Some years ago while we were in Japan, one of our favorite American contemporary Christian singers made choices that broke my heart. I grieved for months. How could someone as solid as we’d thought this singer was in his faith make the choices he was making? What hope was there if someone like that had fallen?

When I expressed these thoughts to our OMS Regional Director, Bill Oden, he said, “I have yet seven thousand in Israel who have not bowed their knee to Baal.” (I Kings 19:18) I responded, “You’re right. Of course, you’re right.” But still I grieved at the loss of this voice that had glorified and praised God.

Recently I was listening to another contemporary singer, Jeremy Camp, and thinking as I have many times, how much his voice reminds me of the singer who fell away. This was not the first time I’d had a strong sense that God had raised up this “voice” in place of the one who had fallen. I decided to do a Google search to see if the facts agreed. My search told me that the year Jeremy Camp gained wide recognition was the same year the former singer left the Christian music scene. God had raised up one of the “seven thousand others who had not bowed the knee to Baal.”

While it grieves God’s heart when one of his children fall (and I still grieve over the loss of the voice that is gone from the Christian music scene), Scripture tells us if our voices are silent, even the rocks will cry out in praise. (Luke 19:40). God will not leave Himself without a witness.

Father, how thankful I am that even if we, your children, prove to be unfaithful, you are faithful still (II Timothy 2:13).