Yesterday morning over 700 people gathered in our community for the 23rd annual NWO (Northwest Ohio) Prayer Breakfast. This is a great event that I have had the privilege of helping to organize for the past five years. Our speaker yesterday was Kris Kirschner (pictured at left), from Atlanta, who shared an incredible story of achieving great material success; losing everything including his finances, his company and his family; discovering some painful childhood wounds that affected him deeply; and how God has been healing and restoring him. It was very powerful, to say the least and I believe those in attendance were deeply impacted. And God helped that to happen in a very unorthodox way.

Prior to the event, I picked Kris up at his hotel to drive him to the venue. When we arrived shortly after 6:00 a.m., we were greeted by a member of our committee who shared some very bad news: the sound system was not working well at all. The speakers on the left half of the room were cutting out with great regularity. And when they were working, it sounded very muffled and extremely difficult to hear…and that was in an almost empty room. I thought to myself that if we had trouble hearing now, it would be impossible to hear with 700+ people in a room with all of the accompanying background noise.

At 6:30, we realized that there was nothing we could do about the situation since the event would be starting in half an hour, so we decided to gather in a circle and pray. No one used fancy words. It didn’t seem like anything extraordinary was said. People simply shared their hearts over a five-minute period and humbly asked God to work it all out.

The event was kicked off by John Henry Livingston who does a great job each year of waking everyone up. However, when he stepped up to the mic, he could not be heard at all above the talking going on in the room. Eventually, the room quieted down enough for John to pray (and he did a wonderful job handling some great adversity), but I had a sickening feeling in my stomach that this event might be a disaster because of the sound system. More prayers went up.

After a great breakfast, we kicked off the program, and much to the delight of everyone in the room, the sound improved greatly. Everyone could hear fine. Was it perfect? Nope. But it was good enough. In fact, in hindsight, it may have been better than perfect. Because it wasn’t as clear as we were used to, I noticed around the room that people were really leaning in to hear Kris’ message. I noticed much less background noise. No clanging of silverware on plates. No coughing or clearing of throats. People were tuned in perhaps more than at any previous prayer breakfast. Incredible!

Again, I was taught a great lesson about the power of God. Had I planned it, we wouldn’t have had any sound issues. That would have been perfect to me. Yet, the Lord knew exactly what He was doing. He knew that Kris’ story was so powerful and needed to be heard, so He worked it out better than perfect. And…He got the glory for it!

“Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more important than food, and the body more important than clothes?”
Matthew 6:25

“As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Isaiah 55:9