Faith and trust are similar and yet very different. Faith believes based upon evidence, trust believes almost despite the evidence.
Unless otherwise noted, all quotations are taken from E.M. Bounds’ book, The Necessity of Prayer.
What is the difference between faith and trust?
” There is, when all is said and done, a sort of venture in faith and its exercise. Trust is faith become absolute, ratified and consummated.”
“…trust is firm belief, it is faith in full flower.”
- The disciples probably believed Christ could cause the fig tree to wither, but they were shocked when it happened. – Mark 11:19
- Faith believes God can, trust believes God has or will.
Abraham, in the beginning, only had faith in the promises of God. Jeremiah had to have trust.
How can we know we are trusting God?
“Trust is the most felt of all attributes… an unfelt love is as impossible as an unfelt trust.”
“Trust sees God doing things here and now.”
“Trust sees, receives, holds. Trust is its own witness.”
“Yet, quite often, faith is too weak to obtain God’s greatest good, immediately; so it has to wait in loving, strong, prayerful, pressing obedience, until it grows in strength, and is able to bring down the eternal, into the realms of experience and time. To this point, trust masses all its forces. Here it holds. And in the struggle trust’s grasp becomes mightier, and grasps, for itself, all that God has done for it in his eternal wisdom and plenitude of grace.”
“Trust is a conscious act, a fact of which we are sensible.”
What is the outcome of trust?
“Trust, in an historical fact or mere record may be a very passive thing, but trust in a person vitalizes the quality, fructifies it, informs it with love. The trust which informs prayer centres in a person.”
“Trust is not a belief that God can bless, that He will bless, but that DOES bless, here and now. Trust always operates in the present tense. Hope looks toward the future. Trust looks to the present. Hope expects. Trust possesses. Trust receives what prayer acquires. So that what prayer needs, at all times, is abiding and abundant trust.
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