Our second study of prayer concerns Prayer and Trust.

The word trust appears in the Old Testament 107 times while in the New Testament it appears 27 times.

With the Old Testament being about 3 times longer than the new the word trust is fairly well represented in both testaments.

Old Testament (986 pages) (0.1085 time per page)

New Testament (360 pages) (.075 times per page)

However the word faith appears in the Old Testament only 2 times but in the New Testament it appears 245 times.

John only uses the word faith once in his writings in the book of 1 John 5:4 For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world: and this is the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith.

Paul uses the word faith much.

In the book of Romans, he uses it 34 times while in the book of Hebrews 31 times, 20 times in Galatians and 18 times in 1st Timothy.

The word trust is most used in the Psalms, 50 times, next in Isaiah, 17 times, Jeremiah, 9 times and in the New Testament it is used most in 2 Corinthians, 7 times, and 4 times in I Timothy.

Many times we use the words faith and trust interchangeably but there are distinctions in the words that we should know.

For faith and trust are not the same but faith and trust work in concert to promote the will of God.

Heb 11:1 says: Now faith is the substance (the foundation upon which hope is built) of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

A little boy hopes for a new shiny truck at Christmas.

Anyone can hope but hope built upon substance is real hope that will be realized.

Is the little boy’s hope built upon substance??

Why can he hope? What gives life to that hope?

Well, his Daddy said that if he is a good boy he will get that truck.

So his hope is built on his Daddy’s word.

His Daddy’s word is the foundation upon which his hope is built.

That is faith. He has faith in his Daddy.

So faith provides hope.

The word faith as used in Heb 11:1 is from a Greek word which means persuasion.

It means credence or certainty or moral conviction of religious truth, or the truthfulness of God as a religious teacher.

Webster's 1828 dictionary says that faith is the assent of the mind to the truth of what is declared by another resting on his authority and veracity without other evidence.

If I have faith my mind assents to the fact that what God says is right because God says it.

In theology faith is the assent of the mind to the truth of what God has revealed.