Bible bringers and the All In series

Pastor Juliet Lyons opens by urging the church to bring a physical Bible on Sundays, to underline and write things down so God can bring them back later. This is part two of the All In series: Elan Church believes God is raising up passionate disciples of Jesus, and that means no half-in, dilly-dallying faith. Today the focus is being all in on worship, especially for anyone feeling detached, burnt out, or a little empty. If you are not in that season now, she notes, you either have been or will be.

An all-me worshipper

Pastor Juliet tells her own story. She joined a church in London in 2002, served on host, kids, youth, and street teams, and after two years was released to join the worship team. The days were long, hauling gear in steel-toe boots before and after leading worship, forty hours a week at work and nearly as many volunteering, and she loved it. After six or seven years she joined the staff, flying to conferences in Italy and Asia and back for Sunday. Then every department was assigned Monday-morning cleaning in the converted nightclub warehouse the church had made its home, and the worship team always seemed to draw the toilets. That is where the Holy Spirit held up a mirror. She thought she was a pure worshipper, but she was worshipping God on her own terms. "You are not an all-in worshipper. You're an all-me worshipper."

What worship actually is

From Genesis onward God has been showing His people how He wants to be worshipped, and underneath all the Old Testament actions was always the heart. Jesus quotes Isaiah to the Pharisees in Matthew 15: these people honour me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me. The Greek word for worship means to reverence, honour, bow down, and submit under the authority of Christ, and Pastor Juliet points out that honour is not given but received. Like honour offered to a spouse in a way they cannot receive, worship offered on our terms falls flat. Worship, then, is anything done with the intent to bless and honour God: singing, praying, changing nappies, mowing the lawn, being trustworthy at work, getting the grades, staying faithful to your spouse, keeping your body a holy temple. The measure of a Sunday at Elan is not "did you like it" but "was He honoured."

Worship with your whole heart

Every person is born with a spiritual hole in the heart, and its default is sinful nature because we fill it with whatever we see. Worship creates space for God to come in and dwell there. Romans 8 draws the line between a mind controlled by the sinful nature, which leads to death, and a mind controlled by the Spirit, which leads to life and peace. God is scanning the earth for real worshippers, not perfect ones, and in John 4 Jesus offers the Samaritan woman water that becomes a fresh, bubbling spring so she will never thirst again.

The Samaritan spirit

Pastor Juliet explains the history: after Solomon, the northern Jews intermarried, absorbed surrounding cultures, built their own temple on their own mountain, and decided to worship God on their own terms, while the southern Jews judged and avoided them. That Samaritan spirit is alive in the church today in the person who says people are too judgmental, so I will worship God from my bedroom. Private worship matters, but worship was never meant to be convenient, and God is clear that He wants us with His people. Vices, desires, and comforts quietly take God's place, and none of them can take away thirst, bitterness, resentment, cynicism, anxiety, or fear. God will not cohabit with sin in a heart He wants to fill.

Worship from an awakened spirit

Back in John 4, Jesus tells the woman that true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth, and that the Father is looking for people who worship that way. But when Jesus gave her the secret to a fulfilled life, it flew over her head; she was with Jesus and her heart did not flutter, unlike the disciples on the road to Emmaus whose hearts burned. It is easy to stand in God's presence and feel numb. Matthew 18:20 is fact: where two or three gather, He is there, so if we leave a gathering saying we did not feel God, the reasonable explanation is that we have dulled our senses with other things. Life shreds hearts until they go calloused, and a numb spirit forgets its identity and starts living as a shadow version of itself: "I'm just an angry person," "I was born this way." The answer is to go back to the One who formed us and ask Him what is true, so the heart comes alive again and He sends us back as agents of change.

Worship in truth

Jesus tells Thomas in John 14:6 that He is the way, the truth, and the life. If we cannot accept the truth of the Bible and the narrow way of discipleship, worship will never take us to the heights or depths God intends. Jesus is holy, uncompromising, and confrontational; He loves us too much to leave us as we are, and worship is where He chips away at pride and cleans up ego. Pastor Juliet warns against getting Samaritan about church, leaving because of offence, and notes that God will let a rebellious person go. This world leeches off body, money, mind, and identity, and a life without God becomes the shadow form, defensive and self-obsessed. We cannot fix ourselves; we drink from the well and do everything as worship, even shovelling manure or cooking for ungrateful kids as a pleasing offering.

The missing piece and the response

A film clip closes the message as a picture of a dried-up, weary, raging soul hearing the Father's voice, going low, being filled again, and then going back to touch everything that had gone dry and change her own atmosphere. That is what worship does: it re-imagines and recalibrates us and shows us who we were meant to be. The band returns with a song about making room for Jesus, the prayer team comes forward, and Pastor Juliet invites the church to pause, speak truth over their lives, drink from the well, and let God soften calloused hearts. Elan will be a house that worships in spirit and in truth, and that starts with the humility to ask for a recalibration in heart, spirit, and truth.