TRUST COMES FROM KNOWING GOD, BUT FAITH COMES FROM HEARING GOD
Faith comes from God. It’s not what we do that produces faith, and it is not an assumption of what God wants to do in and through us. Faith is not moving in presumption. For example, when you’re experiencing a challenge in life, the best thing anyone could ask you would be, “What did God tell you to do?” If you don’t have that answer, then wait on God and see what He wants to say to you. And if waiting on God takes four hours, then wait on God four hours. The important part is to hear from God and get the RHEMA God wants to give you.
It seems that people get confused about the difference between faith and trust. Biblical Greek translates several different words as trust in our English Bibles. According to Strong’s Concordance, the King James Version of the New Testament uses the word trust twenty-seven times. The Greek term elpizo means “to expect or confide,” peitho means “to convince,” while pisto (which is related to pistis) means “to have faith.” Webster’s Dictionary defines trust like this: “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength or truth of someone or something in which confidence is placed.” I have my own definition of trust that I would like to offer here: Trust in God is a reliance on Him to be who He says He will be and that He will do what He says He will do. Trust only comes from knowing God.
Faith, on the other hand, is imparted when God speaks. That kind of faith is different than trust. The point is this: just because Christians have confused the meanings of faith and trust, and have often combined them, we have eliminated the divine connection of faith. Faith can be a now word for a specific situation.
The Difference between Faith and Trust
We are going to walk through some scriptures that I’ve labeled either as trust or faith. In the process of looking at these verses, I realized that faith is an impartation from God regarding a current circumstance, while trust is continuing with God regardless of the current circumstance. It’s a subtle difference in the wording, but in the reality of life’s situations, the two are miles apart. Let’s not confuse them.
God gives us RHEMA, which is a faith-infused word from God for particular situations at particular times. And it has everything to do with God initiating it. This is different from LOGOS, which is God’s written Word about Himself. LOGOS reveals the character of God. For example, there is a scripture in Isaiah that says “by His stripes we’ve been healed” (Isaiah 53:5 NKJV). That is a LOGOS word that reveals that God has healed us through the cross of Christ. But it may not reveal when God will heal us. As Christians, we ask God for healing, and we know He can heal. We trust Him with our health but we have no authority to tell Him when He should heal us. We are supposed to go to God for healing, but there are times when God says, “I need you to pray for this person right now; speak healing over him in My name.” That is a faith-infused word from God. It’s an utterance from God for a specific situation, a “now” word for that time. That is what a RHEMA is all about.
When I began to look at trust, I realized that trust had something to do with standing over time. Trust has to do with the realization that God is who He says He is and that He does what He says He’s going to do. Trust is what you do when things don’t go your way or your expectations are not met. You trust that God knows what He is doing. We take Isaiah 53:5 and we keep trying to force everybody to be healed or to become healers. Really? Is that what God wants to do? If He really wanted to do that, would He not manifest Himself in such a way? We trust He is our healer.
I’m by no means saying that we shouldn’t pray for people to be healed. On the contrary, we should pray for everyone God leads us to pray for; that is the character of God. James 5:14 says, “Is anyone among you sick? Then he must call for the elders of the church and they are to pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord.” Don’t put God in a box regarding when He should do something He has promised in His Word to do. And don’t put burdens on the sick as though they can make the healing happen.
In the end, people may get healed in the life that is now or in the life that is to come. We have a timing mechanism by which we’d like to see that happen. The fact of the matter is that is it up to God when a person will be healed. We simply trust He will do what needs to be done when it needs to be done. Trust has to do with who God is, His sovereignty over all, and how the depth of that sovereignty impacts your life. And I’m okay with that—I’m really excited about it!
The King James Version of Matthew 12:21 says, “And in His name shall the Gentiles trust.” We know this scripture is about Jesus, and the fact is that the Gentiles are the non-Jews who are going to be people who trust God. The Greek word used for trust here means “to expect and confide.” Those are two of the things we do with Jesus: we expect that we’re going to have eternal life with Him, and we confide in Him in everything that has to do with our lives. That kind of trust happens in day-to-day life. But that trust is different from the faith we’ve mentioned in the context of receiving revelation.
