I recently read this blog post by Graham Cooke from his website http://brilliantperspectives.com/. It’s a huge encouragement. Enjoy!

We are all familiar with the importance of living by faith, yet we often overlook the trust we need in our relationship with God before faith can even be present.

Trusting the Lord is not situational; faith is. Trust is a constant, and we are practicing our trust all the time.

When you trust, you are trusting in the nature of God: what He is like.

The nature of God is unchanging; it is true even if we are not doing well. It doesn’t depend on our capacity to do something, it’s really about His ability to do something for us.

By trusting Him, we get a confidence from His nature that causes our situations to no longer have power over us. This allows us to have faith in what He wants to do.

Faith is trusting and believing in something that we can’t see, seeing it as a reality that will come towards us. It’s not always logical, but rests in TRUSTING His unchanging nature.

Simply put, to live by faith, we must first learn to trust.

The Holy Spirit is teaching us every day how to trust the Lord, while simultaneously bringing us to a place where He trusts us. In this process, here are three keys to apply to your life in order to see this type of trust and faith grow.

1. Trust is released in you from your own measure of faith. According to Romans 12:3 “God has allotted to each a measure of faith.” Even if you don’t feel like you have any faith, you do; you have a measure of it, and it needs to be growing. As you remain connected and abiding in the Lord, there is a trust that is released from your measure of faith. This gives you the ability to come and present yourself to the Lord.
2. God must become the object of your confidence; you have to look to Him and His nature. Our tendency is to make our circumstances the object, rather than God. It is critical that you put blinkers on and look to Him.
3. So when you are praying, don’t make the circumstance the object rather give thanks to God for who He is. This continuous givings of thanks makes Him the focus.
4. You must change your inner state to a place of security in the Lord. God isn’t just interested in resolving your life issues. He is interested in you growing up into all things in Christ. The primary responsibility of the Holy Spirit is to change your internal state to become like Jesus. Therefore, all of your life circumstance are about training to become Christ-like.

Once your heart is set on who God is for you, then you can make a decision in faith and move forward in your situation.

Remember to keep your heart open to the Lord at all times; and take time each day to tell Him what you are trusting Him for. You will find it easier to approach your circumstances with faith, because trust is naturally operating in your life!