry.
By contrast, the original story, the one delivered by the apostles to their successors in the early church, was not nearly so much my narrative as it was God’s. And God speaks his narrative through the Bible. God’s story is about the whole world from its very beginning to the very end. It includes all the nations and governments of the world; it includes the earth, sun and sky; it includes the entire universe. This story even includes you.”
~ Webber, Robert E. Who Gets to Narrate the World?: Contending for the Christian Story in an Age of Rivals. InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, IL: 2008. Electronic Edition. Location 231-246.
On Eagles Wings Prayer Focus: A Long Time Comin‘
God’s Love, Christ’s Grace, and the Spirit’s Fellowship, 2 Cor. 13:11-13.
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