Let’s look now at Matthew 8:5-10. In this story, a centurion came to Jesus at Capernaum, begging Him to heal his servant. When Jesus said that He would come to the centurion’s house to heal the servant, the centurion replied that he was unworthy for Jesus to come, but if Jesus would just say the word (the LOGOS) from where they were, he knew his servant would be healed. The centurion continued:
“For I also am a man under authority, having soldiers under me. And I say to this one, ‘Go,’ and he goes; and to another, ‘Come,’ and he comes; and to my servant, ‘Do this,’ and he does it.” When Jesus heard it, He marveled, and said to them that followed, “Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel” (Matthew 8:9-10 NKJV).
Consider again the meaning of faith—it is a persuasion, a moral conviction. And where does faith come from? Faith comes from a word, a RHEMA, from God. What’s so incredible about this story is what Jesus says about this Roman soldier. It wasn’t the Jews who were getting the RHEMA in this context; it was a Gentile. The only thing that this centurion understood was the concept of authority. This was his world, being a soldier. But God had spoken to him about the reality of the authority Jesus had. How do I know this? Because Jesus said, “Assuredly, I say to you, I have not found such great faith, not even in Israel.”
The Spirit of God had to speak (RHEMA) and impart the faith that allowed the centurion to believe and communicate in the context in which he lived. The Roman soldier said something like this: “Listen, Jesus. I know something about You. You have authority over sickness. I understand how authority works. I tell people to do this and that and it happens. You speak the word (LOGOS) and my servant is healed.” The centurion had a revelation of the authority of Christ. He didn’t get that from being a soldier; rather, he got that from the Father speaking directly to his heart.
Jesus marveled that He hadn’t seen anyone in all of Israel with that kind of faith. And He went on to say that Gentile people from all over the world would find their way into God’s kingdom, but “the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into the outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth. And Jesus said to the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour” (Matthew 10:12-13 KJV). The centurion should not get the glory for believing; his faith was the result of God speaking.
Faith comes by hearing, and hearing comes by the RHEMA of God (see Romans 10:17). The centurion heard the voice of God and faith was produced in his heart. How does what happened to him when he heard the voice of God affect us? What should happen to us for us to go to Jesus? John 6:45 has the answer: “Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to Me.” The Father spoke to the centurion, and the centurion said to Jesus, “Please heal my servant,” because he had a revelation. The centurion had a RHEMA from God. That’s faith in that context, faith that God imparted.
Sometimes at church, I want to ask people, “How are you feeling today?” I can tell by how they look that they’re sick, that they’re ready to drop off their feet. But we have Christianized faith so much that many are afraid to say they don’t feel well. They’re going to make a “confession of faith” as though that will manipulate their circumstances. But the answer is this: “You know, I don’t feel too good, but I’m trusting God to get me through this.” That’s the reality of what they’re dealing with. They are trusting that He is going to heal them, but He hasn’t given them a specific revelation that He was going to do something in this instance. He is our Great Physician, so we can rest in Him. We can trust Him, which is a bit different than trying to overspiritualize faith in God for our health. Let’s not try to make faith something that we’re going to make happen.
Years ago, the wife of a friend of mine was diagnosed with leukemia. However, one day at their church he received a RHEMA, and his wife was healed for many years. Then she had a debilitating stroke. Praying for her was awkward. All people could do was trust that God knew what He was doing in her life. As much as they wanted to see her healed, nobody got a specific word of faith to pray for her healing. Nobody could get up because God didn’t get up. But her husband had to trust. He had to place her in God’s hands. Their church begged God and praised Him, but the truth was that nobody received a RHEMA from God. People questioned, “Why didn’t God heal her? He was supposed to heal.”
In these types of situations, people try to perform and get God to move on their behalf. We try to conform God to our image. Our churches put a burden on the people for whom they are praying. We’re all guilty of it. We put a burden on a person that we can’t even carry ourselves. That’s what our religious spirit does, which is just what the scribes and Pharisees did. They put burdens on people they couldn’t bear themselves. And what did Jesus call them? Whitewashed tombs.
