I had been reflecting lately... and I'm becoming more and more convinced that only God's Word is the truly safe and sure foundation to build your life upon.

It's so true. People in the Church will fail us. To be honest, I'm someone who's generally very low in skepticism - I trust people very easily. So, I do trust my leaders a lot.

To be honest, when I first came into Hope, I was so impressed with the spirituality of the leaders, that I thought they were able to discern everything that was on my mind. So actually I felt very paiseh to be around some of them, whom I thought to be more discerning. :P Hee.

But as I went into NUS, I realised that my leaders are normal people... who make mistakes. "Everyone's normal till you get to know them." LOL! They may be very wise, very mature and so on... but they do make mistakes that sometimes the youngest believer is able to see.

And I did see quite a few mistakes that some of my leaders made, but I wasn't sure whether what I saw was a mistake or not. So I decided to trust them and carry on, and not to voice out my opinion.

And... well, there were a few times I decided to speak up. And it turns out, I'm glad I did, because the leaders really did make an error in judgment.

And a bro shared with me some years ago about his troubled heart about the leaders, how he felt confused and uncertain about how different leaders seemed to have different opinions on the same issues... and this bro was a leader himself before!

And another friend shared with me quite a few times his/her troubled heart about how some leaders didn't seem to rely on God, but on their own wisdom... he/she wondered how come they didn't seem to be praying more often and exercising faith and so on.

I did speak up for the leaders, but I understood their confusion and troubled hearts too.

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Hmm. Why am I sharing all these? Well, I read Wenjiang's post some time ago, and it was so thought-provoking. About how men, even the Church, will fail us, but God will never fail us. And how the Church is still so precious and powerful in His hands.

Personally, for me, trusting my leaders is not really a struggle for me. In fact, my personality is that I trust people very readily - those who are sincere, that is.

(Thank God He graciously gave me a very high degree of empathy - it helps to compensate for my low level of scepticism by enabling me to discern a person's sincerity or lack thereof. So that's one reason I haven't been conned out of my life savings haha... by God's grace...)

But the problem is, if my leaders are sincerely mistaken, then... I would tend to be very easily influenced by them. Thank God for Alan who helped me realise this danger point of my personality. :)

In fact... after sharing with Peter some time ago, I realised that I had quite a few misunderstandings... which were actually due to incorrect or imbalanced sharings from some of my leaders. Gosh.

So... what I've come to understand at the end of ten years as a Christian is that only God's Word is the sure and secure foundation upon which to build our lives. All the wisdom and the power of men, no matter how influential, how wise, how capable they are - they will ALL fail.

That I don't have to be afraid of giving feedback to my leaders, especially if I understand the Scriptures to say so. And to resolve to think deeper about how the Word of God applies. It's not easy, especially if you're a working adult, but if we persevere on, and ask God to help us understand, His Holy Spirit will guide us and teach us, and lead us into all truth.

Yup. We will fail, but Jesus never fails. Ultimately, who are we, really? Only fellow servants together with our leaders in Christ. They are God's servants too. We support and love one another. In fact, as one of my old CLs told me, it is possible for you to be more spiritual (in the correct biblical sense) than your leaders... of course, that greater spirituality would be shown by your greater level of support, submissiveness, humility and eagerness to learn from the leader God placed above you... but also, maybe you do have some experience that would be invaluable to your less-experienced leader. In that case I think God would want us to share what we already know to our leaders, so that we can support them. So that their work will be a joy, not a burden, for that wouldn't be of any advantage to us, you know.

Just some thoughts. Feel free to comment...