> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.belonging.house/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # I will believe. - URL: https://www.belonging.house/i-will-believe/ - Published: 2026-08-18T15:46:59.000Z - Updated: 2026-08-18T15:56:19.000Z - Description: Blessed is she who believed. - Author: Christ John Otto - Tags: Podcast, faith, Belief, Mary I will believe 81826 1132 0:00 /1802.684081632653 1× I will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and love other people. I will surrender myself to the Holy Spirit, and depend on His supernatural help. I will attend to the Breaking of the Bread and Prayer. I will stay in relationship with others who are passionate about Jesus. I will saturate myself in all of the Bible and allow its story to permeate my story. I will listen to the Lord, and do what He tells me. I will pursue excellence in my craft, and continually choose to grow and learn. I will go low, become a servant, and trust that God will raise me up. I will become more aware of Christ in me, the hope of glory. I will express a life of generosity. I will embrace my vocation as an artist, artisan or creative professional, no matter my medium, knowing that God wants to transform the kingdoms of this world into the Kingdom of our Lord through the arts and creativity. I will live a life of expectation knowing Christ will come again. I will Believe. In this season of celebrating our twentieth year I am going to begin a series on the Twelve I wills of Belonging House. And the first of these is I will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and love other people. This is the only commandment in the New Testament. Believe on the Lord Jesus and love people. I will believe. In today's gospel we are celebrating the moment when Elizabeth meets Mary. And Elizabeth says things that would become of the prayer of the church. Blessed are you among women and blessed is the fruit of your womb. And then Elizabeth says something astounding. Blessed is she who believed that the word of the Lord would be fulfilled. Blessed is she who believed. We are going to unpack this because this word believed is a version of one of the most important greek words in the New Testament Pisteuo. It's one of the most used words in the New Testament. 244 times. John 3:22-23 says something profound. In the Kingdom and the New Covenant, the commandments of God are not burdensome. They are simple. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and love one another. The first of the twelve I wills is almost a direct quote of John 3:23. I will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and love other people. This is the foundation. The first chapter of Luke contrasts two eras, two covenants against one another through two people. We have an old man who is standing at the altar of incense in the temple. The old covenant is one of standing before God and doing something. And the angel Gabriel appears to him and gives him a promise. This old priest is about to become the father of the last of the Old Testament prophets. And the old man does not believe. So God strikes him dumb and he cannot speak. And that baby is born, with supernatural help, but it is still a natural birth. The New Covenant begins with a virgin girl And she also receives a promise that she will conceive in her womb a son and he will be great and he will rule over the house of his father David. And he will be holy. And believed. And out of her mouth comes a song of praise. It took me a long time to understand this. I was educated into the world of religious professionals. A lot of people in church structures are bureaucrats, not believers. You know how the world works, you know how people behave, and you know how to manipulate people to get them to do things they do not want to do for you. God first called me to live by faith in 1997. I did believe and I tried it for six weeks. There was one notable thing that happened during that time. I hit something on the side of the road with my tire, and I got a flat tire. There was a visible hole in the side of the tire. I put my finger into the hole, prayed, and asked God to seal the hole. Now you could see the hole, it was visible. Then I pumped up the tire and it held. I drove on that tire for almost a month. With a visible hole. My pastor and the leadership of our church stopped me. They thought I was mentally ill. After I stopped living by faith and obeying my pastor, the tire went flat. A few years later I heard the call again, and I sorta believed. My pastor stopped me a second time and that produced the crash I often refer to. And then it happened a third time in 2006. That third time I did not believe, but I obeyed. I lived a few years doing what God said, even though inside I did not believe. As you can imagine obeying without believing caused me a lot of anxiety. And there was only one way to reconnect my head and my heart, and connect believing with doing. God had to put me in increasingly impossible situations. As you may know there was a season when I slept in a different bed for months, and many days I didn't know where my bed was going to be until late in the afternoon. That was strong medicine. It helped my unbelief. Now, after a lot of years, I go when and where God says, and I trust that what I need will be there when I get there. Thank you God. The trick of course, is to know when God really is talking to you. This is why we work so hard to teach people how to hear God and grow in mature faith. You can always tell when people have been shaped by charismatic prophetic culture. They think every imagination of their heart is a revelation from God and prophecy is treated like a form of entertainment. This produces two things: weirder and weirder prophetic words, and words that either cannot be put into practice or misinterpretations of the words. The Kingdom of God is simple. Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and love other people. If God is going to give you a word you need to take it slow and steady, listen not be quick to interpret and then ask how it needs to be carried out. It will always be for the glory of Jesus and the good of other people. If it does not do those two things it is not a word from the Lord. This is why I am so careful about teaching people how to know the voice of God. It is much easier to believe when you are hearing God with other people and learning how to walk it out. God is not weird. But God will ask you to do unusual things. And of course the most unusual is when God tells a virgin she is about to have a baby. And blessed is she who believed. Often we meet people who think that God is giving them a word and it is their responsibility to make the word happen. No, your responsibility is to believe. Yes Lord I am going to act like what you said is going to happen. I am going to choose to do what you say and believe it will work out. I am not going to take your word and fit it into my own thinking. This is how we get distortions. You can always figure out if someone is processing things this way. We sometimes call this a religious spirit, but it is simply human beings trying to make what God said happen using human methods. They will be the people who always somewhat miss the mark. And often what they do is bigger and more expensive and harder to do than what God is asking. And this is why we begin with I will believe on the Lord Jesus Christ and love other people. This is where the New Covenant begins. This is where discipleship for artists and creative people begin, and this is where faith begins. But it is impossible in your own strength. It is impossible. That is why next week we will talk about the second I will. I will surrender to the Holy Spirit, and rely on his supernatural help. I will believe and Love. I will surrender and depend. I will attend. I will stay. I will saturate and allow. I will listen and do. I will pursue and continually choose. I will go low and trust. I will become. I will express. I will embrace. I will live.