This husband’s attitude was, “Okay, we have faith in You. Heal my wife again.” The fact is that God revealed to them that He was the healer; He then revealed that He was sovereign. We can’t lean on our own understanding regarding how and why He does things the way in which He does them. We can trust that in whatever He does, all things work together for the good of those who love Him, to them who are called according to His purpose (see Romans 8:28).
God’s grace empowers you to follow Him, causing you to grow in Him. It stops your flesh from ruling your life. His grace empowers you to make good decisions. What if God were to remove His hand of grace in areas of our lives? What if He did it to reveal a deeper revelation of who He is to us because of His great love for us? I can’t help but think of the story of King David and Bathsheba in Second Samuel 11–12. King David had a relationship with God since he was a young boy. He walked with God, and yet David fell into sin that was evil in the sight of the Lord.
We can talk about all of David’s faults that got him into this situation, but there is something much deeper going on. David did not know the depth of God’s mercy and grace. God revealed that grace and mercy to David by allowing him to walk after his flesh. When God removed His hand of grace, David did what the flesh does and made decisions contrary to the nature of God. David fell into sin, but it was in this journey of sin where David discovered God’s grace and mercy like he had never experienced in the past. God loved him so much that He allowed him to fall in order to more fully reveal Himself. God did not cause David to sin; in fact, God does not cause anyone to sin. When God leaves us to ourselves, we make the decision to sin. That is the nature of the flesh.
Think about Jesus’s words to Peter in Luke 22:31-32: “Simon, Simon, behold, satan has demanded permission to sift you like wheat; but I have prayed for you, that your faith may not fail; and you, once you have turned again, strengthen your brothers.” Jesus calls Peter Simon because it is indicative of his flesh. Satan couldn’t do anything to Peter without permission from God first. Even though satan was going to test Peter, Jesus prayed for Peter that his faith would not fail. He was talking about the faith that came when God gave him a RHEMA regarding who Jesus is. He said to him, “Once you turn again,” revealing that Peter will fall but will also turn to Christ again; and when he does so, he is to encourage his brothers. God allows circumstances to happen for His greater purposes. He sees the whole picture. This is why we need a RHEMA from God and need to stop telling God how we think things should be done.
Before we were born, God knew what we would do. He knew every step we would and would not take. He knew every decision we would and are still going to make. Can He stop the uncomfortable situations from happening in our lives? Darn straight, He can—He’s God. He doesn’t stop those uncomfortable situations, however, because they are the method by which He reveals Himself to us. Every situation is an opportunity to get to know God in a way we did not know Him before.
In the Bible, God repeatedly tells Israel how things should be done and how they should live their lives. Israel continually demonstrates their desire to do what they want. When that happens, God lets them do what they want, and then they suffer the consequences of their actions. While walking through those consequences, it is then that they realize that God is right and they need Him. We don’t know the value of the light until we’ve walked in the darkness.
A Canaanite woman cries to Jesus in Matthew 15:22, saying, “Have mercy on me, O Lord, Thou son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil” (KJV). This woman is a native of Gentile Palestine, and when she presents her request to Jesus, He refuses to answer her. She continues to make a fuss, and His disciples want Him to send her away. She is an outsider, not somebody they would typically talk too. But Jesus’s response is deliberate. He states her cultural and social status and then tells her that He was only sent to “the lost sheep of the house of Israel.” Instead of walking away, however, the woman begins to worship Him, begging Him for help. She agrees yet argues that “the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their master’s table” (Matthew 15:27 KJV). Jesus relents: “O woman,” He says, “great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt” (Matthew 15:28 KJV). And her daughter was instantly healed!
Jesus told her that she had great faith. But where did her faith come from? She had a word from God that produced faith in her heart. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by a RHEMA of God. How bizarre was that whole conversation. Jesus states what society thinks of her—she is not chosen and has the value of a dog—and yet she’s had a revelation from God! How powerful this is! This Gentile woman has the kind of faith that comes from hearing God. And Jesus demonstrated to everyone present that God will speak to anyone regardless of their culture or social status.
