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# Nineteen.
- URL: https://www.belonging.house/nineteen/
- Published: 2025-08-17T23:10:02.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-25T00:50:24.000Z
- Description: Mary and the Ark of the Testimony.
- Author: Christ John Otto
- Tags: artists, charismatic, Mary, Podcast, #Migrated-1784940061448, #Import 2026-07-25 00:49

Nineteen.

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedThis week is a celebration of thanksgiving.  
We have been doing this Belonging House adventure  
for nineteen years.  
There are some amazing things about this story,  
and how so many of the things that I did in the beginning  
became part of our DNA  
and part of our life together.  
We began praying in tongues together for fifteen minutes  
in my living room in Akron, Ohio.  
We celebrated holy communion together daily.  
We sat and listened to God together.  
We ate together.  
And all of this happened before we "formed"  
an organization.  
  
In July 2006 the Lord shocked me with   
an encounter with heaven in my living room.  
And part of that encounter was interacting   
with an angel  
who brought a message from the Lord:  
Raise up an army of artists who will build Jesus  
a throne in the earth.  
I had no idea what that meant,  
or why God called me.  
It has taken a long time to work out what the  
calling was:  
it was a calling to make disciples.  
It was call to transformation.  
And God called me to be a father,  
and before you can be a father,  
you have to learn how to be a son.  
I am still learning.  
  
There are challenging pieces to this call.  
I was given instructions on how to do it.  
Do not do conventional fundraising.  
Do not network.  
Give up all your old ministry contacts.  
Tell the story of all that I am doing,  
and I will move people to give.  
  
And then on August 12, 2006  
I had another dramatic encounter  
at a church in Masillon, Ohio,  
and the risen Lord Jesus came to me   
and said he was calling me to be an apostle to the artists,  
and that he wanted his mother involved in my ministry.  
As you can imagine,  
I thought this was the kind of thing that would get me  
burned at the stake,  
and that I would not be able to tell anyone about it.  
And I didn't for about nine years.  
These are all the big ideas and ingredients  
that God put into our pot,  
and that he has been simmering for almost two decades.  
I am just now  
starting to understand   
and put all the pieces together.  
  
And these big ideas   
all come back to the theme we have been   
exploring:  
God made us in his image.  
We are the image of God.  
And the image is about substance.  
It is not about performance or attributes.  
Jesus Christ is the Image  
of the Invisible God.  
God created Adam and Eve  
to be his image in the earth.  
They were to be God in the flesh to the created world,  
to the animals and the plants,  
and to the things seen and unseen.  
As you know,  
that story became a tragedy,  
and God raise up Bezalel  
who symbolically, and artistically,  
created a model of heaven  
and a model of eden   
in the desert.  
As I mentioned last week  
Bezalel was a symbolic image of a New Adam.  
  
Exodus 37:1  
says,  
Bezalel made the ark.  
And what was the ark?  
It is referred to as the ark of the testimony   
and the ark of the covenant.  
It contained manna,  
the rod of Aaron that bloomed,  
and the tablets of the Ten Commandments.  
And these things pointed to the testimony of all  
God did for Israel  
in the period after the Exodus.  
They were a reminder and a witness.  
  
Let's fast forward  
to the book of Luke.  
In both Luke, and in Acts,  
Luke uses a number of stylistic devices  
to connect dots between the Old and New Testaments.  
Where Matthew refers back to verses from the prophets,  
Luke does something a lot more artful.  
Luke uses literary alllusions.  
He takes words and phrases from  
the Greek version of the Bible,  
the Septuagint,  
and he inserts them into his story.  
And he does it in a way that the reader  
and listener would recognize.  
  
So, in Acts 2,  
Luke inserts phrases from Genesis 11  
into the story of Pentecost  
and makes a clear and direct reference that  
the reader understood.  
God divided the nations at Babel  
and now the divided tongues of fire  
are bringing the nations together  
into the Kingdom of God.  
  
