Belief and Trust.

A friend recently posed the prompt:  What is the difference between believing and trusting (as it pertains to God)?  Good question.  The right question.  It made me think of a lot of different things.  The first thing I thought of is how important it is in our spiritual journeys to be asking the right questions.  As we mature in Christ, he brings about these questions.  A surrendered faith produces a strange freedom to find these searches into the uncomfortable.  I hope that is where my friend is...being made uncomfortable by his Savior.
But now the question at hand.  As I began to chew on the implications I visualized a door.  Before one believes, he or she is outside a door.  Before we believe, we are drawn to this door.  For some of us we are drawn time and time again, compelled to enter yet rejecting it.  We are afraid to walk through.  We are afraid to be disappointed.  What if we walk through and there is nothing there?  What if we give ourselves to Belief and are let down?  The beautiful thing about this journey into belief is that it is at least 50% God calling to us to him (probably 100%).  What I mean to say is that first believing is less like a choice and more like a revealing.  We wander into that door, forgetting it was there or feeling like it is our only option left.

Revelation 3
20 Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will sup with him, and he with me.

Believing in Christ justifies us, makes us righteous by his power and sacrifice.  But once inside belief we begin this process of being sanctified.  This is where we learn what trust is.  It's possible to believe in God, but fail to trust him.  We can believe that Jesus is real, but fail to depend on him.   If you don't believe God loves you, then you cannot trust him with your relationships.  If you don't believe God is sovereign, then you fail to trust him with your choices. God's personal nature forces the issue though and he will not leave us as we are.  God has so much goodness waiting for us if we can continue on to fully trusting him with our very lives.  We seem content to just be joining the party, but our Father is calling us to his table.  We always stop short of the fullness of his Love.  The world we live in works against us, through its parade of broken relationships and culture of prosperity and independence.  People are untrustworthy, and often unworthy.  But we shall love them anyway, because Jesus loves us.  It is in these interactions with the people around us, our neighbors, that we learn how to display our trust for God.  We give ourselves to those around us and expect God to show up.  You will know you are close to the Father's Will when you  begin Loving others with no regard for what you will get in return, nor concern with your well being.  On the other side of Trust is a wonderful place where you don't consider yourself or what trust is at all.  No, instead you are completely responsive to his Will.  You are not only in the door, at the party, but you are now a grand host and delighted to be in the service of your Loving Father.
<Thanks to Celeste for helping me clarify these thoughts>

1 John 3

16 This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. 17 If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? 18 Dear children,let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.

19 This is how we know that we belong to the truth and how we set our hearts at rest in his presence: 20 If our hearts condemn us, we know that God is greater than our hearts, and he knows everything. 21 Dear friends, if our hearts do not condemn us, we have confidence before God 22 and receive from him anything we ask, because we keep his commands and do what pleases him. 23 And this is his command: to believe in the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and to love one another as he commanded us. 24 The one who keeps God’s commands lives in him, and he in them. And this is how we know that he lives in us: We know it by the Spirit he gave us.