Psalm 20:7 vs. “Trust In God”

Elevation Worship feat. Chris Brown · checked 2026-08-21

This song is checked more than once. Each proof takes it against one passage, so the findings differ. Also checked against Proverbs 3:5-6.

What we checked

PassagePsalm 20:7 chapter ↗

Translation shownBSB (Berean Standard Bible)

Presents itself asinspired-by

Categorynot a quote

AlbumCan You Imagine? · 2023

Words addressed tonot addressed to God (sung about Him)

Teaching or experiencemixed

Graded against the standard

Quotation criteria not graded: this song never presents its words as scripture

Applies to every song the Name held holy · God shown holy · true of God · the standard

✓Reverent treatment

✓ What's good

Never says it is quoting: no verse reference, no translation named, nothing framed as scripture
The hymn borrowing is audible and traceable. The opening is Fanny Crosby's "Blessed Assurance" of 1873, a public-domain text anyone can look up and compare line for line
What it says about God holds up to checking. He rescues, He does not fail, He answers those who ask. The bridge follows Psalm 34:4's shape closely
The trust it declares is given a ground rather than left floating, and the ground is a remembered history of God's faithfulness. Psalm 20:6 supplies its own confidence the same way, one verse before the contrast

⚠ Cautions

The psalm's sentence has two halves and the song carries one. No alternative object of trust is named anywhere in the song, so the verse's act of refusal has no counterpart in it
Psalm 20 is a corporate prayer for a king facing a fight, and it ends in a petition rather than a settled state. The song's confidence is personal and already arrived at
The bridge tracks Psalm 34:4 without saying so. Reviewers had to supply that reference, which means a singer who does not know Psalm 34 will hear a testimony where a psalm is sitting
The publisher-side listings and the writer point at different passages. Chris Brown named Psalm 125. One publisher listing gives Romans 5:8, Psalm 9:10 and Psalm 34:4, another gives a list of seven, and PraiseCharts lists themes and no scripture at all. None of them names Psalm 20:7

Verse Proof

Psalm 20:7

The text in BSB (Berean Standard Bible)

“Some trust in chariots and others in horses, but we trust in the name of the LORD our God.”

Psalm 20 is a congregational prayer, headed for the choirmaster and ascribed to David. Its first five verses are the people praying for one man in the second person: may the LORD answer you, send you help, grant your petitions. Verse 6 turns to a single voice saying it now knows the LORD saves His anointed. Verse 7 turns again, to "we." The vocabulary throughout is military. A day of trouble, a victory to shout at, a banner, chariots and horses, and a closing plea that the king be saved. Chariots and horses were how a kingdom's fighting strength was measured in that world, which makes verse 7 the line where the people say what they are counting on and what they are not. Verse 8 keeps both columns running: they collapse and fall, we rise up and stand firm.

What the song says, described not quoted

The song is a settled testimony. It opens by taking up the first line of Fanny Crosby's 1873 hymn "Blessed Assurance" and stays in that borrowed voice for part of the verse, then names Jesus as the one who has stood in the fire alongside the singer, which points at the fourth figure in Daniel 3. The chorus is a first-person resolution to trust God, and the reason it gives is a personal record rather than an argument: He has not failed yet. A second verse turns to Christ's willingness to go to the cross and to God's ordering of a day the singer cannot see. The bridge is a testimony of asking and being answered, and it follows the shape of Psalm 34:4 closely, though the song gives no reference for it. God is spoken about all the way through rather than spoken to.

Nothing in the song is attributed to Psalm 20:7, and nothing needs to be. The words are the writers' own except for the hymn lines, which are Crosby's and are recognisable as hers. What links the song to this psalm is the title and the affirmation inside it. In the psalm that affirmation is the back half of a sentence whose front half names what the singers are declining to rely on. The song has no front half. It declares trust without setting it against anything, so a sentence the psalm builds in two columns arrives here as one. That is a difference of shape, not a misquotation, because no quotation was offered.

· Not a quote: The song cites no verse and presents nothing as scripture. Its subject is a personal record of God's faithfulness rather than Psalm 20:7's contrast between two objects of trust. The song does not carry that contrast.

