The house God is building

Pastor Juliet Lyons closes the A House series, which has described Elan Church as a house built on encouragement, healing, miracles, surrender, confession, and prayer, by declaring that God is building a house of unity. Coming off Heart for the House Sunday and launching Elan's summer Groups, she reads Ephesians 2:11–22, where Paul reminds Gentile believers that they were once far off, without hope and without God, but have been brought near by the blood of Christ, who broke down the dividing wall of hostility and made one new man in place of two.

Unity is a gift, not a fight

One of the biggest deceptions in the church, Pastor Juliet says, is that unity is something we have to conjure up. Unity is not uniformity, and diversity is beautiful, but in the current state of the world it is easy to slip into activist mode in ways that contradict the word of God. Ephesians 4:3 tells us to make every effort to keep the unity of the Spirit, not to create it. "God created unity so that we don't have to." She illustrates with a childhood swimming trauma: three boys held her under the water, and for decades she could not put her head under a tap. When she finally took lessons as an adult, her instructor asked why she was trying so hard to do what her body was wired to do. Lie flat long enough and you will float. In the same way we panic and try to manufacture what God has already ordained. If the enemy can steal unity, the church will destroy itself.

Backing the church with her whole life

With 21 years in vocational ministry, Pastor Juliet has watched gifted people drift to the rim of the church, waiting for an I-told-you-so moment, then use God's name to justify disengaging. She speaks honestly about evil she has witnessed inside the church: targeted hurt, manipulation, lies, depression, and anxiety. Yet she remains convinced that God knew what He was doing when He chose the church, and she will back it for the rest of her life. If Jesus could be betrayed and killed by His own people and still give His life for them, we can trust that God is still building His house.

We were not included; now we are

In God's eyes there are only two kinds of people: those with God and those without Him. That is the only division He deems worth fighting for. Using images of the Jerusalem temple, Pastor Juliet shows the court of the Gentiles and the barrier that promised death to any outsider who crossed it. Gentiles were excluded to the point of death, with no hope; now we have access to God. Rather than pigeonholing people in the Sunday Gathering and judging how others worship, we should come correct into God's presence, asking less whether we enjoyed the service and more whether God was pleased with it.

We were born into hostility; now we have peace

Everyone wants diversity until it is in their face. Verse 14 says Christ Himself is our peace, tearing down the systems of hostility by His death, and Galatians 3 says there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female in Christ. Hostility persists in the church when we elevate lowly things above the things of God: I will be united when they do what I want, or when I get my apology. Winning the fight loses the relationship. God planned for us to encounter people we do not see eye to eye with, because that is how He makes us new. "If you're feeling tension today, that's a sign that God is exposing some stuff and he's trying to form you."

We were strangers; now we are family

Christians together constitute something they cannot make up alone. The gathered church is a dwelling place for the Spirit, a place for communal worship that gives a taste of heaven, and a place where broken people, even strangers, find healing. Community forms us; iron sharpens iron; your presence is a brick in the house, and your floor becomes someone else's ceiling as the building rises toward God. A self-described introvert, Pastor Juliet shares a photo of friends from her single years in London, women from backgrounds very different from her Nigerian upbringing, whom God used to break down her pride and form her.

Relax into the grace of God

The closing invitation is to trust God's master plan no matter what you see or feel. Like someone floating alone in a sunlit pool, stop tensing up and let the buoyancy of God's grace carry you. The world will not know what unity looks like unless the church lets the peace of God guard its hearts and minds. Ephesians 4 through 6 shows how to keep that unity practically, so get into the word and get around people who will help you become who God had in mind.