Do you know that song?  “If I Had a Million Dollars”?   That song always makes me smile because the first time I heard it I was on one of my first dates with my husband, listening to it being sung a capella by the University of Michigan’s Men’s Glee Club (Go Blue!).  Yes, that was really one of our first dates.  It’s actually when I was fairly certain that this was the man with whom I would spend the rest of my life.  I mean, it takes a pretty confident-in-who-he-is man to take a date to a Glee Club performance.

Where was I…

Oh yeh, the song.  So it’s a catchy little diddy, and the lyric is about all of the things the singer would buy with a million bucks… I would buy you a house… I would buy you a car… I would buy you an ottoman, a green dress, a fur coat (not a real fur coat), a little fridge, and I’d buy your love.

I haven’t thought much about this song lately, but over the past month, I’ve been praying about something specific, and I may as well have been praying this song.   I received a specific answer, and was trying to convince God that maybe He could reconsider.  But that never seems to work out well… and His response to me was completely confirmed this weekend.

If I had a million dollars I know exactly what we could do with it.  To the penny, how many cataract surgeries… how many wells… I know how much water a million dollars brings.  These are all good things.  God’s work, right?   So I tell God… if I had a million dollars I would buy You a well, I would buy Your children a home, I would buy sight for X number of blind desperate people, I would…  buy myself a whole lotta pride… I’d buy myself a name… I’d buy myself right out of dependence on You.

Wait.  What?

My prayer had gone something like this… “God, here’s the thing… see… we have a goal here for 1,000 cataract surgeries in 2013… a goal we believe you’ve set and plan to exceed, and we’re tapped out here.  So how about kickin’ down a bone and payin’ the bill?  Ya feelin’ me?  God?  Hello? <tap tap tap> Is this thing on?”

… Believe it or not, God answers rude prayers too.

See, as far as organizations go, LoveManifest is “small”.  We don’t accrue a lot of cash or have people knocking down our doors to give to people they don’t physically see on a daily basis.  We get a donation, we give it where it’s been designated.  All of it.  Someone gives $60, next week someone in India is given sight.  We don’t save up.

In order to maintain our core value of using 100% of donations for their intended purpose, we don’t have any sort of promotions budget outside of our own wallets.  We don’t have big campaigns, commercials to tug at the heartstrings, and we don’t advertise. In fact, although God has given me the gift of vision and successful execution of amazingly cool fundraisers, He has not once allowed me to use it to the fullest as LoveManifest.  Not once.

What kind of crazy ministry is this?

It’s His.  It’s His ministry.  100% completely, unabatedly His.  

We are just invited to participate on a day to day basis…

In just six months of 2012 He funded 24 medical camps, 502 cataract surgeries, 6 bore wells, 7 education grants, and 1/2 of 1 chicken farm at the Hands & Feet Orphanage in Haiti.

In the first four months of 2013 the numbers are climbing with 14 medical camps. 316  cataract surgeries, 3 bore wells, and 1 sanitation facility.

We absolutely cannot, and will not take credit for this.  Not because we are oh so humble, but honestly our numbers just don’t support it.   It has to be God.

So what was His answer to my “How about a bone?” prayer?

Looking back at my journal pages… “I want you completely dependent on Me on a day by day basis, so that when I act,  I will always get the Glory”.

Pretty powerful stuff right there. If you need to reread that, please do.  Or maybe, like me, you need to write it down.

My favorite part of that answer?  “When I act.”  To me, that was a promise I could rest in.  No more worrying, stressing, or scrambling.  Just knowing that “When He acts”, it will be so completely obviously Him, that He will get the glory.

Oh my gosh.  Pause this blog!  I just remembered something I prayed consistently and sincerely before LoveManifest began and for a long time after.  Hang on… I gotta go get my book… it was something in the back of “Forgotten God” by Francis Chan.  I’ll be right back.

Ok… here we go.  Wow…

Page 159

Pray in complete faith right now.  Ask God to have His Spirit work so mightily in you that it would make for an amazing biography.  A biography that speaks of a life so supernatural that no one would even consider giving you the glory.  A biography that displays the power of the Spirit and lifts up the name of Jesus to the glory of God the Father.  Amen.”

I remember how important that line was to me… “a life so supernatural that no one would even consider giving you the glory.”

I am going to be praying this prayer again.  In fact, I already had this morning.  I just didn’t realize it.

So!  Back to whatever it was I was saying that somehow seems of little importance since being rocked by that moment of “go back and look at how it used to be.”  

Now I’m looking for Him to act… expectantly.  Who will He move?  Is it you?  I guess we will wait and see, and while we wait, we will worship Him for who He is, and not for anything less.

If this ministry ever stops reeking of the Presence of God, then … we’re done.

It’s Him, or it’s nothing.   There is no middle of the road.

Spirit come, and have your way.

Love,

Val

“Why would I want to do what just anyone could do?” – Francis Chan