This includes the summary excerpt to Grow Up, chapter three, about believing, trusting and our faith.
We are made right with God because we believe what God said about Jesus and His sacrifice for us. We receive the faith gift He has provided for us. This counts as our righteousness and proclamation made about us upon salvation. Then, we begin a process of cooperating with God by His Spirit. As we allow Him to build our confidence in Him, it strengthens our faith, which is revealed in our actions. With faith, we trust Him and surrender to Him, where He matures us little by little. He grows us up into the righteous one He proclaims us to be by our faith. We see His faithfulness working in us, which grows our faith and trust in Him. We have faith in the work of Christ.
Faith exists for everyone. We all believe in something. Remember, the object of our belief defines our faith. Followers of Jesus Christ believe God exists. We believe what God says about Jesus’ death and place our faith in the sacrifice that pays for our sins. The activity in our lives reveals what we believe. We mature in our relationship with Him by believing what He says, and to believe what He says, we need to know what He says. To know what He says, we must read the Word of God. All of this will grow our trust and confidence in Him. The next two chapters will look at this concept of being in the Word of God and see clearly where we need to place our focus.
In a discussion group this week, one of the members in the class made an observation about these three words; this is the gist of her summation:
We Believe with our head.
We Trust with our heart.
Our Faith is a divine gift that allows us to act out in hands of action.
I began to dig into this as I was pondering this distinction with her. The following is what I came across.
The word trust is the heart word of faith. It is the Old Testament word, the word given to the early and infant stage of faith. The word faith expresses more the act of the will, the word belief the act of the mind or intellect, but trust is the language of the heart. The other has reference more to a truth believed or a thing expected.
Trust implies more than this, it sees and feels, and leans upon a person… (No author’s name is given)
The difference in meaning can be outlined as followed:
- Faith – the act of the will
- Belief – the act of the mind or intellect
- Trust – the language of the heart
Every use of faith, belief/believing, and trust will not fit into this box. But the outline is extremely useful in thinking about the differences between faith, belief, and trust.
This information is pulled from RDRD Bible Study | A Simple Framework For Thinking About Belief, Trust, And Faith
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