▸ Official upload. Now listen with the proof in mind.

Psalm 20:7 puts down the chariots before it names the Name. A song can keep the naming and never mention the chariots.

Why it matters

Psalm 20:7 is one sentence with two columns, and only one of the columns can be lifted out and still stand up on its own. The affirmation travels easily into song. The refusal does not, because it asks the singer to name what they would otherwise lean on, and in the psalm that was the best military hardware of the age.

A song that affirms trust without naming a rival leaves the singer nothing to put down. This is not a fault in the song, which never pointed to the verse and does not owe it anything. It is a reason to read verse 7 to its end, and verse 8 after it, instead of letting the affirmation stand in for the whole.

Is it safe to dwell on?

Sung on repeat, this song moves between God and the singer.

What repetition plants here is a sentence about God's record: He has not failed. That is true, and it is a good thing to have in the mouth on a bad week, and it is why the dwelling tag is mixed rather than self. The song counts God's actions more often than the singer's, but it counts them as they landed on the singer, which is what a testimony is for. Because God is spoken about rather than spoken to, the singing works like remembering out loud rather than praying, which is exactly what verse 6 of the psalm does before its contrast arrives.

The habit the song will not plant is the one Psalm 20:7 builds into its own sentence: looking at whatever you have been leaning on and saying its name. That habit lives in the half the song does not have. Sing it, and read the verse to its end, and the psalm will keep asking the question the song does not.

Helpful comparison

It is worth noticing which half of this verse the translations argue about. The contrast is stable across all three public-domain versions the site carries: WEB, KJV and BSB all set some and some against but we. The affirmation is not stable. BSB and WEB have the people trusting the name of the LORD; the King James has them remembering it. So the idea the song shares with the psalm sits in the half where the English versions differ, and the half the song does not have is the half they all agree on.

Verse 8 then carries the same two columns into their outcomes, they fall and we stand. The contrast is not a flourish inside verse 7. It is how the psalm is put together, right up to the closing petition, which asks for rescue rather than announcing it.

Sources

Elevation Worship — Trust In God (feat. Chris Brown), official lyric video · (the recording checked for this proof; oEmbed returns author_name "Elevation Worship", the artist's own channel)
Wikipedia — Trust in God (song) · (released 28 April 2023 from the album Can You Imagine?; writers Chris Brown, Steven Furtick, Brandon Lake, Mitch Wong; producers Brown and Furtick; notes the incorporation of "Blessed Assurance")
PraiseCharts — Trust In God · (CCLI 7206001, the same four writers, the copyright and publisher line, and a themes list carrying no scripture references)
Integrity Worship — Trust In God · (publisher-side listing; scripture references given as Romans 5:8, Psalm 9:10 and Psalm 34:4, and the opening line identified as "Blessed Assurance")
Word to Worship — Trust In God · (a different scripture list for the same song: Deuteronomy 11:5, Psalm 78:7, John 14:1, Habakkuk 3:18, Luke 1:47, Psalm 34:4, Psalm 77:2)
Air1 — Faith Behind The Song: "Trust In God" · (Chris Brown names Psalm 125 as the scripture behind the song, in a translation he does not name; the article also identifies the "Blessed Assurance" sample as Crosby and Knapp, 1873)
The Berean Test — Elevation Worship (feat. Chris Brown), Trust in God · (section-by-section review; identifies the bridge as following Psalm 34:4 and the hymn lines as Crosby's, and names no rival object of trust anywhere in the song)
Peer Magazine — Review: "Trust in God" by Elevation Worship · (independent second read of the song's structure; the Daniel 3 allusion and the Psalm 34:4 bridge, again with no contrasting object of trust)
Hymnary.org — Blessed Assurance, Jesus Is Mine · (text by Fanny J. Crosby, 1873; tune ASSURANCE by Phoebe Palmer Knapp, 1873; first published in Gems of Praise)
Seedbed — Trusting in the Name of the Lord (Psalm 20) · (chariots and horses as the psalmist's shorthand for human strength and ingenuity; verses 7 and 8 read together as one contrast)
GotQuestions — What does it mean that some trust in chariots? · (chariots and horses as the measure of a kingdom's strength in the ancient world)

Corrections

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