Brandon Gilliland

A common fear that almost every musician has when it comes to live performances, involves having some piece of gear fail during a live set. I have had many things happen to me when I have played live. Most every musician who  regularly performs live can testify to this fear.

I have:

• broken strings (this is bad because your whole guitar goes out of tune, and you can not play the same chords)
• fried cables
• dropped picks (this always happens when my picks are not easily accessible!)
• had a guitar break
• short-circuited pedals (bad…just bad…)
• had mics go out
• had tubes blow (this is always bad because the sound can not travel out of your amp)

Out of all of these things, I am glad to say that I have not fallen on stage…only at practice! The point of mentioning all of things things is that they can not be controlled. No matter how much one prepares or insures that the gear is quality, these things can still happen. Learning to deal with these situations properly is important.

In leading worship, the last thing I want to occur includes the list above. Every time I lead worship, I always recognize that everything is in God’s control. I have found that many times, God uses these events to shape us. When things do not go the “perfect” way, God can often use them for His glory.

I can recall a time when the band and I were leading worship. We had all agreed to practice extra early to insure that our set was going to be awesome. We were going to add all of these new components to the songs, and it was going to be great. We soon found that we were needed to help out with some church activity before church started. I initially thought about the practice. “What about worship band practice?!”

What I though was going to be half an hour, soon turned into a few hours. At this point, we literally had 10 minutes to run through a complete sound check. On top of that, half of our stage gear was missing. We had barely enough mics, the sound board was messed up, some songs were not ready with words to be placed on the screen. In our minds, it was a disaster. We all semi-completed our 10 minute sound check and quickly went outside to have a pre-service prayer meeting like usual. The only difference in this prayer time was that we were overwhelmed. We prayed for God to have His way in the situation.

Eventually, we stepped up to lead worship. On the very first song, my guitar string broke. At this point, I realized that I could not do anything in my own strength. I asked again that God would have His way in the worship set. As the worship set came to a close, I prayed, and it was time for the sermon. After the sermon ended, I packed up my gear as usual. One of the leaders came over to me, and told me that it was one of the best worship sets he had been a part of in awhile. I was honestly in shock! To us as a band, it was one of the most disastrous sets as far as the technical things.

That night a few weeks ago showed me that God can use the most unfavorable conditions to bring glory to Himself. He does not need to use us, but He does. God calls us to minister and serve Him in different ways. Even when things are not favorable, He can use it for His glory. Do not allow yourself to get in the way of God moving.

Has there ever been a time in your life when God used an unfavorable situation for His glory?