In Second Corinthians 1:3-8, Paul describes the tribulations he has endured to the point where he and his companions “despaired even of life.” This man of faith has been honest about what he has just gone through. How contrary that is to some of what we say in church where people don’t want to confess what’s really going on. Yet Paul says, “Look, we wanted to die.” That’s how bad his situation was. But despite his “sentence of death,” they did not trust in themselves “but in God who raised the dead.” Paul and his friends needed to convince themselves to trust. The Greek word he uses here is peitho, which means “to convince.” Crazed by their torments, trials, and tribulations, they wanted to die. They had to look to God, the author and finisher of their faith, because they could hardly go on. What were they trusting God for? For getting through that situation. That trust is different from faith.
Here’s another illustration from Luke 18:35-43. Jesus and His entourage are walking along the road approaching Jericho when a blind beggar calls out to Him from the side of the road. “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me!” the beggar says. The leaders of the procession try to shush him, but the blind beggar keeps crying out even louder, “Son of David, have mercy on me.” Jesus stopped and told them to bring the beggar to Him. When the beggar got to Him, Jesus asks him what he wants. When the beggar asks for his sight, Jesus responds by saying, “Receive your sight, for your faith has made you well.”
Faith comes by hearing a RHEMA from God. The pattern continues: God speaks to the beggar, and faith has been imparted to be made well. He moved from having a need to regaining his sight and following Jesus, glorifying God. Faith has come by hearing, and hearing by an utterance or a RHEMA of God.
Paul writes more on this subject in First Timothy 4:10: “For therefore we both labour and suffer reproach, because we trust in the living God, who is the Saviour of all men, especially of those that believe” (KJV). Again, the Greek word for trust means to expect or confide. And again Paul is talking about long-term persevering. He’s giving us a big picture. God wants us to have a walk of trust that enables us to be content whether we are laboring or suffering reproach. That’s what trust is all about.
God wants us to know Him in the context of Him solving our circumstances. It’s the difference between walking in the Spirit and walking in the flesh. Jesus said that a person does not live by bread alone but by every RHEMA that proceeds out of the mouth of God (see Matthew 4:4). To be embraced by the fullness of God is to have the RHEMA as well as the LOGOS. The sword of the Spirit is two-edged—it’s RHEMA as well as LOGOS. It is spirit and it is truth. He who worships God must worship Him in spirit and in truth.
God designed us to walk in the fullness of who He is, which doesn’t necessarily mean everybody will go on the journey. Our responsibility is to not be critical or judgmental of those who don’t make that journey; our responsibility is to encourage others to discover new things about God. We demonstrate this by experiencing a life of discovery in our walk with Him. But we need to recognize that some people will just be where they are, and it is God who will cause them to grow. Romans 12:4-6 says there are many members of the body, but not all have the same function. We are one body in Christ and members of one another. We have gifts according to the grace that was given to us. No one is less important than anyone else; it only means we are at different places in the journey.
In Romans 1:16-17, Paul declares he’s not ashamed of the gospel because of its power to save everyone, both Jew and Gentile, and that God’s righteousness is revealed “from faith to faith.” Since faith comes by hearing, and hearing by a RHEMA, we can more clearly see what faith is. It is hearing God in each situation as we travel through life, allowing Him to impart the necessary faith to see His promises come to pass. Our lives should be filled with stories of God speaking and doing what we had no power in ourselves to do, “for therein is the righteousness of God revealed from faith to faith.” One revelation at a time.
Look at your life as a Christian. Is it not different than it was fifteen years ago? Hasn’t your revelation of God changed and grown since you were first born again? “As it is written,” writes Paul, “the just shall live by faith” (Romans 1:17 NKJV). Justified Christians live by a conviction that is imparted from a loving God who speaks to them. Faith is an impartation from God regarding a current circumstance, while trust is continuing with God regardless of the current circumstance in which you find yourself. Faith comes from hearing God, but trust comes from knowing God.
Notes
1. Craig D. Lounsbrough, An Intimate Collision: Encounters with Life and Jesus (Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK: Ambassador Books, 2013).
2. Samuel Chadwick, The Path of Prayer (Sheffield, UK: Cliff College Publishing, 1801), 65.