The Message

Trust and Confidence


Trust and Confidence.

What is better, to have trust or to have confidence? What is the difference between trust and confidence? Trust is assured reliance on the character, ability, or strength of someone or something; confidence is a feeling or belief that one can rely on someone or something.

We always think they are the same by just looking at them, but if we dissect and study precisely the idea and sense each word gives, there’s a difference. So, for example, the Bible tells something about trust, not much about confidence, and both come to believe. 

Hebrews 10:35-36, -do not throw away your confidence; it will richly be rewarded. You need to persevere so that when you have done the will of God, you will receive what He has promised. When we acknowledge Him that He exists, He promises He will reward us. Is that the confidence we have in God about the promises and rewards that if He does not act according to our wishes, we will lose faith in Him? It seems like it’s a threat if that will be our response. We cannot challenge God, and we cannot give Him a choice of what to do. It will be out of respect for His sovereignty and being a Father, which is not what He wants to hear from us. 

Confidence is only good when you are obedient to His Will. If we are obedient to His Will, He hears us. Satan told God that since Job had been gifted with such abundance and wonderful life from Him, it was no surprise that he served God. Then he continued; if you take his good fortune away from him, he will turn against God. The job was a blameless and upright man who feared God and turned away from evil. This challenge can show how confident God was in Job, and Job trusted God. Job 1:1-22 

People build trust based on faith, belief, confidence, and experience of accomplishments. The integrity and reliability are proven as an added strength of why we have to give our trust. God doesn’t need to prove anything to trust Him, but we need to believe in what He can and will not do. We should think first to saying the Father and I are one. Jesus said: the Father and I are one… 

John 17:20-23 20—“My prayer is not for them alone. I also pray for those who will believe in me through their message, that all of them may be one, Father, just as you are in me and I am in you. So may they also be in us so that the world may believe you sent me? I have given them the glory you gave me, that they may be one as we are. “I in them and you in me so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me.”

Trust is subject to human acceptance. Many people throughout the world have trusted the Bible. We believe the Bible is the word of God that we trust and that what was written is true. 

Confidence in the Spirit is subject to God’s act, not the prediction or expectation of human action. 

Proverbs 3:5-6—“Trust in the LORD with all your heart and lean not on your understanding; 6, in all your ways, submit to him, and he will make your paths straight.

 Jeremiah 17:7-8—”But blessed is the one who trusts in the LORD, whose confidence is in him. 8 They will be like a tree planted by the water that sends out its roots by the stream. It does not fear when heat comes; its leaves are always green. It has no worries in a year of drought and never fails to bear fruit.”

Psalm 37:3 The steps of a good man are ordered by the LORD, And He delights in his way. 

Related Topic to Read: Trust- Do we have to believe first or trust before we think? Confidence-Is confidence the same or similar to trust?

Bishop Joseph

Dr. Joseph Vitug, Ph.D. - Bishop Emeritus

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