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# Your Art Is Not Second-Rate Work: Embracing the Call as an Artist
- URL: https://www.belonging.house/your-art-is-not-second-rate-work-embracing-the-call-as-an-artist/
- Published: 2026-10-26T10:29:17.000Z
- Updated: 2026-10-26T10:29:17.000Z
- Description: God is raising up an army of artists. Why your art is not second-rate work, and how Zechariah's four artisans strike terror into the powers of this age.
- Author: Christ John Otto

I will embrace my vocation 102626 0625

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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.

Sometime around the winter of 2012  
I stumbled upon a verse of scripture  
in Morning Prayer that I did not understand.

It was the end of the first chapter of Zechariah.  
This is one of the few places in the Bible  
where a prophecy is given  
and the actual date is attached.  
The date Zechariah had his vision was February 15, 519 BC.  
So this is about sixty five years after the Babylonian Captivity.  
Zechariah knew Jeremiah said the captivity would be seventy years,  
and he is getting impatient with God.  
And then Zechariah sees  
four hours.  
Four is an important number in the Hebrew mind.  
It corresponds to the four winds  
and the four cardinal directions.  
It is all encompassing,  
and represents the whole world,  
and even more, "ha olam."  
The whole created order.

Horns represent power.

God is showing Zechariah  
the powers of the universe,  
and in context  
powers that are in rebellion against God.  
And then the LORD shows him four  
Charashim.  
My bible at the time translated this word "smiths."

It was a weird verse.  
Sometimes you find something  
in the daily readings  
and it bugs you.  
This verse, for some odd reason,  
bugged me.  
And so, I went over to the Gordon Conwell Library,  
and I started looking up the word.  
And in the end,  
I discovered that it was deliberately mis-translated.  
Translators know what this word in particular means.  
It is an artistic word.  
The word meant artisan, or master craftsman.  
And the two most prominent uses of this word  
are in Exodus 35:35  
in the second call and ordination of Bezalel  
to be the Artistic Director of the Tabernacle.  
And 1 Chronicles 4:14  
where we discover that there is a valley  
in Israel  
where all the artists who maintain  
and create things for the temple worship  
live and work.  
And that the nation of Israel  
supported out of the Temple Treasury.  
1 Chronicles 4:14 is extremely important  
because  
the word is actually defined,  
and we can then find the Greek word in the New Testament.  
And we then can find places  
where there are references to the arts.

Bango.

I'm not going to go down the rabbit trail  
about Bible translation today.  
The point is this.  
Zechariah  
saw a moment in the future  
when the entire world  
and cosmic powers  
would align against  
Israel,  
Jerusalem  
and by extension  
the real church.  
In the face of hopeless  
opposition from the whole world,  
God raises up  
artists and artisans  
from the four winds to combat them.  
And in the next verse it says  
the artists will strike terror  
in the hearts of the horns, these cosmic powers.

In 2006  
when God called me to raise up an army of artists,  
I had no idea what He was talking about.  
And the people around me were worse,  
they thought they totally knew what God was talking about  
and thought I was a nut.  
They all thought that I was starting a  
Christian Artist Commune  
where everyone was poor,  
sang folk songs,  
and ate lentils.

I hate lentils.

The attitude of the people around me  
was the same as the translators who translated this verse  
blacksmiths.  
The arts are not important.  
Artists are too lazy to do real work.  
They aren't good with money,  
are starving,  
and they probably deserve to starve.  
Why don't you get a real job.  
Start a real ministry,  
be a missionary or do something useful.

I have heard it all.

And I have dried a lot of tears over the past twenty years.  
A lot of people in our house have been mistreated,  
misunderstood,  
and suffered real abuse,  
sadly at the hands of the church  
who want pretty things  
but aren't willing pay for it.

And honestly,  
there are people who love my books  
but somehow never hear the message  
and when I talk about artists  
and raising up warriors  
it just doesn't go in.  
There is a spiritual block.

We have a lot of people  
who have a big call on their lives,  
but are too afraid to let go  
of a small paycheck  
to walk into it.  
And I get that.  
You all know I refused to quit my job  
and so I was fired.

My life is a parable  
for you who are called into the arts.  
God asked me to quit my job,  
not raise support,  
and not do the ministry building thing,  
no networking,  
no promoting,  
no pushing and building  
to get a big thing going.  
I am not called to build a big ministry.  
I am a sign that you can step out and be an artist.  
He told me to start telling people  
that He could be trusted  
so that artists would  
embrace their call  
and be disciples  
and strike fear into the evil  
that is gaining strength  
every day.

The dark is getting darker,  
but the church is still refusing to turn the light on  
and get brighter.  
And so  
twenty years ago  
I stepped out of my world  
and into this uncharted one.

