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# Prepare the Way for the Lord
- URL: https://www.belonging.house/prepare-the-way-for-the-lord/
- Published: 2025-12-07T23:29:16.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-25T00:50:08.000Z
- Description: The John the Baptist mission.
- Author: Christ John Otto
- Tags: Advent, Podcast, #Migrated-1784940061448, #Import 2026-07-25 00:49

Prepare the Way for the Lord

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Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when publishedPrepare the Way  
for the coming of the Lord.  
  
This phrase  
was part of the dramatic call  
I received in 2006.  
Raise up an army of Artists   
who will build Jesus a throne  
and make a way for the coming of the Lord.  
You will father a new generation of artists  
who make a way for the coming of the Lord.  
  
In Scripture  
there is really only one forerunner  
John the Baptist.  
His message can be broken down into four parts:  
  
1.Prepare the Way for the coming of the Lord.  
2\. Change your thinking.  
3\. Produce works that show you have changed.  
4\. He must increase  
and I must decrease: when he comes turn to him and be filled with the Holy Spirit.  
  
These four points are the core of the character and the nature of every person called to be a forerunner.  
  
Before we talk about John  
we have to talk about his lifestyle.  
John was a Levite.  
He was the son of a priest,  
and when the book of Matthew was written,  
the priesthood in Israel  
was politically compromised.  
The priests  
who had led the Maccabean revolt two hundred  
years earlier against the Greeks  
were now collaborators with the Romans  
in order to keep an uneasy peace in Israel.  
John was born to be a priest  
and at some point  
he walked away.  
At some point he made a choice  
that there would be no compromise.  
The image of John is a wild and crazy one,  
but behind this image  
is a man who had to have been well trained,  
and knew the Scripture.  
There are a couple indications  
that underneath that rough exterior  
there had been wealth and refinement.  
He wears a leather belt,  
and that means there was a buckle.  
That means money.  
He eats wild honey and locusts.  
To us that sounds a bit disgusting,  
but those were rare delicacies in the ancient world.  
It would be like us saying he ate truffles all day.  
Yes, they were natural  
and hard to come by,  
but John knew how to find them,  
and he lived on delicacies.  
  
From the image we get of John  
he is a man  
who at some point  
chose  
to live   
completely outside the system.  
He was beholden to no one.  
  
When God really calls you out to make a way for the coming of the Lord  
he is going to disconnect you from the corruption of your generation.  
John was born to be priest,  
and he chose instead  
to go into the desert  
and be schooled by God.  
You can walk from the cave of Elijah  
to the spot where John was baptizing.  
You can see the Jordan from the cave.  
It is one of the driest places I have been.  
My guess is,  
John knew about Elijah’s cave,  
and probably stayed there.  
  
God takes you into the desert  
to tune your heart.  
We used to say that violinists were  
unhappy,  
because most of them have perfect pitch,  
and when you have perfect pitch,  
you have to live in a world that is slightly out of tune.  
When Jesus pulls you away  
you suddenly find your self  
out of tune with everyone else.  
  
And out of that irritation  
you begin to proclaim the call on your life.  
  
Prepare the way for the coming of the Lord.  
And anyone who has a true forerunner calling  
is going to carry   
emotion  
behind the message.  
That emotion is a force.  
The core of the message of the forerunner is in Isaiah 62:  
Go through, go through the gates,  
 prepare the way for the people;  
build up, build up the highway,  
 clear it of stones,  
 lift up an ensign over the peoples.  
Behold, the Lord has proclaimed  
 to the end of the earth:  
Say to the daughter of Zion,  
 “Behold, your salvation comes;  
behold, his reward is with him,  
 and his recompense before him.”  
Clear the stones.  
Break up the fallow ground.  
Make the way smooth.  
  
2\. Change  
The English translation here   
uses the words “repent” and “works worthy of repentance.”  
The Greek here matters,  
because the words in the Greek are Metanoia  
and Metanoiete.  
  
In the English Bible tradition,  
the word that is most often translated “repent”is the Greek word,“metanoia.”   
  
It’s a compound word,  
made of a prefix and a noun to form a verb.   
Meta means to change.  
It does not mean“to turn” or change direction.  
It simply means change.  
It comes down to us in the term for how a caterpillar   
becomes a butterfly:  
Metamorphosis.   
Which, if you know Greek  
is also a compound word of a noun with a prefix and a suffix:   
Meta—to change   
Morphe—shape or form   
osis—process of.   
Metamorphosis is the process of changing shape   
from one thing to another.  
It’s very simple.   
  
The second part of this word  
is also very simple.   
“Noia” means mind or thinking.  
The Greeks thought that thinking   
and the mind were one.  
As you probably do as well.  
  
The way this comes to us in English is the word “paranoia.”   
It’s a full on Greek word we all know. ”  
“Para” is the word for come behind or come ahead,   
or even come along side.  
It can mean both—as in paramedic—a medic who gets there first.   
To be paranoid is to think someone is behind you.  
So, now that we understand the component parts  
we can put the two together and we have our word  
Metanoia.  
  
To change your mind or thinking.  
And intrinsic in this,  
because the Hebrew mindset does not  
isolate the thinking from the doing,  
is the idea that your thoughts  
are going to change your behaviour.   
  
