Trust and Faith in Him Alone

By: Ariel Fang, former Doulos member (Class of 2010)

Read: Jeremiah 17:7

This is a story on how God used Ben to teach me the importance of trust and faith in your leaders and ultimately in Him alone.

I remember feeling incredibly frustrated while my parents lectured me on how so-and-so youth group event clashed with some other group’s event or how the planning of some youth group thing was atrocious and we should not be allowed to do such thing ever again. Then they would tell me to go tell Ben. And then it sucked more. I felt that I needed to “fix” the youth group program so I wouldn’t have to deal with anymore uncomfortable car rides home on Sunday. And justified my frustration by agreeing with my parent’s perspective.

So when I finally joined Doulos I knew that the perfect opportunity to subtly complain had arrived. But no matter how I phrased my (parents’) discontent with how youth group was run, Ben would always stand firm with how things were going to happen. The conversations usually went something like this:

“Hey Ben, I think we should check to see whether or not we’ll be in the other service’s program tonight. We should work something so we don’t bother them.”
“Yea, but they should know that youth group always have this space every Saturday, and if they have a problem they should talk to me.”
“Oh…okay…”

And that would basically settle it. Now, this is not to say that my parents suddenly were happy with how things were run in youth group. Nor is this story meant to portray my parents in a habitually angry light (because they are awesome). But through these attempts to “fix” youth group I came to see something very simple. I was putting my parent’s desires above that of furthering the kingdom of God. I was taught to trust Ben; that even though youth group events may not be the most well planned that I needed to understand that he knows what to do. Most importantly though I was taught through Ben’s actions that it was not a perfect youth group event that is considered a successful event. But rather youth group was most successful when the leaders trusted in God and were faithful to His will. I'm not saying that Ben is 100% like Jesus; that would be crazy-talk. But rather, we should not only trust the Lord but also trust our leaders to be in-line with the Lord as well. If we do not have confidence in the leaders that God has placed in our lives are we really faithful in God?