You can't have trust without faith. Or is it, you can't have faith without trust?
Well, I would genuinely love to hear any feedback you all may have, but I'd also like to share my recent experience on the topic. I'm going to take the trust comes first avenue.
One definition of trust is the confident expectation or HOPE in something. In Hebrews the bible defines faith as: The substance of things "hoped" for, the evidence of things not seen. Hope comes first. Too much information, stay with me!
So in literally about 4 situations in my life, my hope had apparently been running lower than usual. I have the tendancy sometimes to try to be stronger than I really am, and I felt that wavering a little. Suddenly, my efforts weren't getting me anywhere, and I felt a little of my world crumbling. I'm not sure if this was a gradual misplacing of where my strength should come from, because clearly the bible says that His (Gods) strength is made perfect in our weakness. I wasn't allowing that strength to operate. I think I was trying all by myself. I wish I had an answer as to why, because clearly God has proven Himself MULTIPLE times in my life... but man oh man, was the rain coming down.
Every aspect of my life seems like it's under attack. My family, like NEVER before, my health, relationships...literally EVERY area, under attack full force.
Well, if my hope were where it should have been, in Jesus... I wouldn't have felt my world crumbling, because I would have trusted God had it. Apparently somewhere down the road I put my hope in other places that didn't shout to me truth about what God says about family, health and relationships. You see...FAITH comes by hearing...and hearing the Word of God.
When you're feeding yourself what God says, you're feeding yourself truth. LIke this: my situation says that my health isn't perfect, but GOD says that he forgives all my sins and heals all of my diseases.... and God has this track record of being right, regardless of the circumstance.
So here we go, I begin to place my hope where it belongs...Gods promises. I begin to trust Him because He's proven Himself faithful, and my faith is built. But without discovering Gods promises, and stirring up that hope, it's a little more difficult to build that faith.
I'm in the middle of this faith building thing right now... and I'm hopeful :) so Hopeful. I'm finding delight in my Savior. And I'm so thankful for Jesus being given so that we can have a relationship with this God who has CRAZY love for us, and wants us to be whole, complete, rid of insecurities and anxiety, healthy and happy. I wanna love like that!
