Tamela Mann: ‘I Want to Reach the Masses for Him’
By Movieguide® Staff
Grammy Award-winning singer Tamela Mann said that God and faith remain her cornerstone despite her success in Hollywood and gospel music.
“I just want to be able to put people’s eyes back on God. Not their eyes be on me, but your eyes and your ears tuned in to what thus say the Lord. What is His desire for our lives and for our steps to be ordered by Him? So that’s my focus, my goal until I die,” Mann told The Christian Post.
Mann’s most recent album, Overcomer, speaks to her overcoming some of her physical health battles.
“This album is based off a lot of things that I have been dealing with over the last five or six years,” Mann said. “One would be my double knee surgery, then I got on the journey of health and wellness… but part of the journey is to overcome.
“This part of the journey, I’ve been praying and asking the Lord, of course, it’s an everyday task [of], ‘Lord, I need help. If you could just help me help myself do better.’ Even with my relationship with Him just being close with the Lord. So that’s kind of how Overcomer came about.”
While she did not have a solid earthly father, Mann also shared that she lives to glorify her heavenly father.
“For me, it comes from a place of not having an earthly father, and not wanting to let my Heavenly Father down. So the purity for me is to make Him proud, … to make Him proud in what He sees me doing,” she said. “I just thank Him, and I constantly ask the Lord to keep the burning and the fire, just like I do for my relationship with my husband. It’s been 33 years. I’m like, ‘Lord, keep my eyes on You, keep my eyes on him, and to desire nobody else but him and You.’ I know the Lord is my first love and I keep myself in that place of thinking.”
Mann confessed that the temptation to take credit for what she has accomplished is strong. However, Mann wants people to look to God through her music and not towards her ability or talent.
“I never want to get caught up in that it’s all about me. I want to keep the focus on that it’s about the Lord and us reaching as many people as we can,” Mann explained. “I’m not perfect in no way. I have flaws just like everybody else. But I just really, really mean Jesus. I really mean to get the word out and to help people. To be able to be tangible, to touch the people and the people to touch me.”
Mann noted that she especially loved tracks “Help Me” and “He Did it For me” from the new album.
“‘He Did it For Me,’ when I hear it, it makes me cry. It makes me really cry because it says, ‘The gifts I have, I may not deserve it, but He chose me.’ I believe He chooses who He wants,” she said. “He gives us the choice to choose Him, but I just thank God for the favor that He’s placed upon my life. And again, I just want to represent Him well. I want Him to say, ‘Well done.'”
“I don’t want to do all this and all this be in vain,” she added. “I just want to reach the masses for Him. Not for my name to be cried out, but for His name to be cried out, and for His name to be great. God is faithful. He’s so faithful to us, and I want Him to help me overcome, to stay focused, to finish.”