I will believe.
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.
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