Luke does this again  
in Luke Chapter one.  
Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit,  
and she exclaimed with a loud cry.  
The phrase here  
uses the same device Luke uses in Acts,  
and it comes from the reading we heard from   
I Chronicles 15.  
David has taken the old Tabernacle at Shiloh apart,  
and he has brought the Ark,  
which had been taken into Exile and was being cared for   
by Obed-Edom  
and he is bringing it into Jerusalem.  
David is setting up a worship revolution  
and that revolution in I Chronicles  
involves a tent  
where, instead of blood sacrifices,  
there is a continuous sacrifice of praise  
before the Ark of the Testimony.  
They are going to dwell in a tent   
of the Lord's Presence.  
And Luke takes a phrase from  
I Chronicles 15:16,  
and puts that into the mouth of Elizabeth.  
Just as the people   
raised a shout of joy for the ark,  
and the testimony,  
Elizabeth shouts for joy for Mary.  
And Elizabeth cries:  
blessed are you among women,  
and blessed is the fruit of your womb.  
And blessed is she who believed that there  
would be a fulfillment of what was spoken by the Lord.  
The new covenant  
is not about a wooden box.  
The new covenant is about human beings  
and now God's ark  
is a person.  
And instead of the Law and the Priesthood  
and the manna,  
this person contains  
the Word made flesh,  
the Great High Priest,  
and the Bread of Life.  
The Kingdom of God  
is not about things or buildings or objects.  
The Kingdom of God   
is about being a tabernacle for the Holy Spirit.  
And this woman  
through her "yes"  
becomes a new Eve,  
who instead of releasing death into the earth,  
obeys God and releases eternal life.  
Eve was to be the mother of all the living,  
and Mary would be,  
as it says in Revelation 12,  
the mother of all the redeemed.  
And when we go to Revelation,  
God's temple in heaven is opened,  
and the ark appears.  
The ark Moses saw.  
And the ark is a woman.  
  
So what does this have to do with you and me  
and what does this have to do with artists?  
First,  
the plan for you and me  
is to be the image of God,  
to be a bearer of the testimony.  
Later in that chapter in revelation  
it says they overcame by the blood of the lamb  
and the word of their testimony.  
God became a man  
through the flesh of a virgin,  
that is a powerful testimony.  
And God became flesh through Mary  
when she said yes.  
God becomes flesh through you  
when you say yes.  
God wants you to be a tabernacle of the Holy Spirit  
and God wants you to be his yes on the earth.  
  
Mary's yes  
was the greatest creative act in human history.  
After God creating the world ex nihilo, out of nothing,  
God created a baby in a the womb of a virgin.  
But he did it with her permission.  
And she agreed.  
And in her agreement  
she made answer for the creation  
to the redeeming will of God.  
Light,  
fire, and life  
joined to our nature  
you have brought forth  
that to the glory of God the Father  
heaven and earth might be restored.  
  
And finally,  
we are back to a key idea  
an idea that many Christians have lost  
and artists and creative people also have lost.  
We are called into relationship.  
God is the most relational being in the universe.  
There is always room for you at the Father's table.  
Jesus has a mother.  
God has a mother.  
A human mother,  
and this new covenant is not a covenant of tasks  
or information, or even doctrine.  
This new covenant  
at its heart is a covenant of relationship.  
Revelation twelve ends   
saying that the dragon has gone off to make war  
against the children of the Woman.  
We are called  
in the spirit  
to be a family.  
And wherever you see breakage in relationship  
you are not seeing the work of God,  
because  
just as Israel is a physical tribe of people  
the Body of Christ is a new nation.  
  
The name Belonging House came from the teaching  
of Ingrid Trobisch, who taught a lot on marriage and family.  
She said that one of the greatest needs we have   
is for "geborgenheit."  
Geborgenheit is the german word to describe  
the emotion you feel when you are held in the arms   
of your mother and lean against her breast.  
It is a feeling of safety, security, and belonging.  
It is the place of complete and total rest.  
It is shalom.  
  
Of course,  
Geborgenheit would look weird on a logo,  
so we went for Belonging House.  
You cannot create  
and you cannot go into a big battle  
as an artist and creative people  
in a global psychological war  
if you do not have a place to belong.  
  
I believe this is why God calls people   
into our fellowship who are not artists.  
We need a support system  
and a family.  
And out of that place of the Presence,  
around the Ark of God,  
we can create  
and we can go forth.  
  
*I do not put my Substack behind a paywall, so if my work has helped you, consider buying a coffee at buymeacoffee.com/christjohnotto or support our community, Belonging House at https://belonginghouse.betterworld.org Thanks.*