When we walk with the Lord
In the light of His Word,
What a glory He sheds on our way!
While we do His good will,
He abides with us still,
And with all who will trust and obey.
Trust and obey, for there's no other way
To be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey.
Not a shadow can rise,
Not a cloud in the skies,
But His smile quickly drives it away;
Not a doubt nor a fear,
Not a sigh nor a tear,
Can abide while we trust and obey.
Not a burden we bear,
Not a sorrow we share,
But our toil He doth richly repay;
Not a grief nor a loss,
Not a frown nor a cross,
But is blest if we trust and obey.
But we never can prove
The delights of His love
Until all on the altar we lay;
For the favor He shows,
And the joy He bestows,
Are for them who will trust and obey.
Then in fellowship sweet
We will sit at His feet,
Or we’ll walk by His side in the way;
What He says we will do,
Where He sends we will go,
Never fear, only trust and obey.
Public domain hymn text (published 1887). Words by John H. Sammis.
The Story Behind the Hymn
John Sammis was a Presbyterian minister who spent most of his career in ordinary pastoral work, largely outside the national spotlight occupied by more famous evangelists of his era, until a single hymn text — built almost entirely out of someone else's words — secured his lasting place in the history of American gospel song. He wrote this hymn after hearing a young man give an unscripted personal testimony at a revival meeting associated with evangelist D. L. Moody, one of the most influential figures in nineteenth-century American revivalism, whose campaigns drew enormous crowds across the United States and Britain over several decades.
The young man in question, describing his own faith as genuine but still uncertain in many respects, said simply and without embellishment: 'I am not quite sure, but I am going to trust, and I am going to obey.' The plain honesty of the line — admitting doubt while still committing to action — struck Moody's regular song leader and musical collaborator, Daniel Towner, so forcefully that he wrote the exact words down on the spot before the meeting had even ended.
Towner later sent the phrase to Sammis by letter, asking him to expand it into a complete hymn text suitable for congregational singing. Sammis, working from that single borrowed sentence, built out the full set of verses, and Towner composed the tune himself once the words were finished, giving the hymn an unusually collaborative and traceable origin story compared to many hymns whose exact moment of composition is lost to history.
The hymn's central theological claim — that genuine happiness in the Christian life flows specifically from the twin, practical disciplines of trust and obedience, rather than from emotional certainty or dramatic spiritual experience — reflected a broader theological current running through the revival movements of the late nineteenth century. Moody himself was known for preaching a similarly plain, practical style of faith, distrustful of overly emotional or theatrical religious display, and this hymn's blunt insistence that 'there's no other way to be happy in Jesus, but to trust and obey' distilled that entire revivalist ethos into four repeatable lines that congregations across America and Britain sang for generations after the young man's original testimony had long been forgotten.
