The Interesting Difference Between Trust and Faith
As a business coach, I find it an interesting and challenging exercise to explore the differences between trust and faith. As it comes to trust, I want my clients to trust in me as their coach. I don't believe that anyone would hire me unless they had trust in me and my ability to coach them effectively. At the same time, I am encouraging both mindset and practice for my clients to have faith in the process and faith in themselves to achieve their goals. Let's explore trust and faith.
Faith and Trust have similar meanings, and often we use the two terms interchangeably. For most people there is no practical difference between faith and trust. If we look at the two words grammatically…
Trust can be either a noun or a verb, depending on context. As a noun, trust means "assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.” As a verb, it means "to rely on the truthfulness or accuracy of," "to believe," "to commit or place in one's care," or "to place confidence.”
Faith is almost always a noun. Faith is more commonly considered a spiritual concept. In the Bible, Faith is defined as "the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.” (Hebrews 11:1)
In other words, faith involves trusting in something you cannot explicably prove. Faith involves both the intellect of knowing and believing, and the trust in it. So, we believe something to be true, and we also place our trust in it, we rely on it. Faith recognizes that a chair is designed and made to support the person who sits on it, and trust demonstrates the faith by actually sitting on the chair.
Faith without trust is not faith.
Belief without reliance is empty.
As I look at our world today, I see an erosion of trust and faith, and a misalignment of many people placing their faith in things that have no truth-basis to them. This typically leads to a lot of pain, disappointment, disillusionment and a further erosion of a lack of trust. I see many people with the residual hurts of a lack of faith and trust that holds them back from growth and effectiveness in life.
In my coaching practice, I use my training in COR.E Dynamics to encourage and develop the 10 COR.E Disciplines of Awareness, Acceptance, Conscious Choice, Trusting the Process, Authenticity, Fearlessness, Confidence, Connection, Presence in the Moment and 100% Energetic Engagement to help my clients expand their effectiveness to levels they never thought imaginable. When my clients assimilate and utilize the 10 COR.E Disciplines in their daily lives, the pain and anxiety of discerning trust and faith just falls away.