The second day of a new year often feels like reality setting in—plans, pressures, and unknowns all waiting for us. In the middle of that swirl, God calls us not to cling to our own calculations, but to place confident, childlike trust in Him. Proverbs 3:5 invites us to entrust our whole inner life—our thoughts, fears, dreams, and questions—to the Lord instead of propping ourselves up with our limited perspective. This isn’t blind faith; it’s faith grounded in the character of a God who has never failed His people.

All Your Heart, Not Just the Safe Parts

“Trust in the LORD with all your heart, and lean not on your own understanding” (Proverbs 3:5). Notice that little word “all.” God is not asking for polite, partial trust—the kind we extend as long as we still feel in control. He is inviting us to bring the whole of who we are, even the trembling, doubting parts, and lay them before Him. Half-hearted trust keeps a hidden backup plan; whole-hearted trust says, “Lord, if You do not come through, I have nowhere else to go—and that is exactly where I want to be.” This is the same call behind, “You shall love the LORD your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength” (Deuteronomy 6:5).

This kind of trust is forged as we get to know God’s name—His character, His track record. “Those who know Your name trust in You, for You, O LORD, have not forsaken those who seek You” (Psalm 9:10). The more clearly we see who He is—faithful, sovereign, wise, and good—the more natural it becomes to hand Him the hidden corners of our hearts. Ask yourself today: Are there “safe parts” I give to God, and guarded rooms I keep locked? He is worthy of all of it.

Letting Go of the Illusion of Control

We “lean on our own understanding” whenever we insist that life must make sense to us before we obey God. But our understanding is tiny, time-bound, and often tinted by fear or pride. The Lord gently reminds us, “‘For My thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways,’ declares the LORD. ‘For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so My ways are higher than your ways and My thoughts than your thoughts’” (Isaiah 55:8–9). Trust means accepting that there will be seasons when we do not see the full picture, yet we keep walking because we know the One who does.

This doesn’t mean we turn off our minds; it means we submit our minds. We bring our questions, plans, and concerns to God in prayer instead of trying to carry them alone. “Be anxious for nothing, but in everything, by prayer and petition, with thanksgiving, present your requests to God. And the peace of God, which surpasses all understanding, will guard your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus” (Philippians 4:6–7). There is a peace that outruns our need to understand, and it shows up when we trade control for surrender.

Trust Expressed in Everyday Steps

Trust is not just an inner feeling; it shows up in actual choices. The verse that follows says, “In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight” (Proverbs 3:6). To “acknowledge” God means more than tipping our hat to Him—it means bringing Him into every decision, every calendar, every relationship. It’s waking up and saying, “Lord, this day is Yours. Lead, and I will follow.” When we do that, He doesn’t promise a painless path, but a directed one—a path He Himself straightens according to His wisdom.

This trust-filled posture changes how we plan our future. James writes, “Instead, you ought to say, ‘If the Lord is willing, we will live and do this or that’” (James 4:15). We still plan, but we hold those plans with open hands. As you step into this new year, what would it look like to acknowledge Him in “all your ways”—in your work, your finances, your habits, your conversations? Trust becomes real when it moves from a verse we like to a lifestyle we live.

Lord, thank You that You are always trustworthy and never forsake those who seek You. Today, help me to stop leaning on my own understanding and to acknowledge You in all my ways; teach me to trust You with all my heart in every choice I make.

THE NEW TESTAMENT TEACHES that all things are pure to the pure, and I think we may assume that to the evil man all things are evil. The thing itself is not good or bad; goodness or badness belongs to human personality.

Everything depends upon the state of our interior lives and our heart's relation to God. The man that walks with God will see and know that for him there is no strict line separating the sacred from the secular. He will acknowledge that there lies around him a world of created things that are innocent in themselves; and he will know, too, that there are a thousand human acts that are neither good nor bad except as they may be done by good or bad men. The busy world around us is filled with work, travel, marrying, rearing our young, burying our dead, buying, selling, sleeping, eating and mixing in common social intercourse with our fellowmen.

These activities and all else that goes to fill up our days are usually separated in our minds from prayer, church attendance and such specific religious acts as are performed by ministers most of the week and by laymen briefly once or twice weekly.

Because the vast majority of men engage in the complicated business of living while trusting wholly in themselves, without reference to God or redemption, we Christians have come to call these common activities "secular" and to attribute to them at least a degree of evil, an evil which is not inherent in them and which they do not necessarily possess.

The Apostle Paul teaches that every simple act of our lives may be sacramental. "Whether therefore ye eat, or drink, or whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God." And again, "Whatsoever ye do in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God and the Father by him."

Some of the great saints, who were great because they took such admonitions seriously and sought to practice them, managed to achieve the sanctification of the secular, or perhaps I should say the abolition of the secular. Their attitude toward life's common things raised those above the common and imparted to them an aura of divinity. These pure souls broke down the high walls that separated the various areas of their lives from each other and saw all as one; and that one they offered to God as a holy oblation acceptable to God by Jesus Christ.

