Believe for It
CeCe Winans built a Grammy-winning song around a plain, direct request -- believe for wholeness, for yourself and everyone around you -- and let four decades of vocal control do the rest.
By Song Reviews · August 30, 2026
CeCe Winans built a Grammy-winning song around a plain, direct request -- believe for wholeness, for yourself and everyone around you -- and let four decades of vocal control do the rest.
CeCe Winans has been recording gospel music since the 1980s as part of the Winans family’s broader dynasty, and “Believe for It,” the title track of her 2021 album, doesn’t try to reinvent anything about that tradition. What it does is execute the tradition’s central move – a plain, direct statement of faith, sung with total conviction – about as well as it’s currently being done by anyone. Winans has described the song’s purpose simply: a call to “believe for wholeness and healing for yourself, your family, and your community.” There’s no clever conceit standing between that statement and the listener; the song’s entire design is to say the thing and mean it.
The vocal performance is where four decades of experience actually shows. Winans doesn’t oversing the track the way a younger artist reaching for the same emotional register might – she holds back through the verses, keeping her tone conversational and controlled, and saves the vocal power for exactly the moments the arrangement builds toward, so the eventual release lands as earned rather than as a stunt. It’s the difference between a singer performing conviction and a singer who’s had thirty-plus years to figure out precisely how much restraint makes the payoff work.
The song’s reception backed up the craft: twelve weeks at No. 1 on Hot Gospel Songs, a 2021 GMA Dove Award, and the Grammy for Best Contemporary Christian Music Performance/Song the following year – the same category “Hard Fought Hallelujah” would win three years later. Winans’ path back into this week’s coverage doesn’t end there, either: she later worked directly with Carrie Underwood on Underwood’s 2021 gospel album My Savior, the same record that includes Underwood’s solo studio return to “How Great Thou Art” – a small, real connective thread running under two otherwise unrelated corners of this week’s Sacred Sunday.
8.6/10 – no gimmick, no reinvention, just a veteran gospel singer doing the fundamentals better than almost anyone else currently working.
Hero image: CeCe Winans performing backstage at “The Experience,” Lagos, Nigeria, December 4, 2009, by Pastorflex, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.