The whole point is this.  
God has a secret weapon.  
It is making the world beautiful  
in the face of the barbarians who want to burn Limoges,  
and who want to deface the Mona Lisa,  
We are living in days of unprecedented evil.

And to this  
God shows me the four artisans.  
We have artisans and artists in the four corners of the world.  
We have pockets of people  
waiting for their marching orders.  
The reason the Twelve I wills  
take ten "I wills" to talk about discipleship  
and not art  
is that there are many powerless artists out there  
who are really secular artists  
who have been co-opted  
by government grants,  
the need to be in the contemporary art scene,  
and the desire for fame and money.  
These folks are not Christian artists,  
they are worldly artists  
who have compartmentalized their religious beliefs  
but believe more in the world system.

That system is in a big shift,  
and there is coming a time  
when you will have to bow down to the idols they have made  
if you want to be an artist at all.  
And history has shown us  
that when the marxists,  
socialists,  
and muslims  
take over  
the first ones they shoot,  
dismember,  
or stone,  
are the artists.  
Some places  
they just quietly starve you  
by keeping you out of a job  
or a place of influence.  
It is deadly to commit wrongthink.  
They aren't going to be any different now  
than they were yesterday.

No, from what I just said,  
you now know  
Belonging House International  
is not a nice Christian arts ministry.

Belonging House International  
is a community of trained warriors.

Instead of bayonets and bullets  
we are calling people to be disciples  
and be spiritual warriors.  
You have to be solid on the inside.  
You have to get your beliefs straight.  
You have to be able to sift the barrage of lies  
coming from institutions and media.  
You have to get your life in line with God.  
And you have to step out  
and do that thing  
God is calling you to do.  
God is not raising up an army  
of mid-level managers  
in cubicles.  
God is not raising up  
people living paycheck to paycheck  
trying to get by  
who know they should be  
painting,  
writing,  
composing,  
or creating,  
but just never seem to find the time.

God is raising up artists and creative people  
who have learned that he can be trusted.  
God is raising up people willing to step out of the boat,  
and trust that the water will hold you up.

This is why I never use the word "creatives"  
by the way.  
It is a label, and Christians love labels.  
It diminishes you and makes you less.  
God is raising up people  
who are intended to be the Image of his Son.  
And John 1 tells us  
that it is through him  
that all things were made.  
Jesus was a creative person.  
And when you become a disciple  
you are called to be like him.

I am going to talk about two people  
in this house who I believe  
really have become examples of what I am talking about.

I have watched Rachel grow  
from a girl just out of college  
into a mighty woman of faith.  
Rachel has been willing to risk it  
more than once  
and she has gone to places I honestly  
would be scared to go.  
She has believed what I said last week,  
your gift will make a way for you.  
And that has opened doors to her  
in places where Christian missionaries  
are not welcome.  
And she had a sense that Belonging House  
was being called into New York City  
before I did.  
And when Rachel believes that God is saying something,  
she jumps,  
and she goes.  
More than once she has really scared me.  
And I have had to hold my breath  
and commend her to God,  
and God always comes through for her.

Last week I went to her apartment in Brooklyn  
to help finish some unfinished projects.  
When Jesus sends you someplace on assignment,  
it may not be very nice,  
but he gives you grace.  
The apartment isn't fabulous,  
but she lives next to her school.  
She is the art teacher.  
And last year she had a rough year,  
and prayed alot about whether to keep the job.  
She prayed in new teachers who know Jesus.  
And she is able to be a light  
in the lives of these children.  
That is being a warrior artist.

Last year one of Rachel's friends  
read my book Artists at a Shift in Time.  
He started telling Rachel  
that he needed to meet me.  
About six months ago  
Yeltsin did meet me.  
We have had a lot of talks.  
He is finishing his art degree this semester.  
I did not go to art school  
because I couldn't find a place  
that would teach me how to paint  
like an old master.  
Yeltsin paints like an old master,  
and in fact,  
he really is descended from an old master.  
It's in his blood.  
And he is mostly self-taught.  
In this last semester  
he has been painting a series of paintings  
that have profound spiritual meaning.  
In the contemporary art scene  
that is pretty rare.  
Most artists talk about their practice,  
and create artists statements  
to get grants.

Yeltsin was working on his painting  
at the college where he is studying.  
One of the cleaning ladies came to him  
and asked him about his painting.  
She said that she didn't like cleaning the art studio,  
because she feels demons coming off the paintings.

When she walked into the studio and saw Yeltsin's painting  
it felt like it was cleaning the atmosphere.

Being an artist or a creative professional  
is not second rate work.  
Jesus Christ was an artisan,  
and at the end of the book,  
we discover a city coming down out of glory.  
It is the city  
Jesus went to prepare.  
And into that city  
the Kings of the earth  
will bring the glories of their cultures.

