One Day

One day at about three in the afternoon he had a vision.

Acts 10:3

I love the two-word phrase in Acts 10:3: one day. It is pregnant with hope. Why? Because one day could be today. Today could be the day that God answers the prayer, performs the miracle, or keeps the promise!

In one day, God can deliver from an addiction that has held a person captive for years. In one day, God can bring back a prodigal child who has run away and been gone for decades. In one day, God can provide more than someone has accumulated in a lifetime. But if we are going to experience a miracle one day, we need to pray every day. Too many people pray like they are playing the lottery. Prayer is more like an investment account. Every deposit accumulates compound interest. And one day, if we keep making deposits every day, it will pay dividends beyond our wildest imagination.

$3 Million Miracle

One reason I love Acts 10:3 is because one of the greatest miracles I’ve ever experienced happened “one day at about three in the afternoon.” I received a phone call on a Wednesday afternoon that changed the trajectory of my life personally and the life of our church corporately. Nothing could have prepared me to hear these words: “We want to give you three million dollars.” I was absolutely speechless. And I’m a preacher! The caller graciously broke the awkward silence. He told me there were no strings attached and they wanted to remain anonymous. Then he explained the rationale behind the gift: “Pastor Mark, we love your vision and trust your leadership. There are some churches we wouldn’t feel comfortable investing in because they wouldn’t know what to do with the money, but you have vision beyond your resources.”

That phrase will echo in my auditory cortex forever: vision beyond your resources.

That phrase has become a mantra at National Community Church and is inspiring us to continue dreaming irrational dreams. We certainly practice sound financial management, count the cost of every vision, and steward every penny in a way that honors God, but we refuse to let our budget determine our vision. That would be poor stewardship because it’s based on our limited resources rather than on God’s unlimited supply. Too often we butcher our God-given dreams because we forget the simple fact that God owns the cattle^a on a thousand hills. Don’t let fear dictate your decisions. Letting your budget determine your vision is backward. Faith is letting your vision determine your budget. And if your vision is God-given, it will most definitely be beyond your ability and beyond your resources. Why? Because then God will get all of the glory! And I promise you this: the God who gives the vision is the same God who makes provision.

One Better

Our church is amazingly generous, but our median age is twenty-eight, which means most of our attendees are nowhere near their peak earning potential. They are faithfully tithing on their income as Hill staffers or inner-city schoolteachers or coffeehouse baristas, but they don’t have the income or savings accounts to give large financial gifts. They are focused on paying off school loans or saving for a wedding. Over the course of thirteen years, the largest single gift we had ever received was a $42,000 tithe on the sale of a home. I honestly had no idea that anybody in our congregation had the means to give this kind of gift. I’ve since learned that the miracle is already in the house!

On March 15, 2006, we opened the doors to our coffeehouse on Capitol Hill. The total cost of building Ebenezer’s Coffeehouse was about $3 million, and our mortgage was $2 million. One day, as I was praying, I felt prompted to pray for a $2 million miracle. The first thing I had to do was decipher whether this prompting was just my own desire to be debt-free or whether it was the Holy Spirit who dropped that promise into my heart. It’s tough to discern between wishful thinking and prayerful promptings, but I was about 90 percent sure it was the Holy Spirit who put that promise in my heart. I had no idea how God would do it, but I knew I needed to circle that promise in prayer. I mentioned the $2 million miracle to four people in my prayer circle, and we started praying for God’s provision.

Certainly weeks went by when I failed to even think or pray about the promise, but we did circle that $2 million promise off and on for four years. At one point, I got a little impatient and tried to manufacture the miracle with a startup business. Unfortunately, what I thought was a $2 million idea turned into a $15,000 personal loss. I was tempted to give up when my plan failed, but we kept circling that promise in prayer. Then one day at about three in the afternoon, I got the phone call. The amazing thing is that we weren’t even in a capital campaign. We weren’t asking for money publically; we were just praying for it privately.

The moment I heard those words, “We want to give you three million dollars,” I knew it was a fulfillment of the promise God had given us. I was, however, a little confused by the amount. We had been praying for $2 million, not $3 million. That’s when the Holy Spirit seemed to say in a playful tone, Mark, I just wanted you to know that I can do one better. And, of course, He meant $1 million better!

Degree of Difficulty

Whenever I’m praying for something that is way beyond my ability or resources, I tend to pray longer and louder. I’ll pull out the biggest theological words I know and pray in King James language. I mistakenly think my combination of words will somehow unlock the miracle, but I’m learning that God listens more to our hearts than our words. And what God loves more than anything else is childlike faith. It’s our childlike faith, not our theological vocabulary, that moves the heart of our heavenly Father. It’s simple childlike trust. It’s the bedrock belief that God is bigger than our problem, bigger than our mistake, bigger than our dream.

When we pray, we tend to rank our requests by degree of difficulty. We see our requests as big or small, easy or difficult, simple or complex. But let me remind you of this simple yet profound truth: to the infinite, all finites are the same.

When Jesus walked out of the tomb, the word impossible was removed from our vocabulary. The size of your prayers depends on the size of your God. If your god is small, you’ll pray man-sized prayers. But if your God knows no limits, then neither will your prayers. The God we pray to exists outside of the four space-time dimensions He created, and maybe we should pray that way!

I love the story about the man who sized up God in prayer one day. “God, how long is a million years to you?” God said, “A million years is like a second.” Then the man asked, “How much is a million dollars to you?” God said, “A million dollars is like a penny.” The man smiled and said, “Could you spare a penny?” God smiled back and said, “Sure, just wait a second.”

A three million dollar gift was way beyond what I would have asked for or imagined, but then the miracle happened. And even larger gifts have been given since that $3 million miracle. Please don’t miss or dismiss what you’re about to read: the way you steward the miracles of God is by believing for bigger and better miracles. God stretches your faith so you can dream bigger dreams.

God can accomplish more in one day than you can accomplish in a lifetime.