Jews did not understand the mind the same way.  
Jews understood the mind, thinking,  
and the heart as one,  
as the “soul.”  
Jews did not think things sprang out of your head,  
but rather,  
out of your center,  
either the area of your heart  
or your intestines.  
  
The Hebrews thought that the mind was connected to your gut,   
or your bowels.  
So when Jesus had compassion,   
it says he “felt it in his gut.”  
The head is never floating somewhere apart from the body.  
  
Have you noticed something?  
I have not mentioned sin.  
Metanoia is not about sin.  
It’s about change.  
Metanoia is about an inside out transaction,  
that is not about morality, reparation, or even consequences.  
It’s about becoming something else.  
Maybe it’s about becoming a new creation.  
 When you truly metanoia,  
the sin  
which is really a symptom  
of the separation from God,  
and of a wrong identity,  
begins to go away.  
You are changed.   
That’s why a lifestyle of repentance  
is eternal, but hopefully,  
a lifestyle of sin is temporary.  
This is why sin based revival movements die.  
When people get transformed  
things change  
and you can’t keep going to the altar.  
At some point you have to start living like Jesus.  
  
God is always finding places in your thinking  
that need to change.  
Even if it  
doesn’t really add up to sin.   
Turning to God  
will in turn  
bring a transformation of your thinking.  
Turning and Transformation  
must be held together.  
  
The Forerunner calls people to action.  
So   
if you are making a way for the coming of the Lord  
and people are suddenly giving up their wrong ways of thinking,  
the next piece is very important.  
John called the people to works worthy of repentance.  
And he called them to a “mikvah.”  
This was a ritual bath  
either for ritually unclean people   
like women after childbirth,   
or a person who has touched a dead body,  
or a new convert to Judaism.  
If wanted to come to Israel,  
you had to humble yourself  
and get baptized.  
John is saying  
you might be Jewish  
but your are not Israel,  
and you need to get birthed into Israel.  
John’s baptism  
was a baptism without the power of the Holy Spirit.  
It was just a human sign of a choice.  
And there were people that John refused.  
He refused the religious experts,  
the professionals,  
the ones were compromised.  
John turned them away and called them a brood of vipers.  
This would be echoed later  
when Jesus said,  
“many of you will come to me saying ‘Lord, Lord  
we did all these great thing in your name,  
and the Lord will say  
depart from me  
I never knew you.”  
  
John’s baptism is not our model,  
because there was no Holy Spirit.  
He was preparing the people for something greater.  
  
You have to produce works that look like you have had a metanoia.  
  
Finally,  
the forerunner  
points to someone else.  
He must increase  
and I must decrease.  
We are not making a way for ourselves  
or our ministry.  
It is not about you  
or your ministry.  
It is about Jesus  
and all signs are pointing to the truth  
that Jesus is coming  
and every eye shall see him.  
And John is saying to us,  
I baptize with water,  
but there is one coming   
who will baptize with the Holy Spirit  
and with fire.  
  
John like so many in his generation  
confused the promises of the first coming of Jesus  
with the second one.  
Bob Tuttle at Asbury used to say,  
Jesus came once as a little Baby,  
but he is coming again  
with a ROAR!  
  
Let’s take these four ideas  
and land this airplane  
with some practical thoughts.  
Last year Mark Pierce  
told me I had a John the Baptist calling.  
  
I was called to be a priest,  
and then God forced me to leave a system that was   
grossly corrupted  
and live in the desert  
for a long time.  
And when I was called to raise up an army of artists  
I was given a few basic directions:  
and those directions were in opposition to the prevailing wind  
of ministry building,  
consumer Christianity  
obsession with money and big organizations  
and building cultures around events and celebrities.  
On January 7  
I will officially be cranky for twenty years.  
This past year  
we experienced the hardest pruning   
in our ministry history.  
It’s been a hard season.  
  
In the midst of this hardness  
I have had to ask God to turn the pruning into growth.  
He called me to go against the flow  
but not be weird.  
If you have a forerunner call,  
you are going to be asked to do unusual things,  
like not go to professional events and   
not go raise money  
and not network  
or even hang out with people who may be into the arts  
but who are not interested in metanoia.  
Some of you listening  
need to permission to   
say to other Christians in the arts,  
you are a just secular artists in the secular world  
doing a few religious things,  
but Jesus is calling me to be a disciple,  
and that means I have to listen to God everyday  
do what he tells me   
and go and do the thing he asked me  
even if it doesn’t make sense to others.  
And if you do this,  
you are living a lifestyle of repentance.  
And you cannot walk this way  
with the resistance that is going to come with it,  
without a baptism of the Holy Spirit  
and fire.  
But the baptism  
comes second  
after the decision.  
So as we look toward the return of the King  
and the coming of our Lord Jesus,  
we need to ask God to come  
Come Holy Spirit.  
Fill us with the fire and the glory  
that you poured out on Pentecost.  
We need a fresh baptism  
to continue to walk in the forerunner anointing.  
We ask Lord,  
for an increase of dreams,  
vision, and revelation in our house  
that we would be magnetized  
to attract the men and women  
who are like iron that was forged in the fire.  
Come Kingdom of God,  
be done will of God.  
Amen.

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