I am going to wrap this up  
by sharing a little thing I wrote ten years ago.

This message has been about  
about why  
God is raising up artists across the earth.  
Why?  
Because  
God wants  
to make the kingdoms  
of this world  
the Kingdom of our Lord  
and of his Christ.

That's from the Bible,  
and also Handel's  
"Hallelujah Chorus."

Maybe you never noticed.  
That's culture, by the way.  
God's plan is to transform the earth,  
so that when Jesus returns  
to reign he will find  
a place that feels like home.  
The plan from the beginning  
was to create a home.

A home  
where God and man  
could live together in love.  
Yes,  
I know,  
that's radical.  
God wants  
to establish his Kingdom,  
and God's government  
is all about freedom and responsibility.

Freedom.  
You get to be free from everything  
holding you back and be a member of a royal family.  
There are endless benefits and many responsibilities.  
The biggest responsibility  
is to be like Jesus.  
You can't try harder to be like Jesus.  
You can't be nicer to be like Jesus.  
And you definitely should not be like Jesus on your own.  
You have to give up your control  
and let Jesus rule and reign through you.  
That means  
closing your mouth,  
stopping and waiting,  
and not doing anything  
until Jesus is Lord.

That means  
Jesus is the boss.

But I think that by now  
you know that  
letting Jesus be boss  
is probably better  
than you and your vision,  
mission, career goals,  
and success.

Jesus is  
an awesome boss,  
and the benefits are amazing.  
But to do this is radical.  
And it is dangerous.

You see,  
although this isn't politics,  
it is revolutionary.  
Some people  
want to keep  
their power,  
and  
their control  
over other people.

Remember what I said  
about power over people and control.  
That ain't freedom.  
Even some people  
who say they are  
Christians  
want power  
over other people.  
Power is a dangerous drug.  
And you wield  
a  
dangerous  
arsenal of weapons.

You have  
the weapons  
of creativity.

You can  
paint pictures  
and let people  
see what you see.

You can  
tell stories  
of great adventures  
that awaken the heart.

You can  
write songs  
that people remember and release life.

You can  
design  
better tools  
to improve life.

And you can  
help people  
imagine  
a better world  
for themselves  
and their children.

Remember,  
an artist  
is the only one  
who can get free  
and then help others  
get free too.

And freedom is the foundation of the Kingdom.

And a lot of free people  
are hard to control.  
Especially  
a bunch of  
virtuous  
free people  
who have been  
inspired to see  
the Good,  
the True,  
and  
the Beautiful  
everywhere.

Remember,  
this is why  
there is a war  
over the arts,  
and a war over culture.

Whoever directs culture  
determines government in the future.  
not politics.

This is why  
some people  
want to control  
which words  
you are allowed to say.

And this is why,  
when some people  
get power,  
they line up all the artists, writers, and thinkers  
and shoot them in the head.

They do this first,  
you know,  
usually before  
they start rationing  
all the food.

Because  
a free imagination  
is a dangerous thing.

And the King is coming.  
And the King's greatest weapon  
is a bunch of free thinking people  
making beautiful things that make life better.  
That's a threat to the status quo.  
That means change.  
And it means the end of Satan's empire,  
and the end of all his useful idiots.

As I said before,  
the stakes are high.  
And it's a fight to the death.

I hope you see now,  
why God is forging a global arts movement.  
There are songs,  
and sounds,  
that the world aches to hear.  
All of creation  
is groaning  
for God's Royal Family  
to start acting like one.

To exercise dominion,  
and advance  
the government  
of the King.  
Because  
everyone wants a King like Jesus.  
They just don't know it yet.  
And you,  
through excellent work,  
are going to show them.  
Not with a sermon,  
but with your life.

The days  
of struggling artists  
in the back of the church  
are coming to an end.  
And the days  
of creators advancing  
the government of God are just beginning.  
A story in a magazine that describes the culture of heaven.  
A poem at a reading that makes people  
hunger for something more.  
A dance that moves the audience to see the unseen.  
A movie that awakens the desire  
for the Kingdom to come on earth as it is in heaven.  
It's not about you and your destiny.  
It's not even about making a living.  
Although these things  
are important,  
and God does care about them.

No.  
It's about the future of the human race,  
and the survival of planet earth.  
It's about setting up  
the throne of David  
and expanding the influence  
of the Kingdom of Jesus.

So that  
when he comes  
he will know he's home.  
And we will be ready, and there will be many waiting  
to take up residence in the castle  
we have built together on the mountain.  
Making art,  
and eating food,  
and showing off  
the glories of the nations  
together,  
in Freedom.

## Come under the roof

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Fear not God can be trusted