Nicholas Herman (Brother Lawrence) made his most common act one of devotion: "The time of business does not with me differ from the time of prayer," he said, "and in the noise and clatter of my kitchen, while several persons are at the same time calling for different things, I possess God in as great tranquility as if I were upon my knees at the blessed sacrament."

Francis of Assisi accepted the whole creation as his house of worship and called upon everything great and small to join him in adoration of the Godhead. Mother earth, the burning sun, the silver moon, the stars of evening, wind, water, flowers, fruits-all were invited to praise with him their God and King. Hardly a spot was left that could be called secular. The whole world glowed like Moses' bush with the light of God, and before it the saint kneeled and removed his shoes.

Thomas Traherne, the seventeenth century Christian writer, declared that the children of the King can never enjoy the world aright till every morning they wake up in heaven, see themselves in the Father's palace, and look upon the skies, the earth and the air as celestial joys, having such a reverent esteem for all as if they were among the angels.

All this is not to ignore the fall of man nor to deny the presence of sin in the world. No believing man can deny the Fall, as no observing man can deny the reality of sin; and as far as I know no responsible thinker has ever held that sin could ever be made other than sinful, whether by prayer or faith or spiritual ministrations. Neither the inspired writers of Holy Scripture nor those illuminated souls who have based their teachings upon those Scriptures have tried to make sin other than exceedingly sinful. It is possible to recognize the sacredness of all things even while admitting that for the time the mystery of sin worketh in the children of disobedience and the whole creation groaneth and travaileth, waiting for the manifestation of the children of God.

Traherne saw the apparent contradiction and explained it: "To contemn the world and to enjoy the world are things contrary to each other. How can we contemn the world, which we are born to enjoy? Truly there are two worlds. One was made by God, and the other by men. That made by God was great and beautiful. Before the Fall it was Adam's joy and the temple of his glory. That made by men is a Babel of confusions: invented riches, pomps and vanities, brought in by sin. Give all (saith Thomas a Kempis) for all. Leave the one that you may enjoy the other."

Such souls as these achieved the sanctification of the secular. The church today is suffering from the secularization of the sacred. By accepting the world's values, thinking its thoughts and adopting its ways we have dimmed the glory that shines overhead. We have not been able to bring earth to the judgment of heaven so we have brought heaven to the judgment of the earth. Pity us, Lord, for we know not what we do!

Stretching forward to the things which are before, I press on towards the goal. - Philippians 3:13-14

CHILDHOOD is the prophecy of maturity. " The child is father of the man"; the bud foretells the flower. In the same way, the very imperfections of the Christian life, as it is seen here, argue the existence of another state where all that is here in the germ shall be fully matured, and all that is here incomplete shall attain the perfection which alone will correspond to the power that works in us. Think of the ordinary Christian character. The germ is there, and more than the germ. As one looks at the crudity, the inconsistencies, the failings, the feebleness of the Christian life of others, or of one’s self, and then thinks that such a poor, imperfect exhibition is all that so Divine a principle has been able to achieve in this world, one feels that there must be a region and a time where we shall be all which the transforming power of God’s Spirit can make us. True, the very inconsistencies of Christians are as strong a reason for believing in the perfect life of heaven as their purities and virtues. We have a right to say mighty principles are at work after Christian souls - the power of the Cross, the power of love essaying to obedience, the power of an indwelling Spirit; and is this all that these great forces are going to effect on human character? Surely a seed so precious and Divine is somewhere and some time to bring forth something better than these few poor half-developed flowers, something with more lustrous petals and richer fragrance. The plant is clearly an exotic here; does not its obviously struggling growth here tell of warmer suns and richer soil where it will be at home?

There is a great deal in every man, and most of all in Christian men and women, which does not fit this present. All other creatures correspond in their capacities to the place where they are set down; and the world in which the plant or the animal lives, the world of their surroundings, stimulates to activity all their powers. But that is not so with a man. "Foxes have holes, birds of the air have nests." They fit exactly and correspond to their "environment." But a man! - there is an enormous amount of waste faculty about him if he is only going to live in this world. There is a great deal in every nature, and most of all in a Christian nature, which is like the packages that emigrants take with them, marked "Not wanted on the voyage." These go down into the hold, and they are only of use after landing in the new world. If I am a son of God, I have got much in me that is "not wanted on the voyage"; and the more I grow into His likeness, the more I am thrown out of harmony with the things round about me in proportion as I am brought into harmony with the things beyond.

"Neither life, nor death, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature," shall be able to break that tie and banish the child from the conscious grasp of a Father’s hand. Dear brother and sister, can you say, "Now am I a child of God"?

Then you may patiently and peacefully front that dim future.