A manual for making decisions, disguised as a proverb.

Trusting with all your heart, Henry says, means to repose an entire confidence in the wisdom, power, and goodness of God, believing that he is able to do what he will, wise to do what is best. Notice what that asks of you: not a feeling, but a transfer of weight. The confidence you would otherwise rest on your own read of the situation goes, whole, onto God.

The warning against leaning on your own understanding is not anti-intellectual; it is diagnostic: Those who know themselves cannot but find their own understanding to be a broken reed, which, if they lean to, will certainly fail them. Henry balances the two postures in one sentence — be diffident of our own judgment, and confident of God's wisdom, power, and goodness.

Then Henry hands you a rule of motion: follow Providence and not force it, adding the proverb-within-a-proverb, That often proves best which was least our own doing. If you have ever watched a door you did not push swing open, you have seen what he means.

Acknowledging God in all your ways, Henry says, is wide-coverage prayer. We must ask his leave and ask his advice and beg direction from him — not only in hard cases but in every case, be it ever so plain — and then patiently, and with a holy indifferency, wait his award. His word award means God's decision, not a prize: you are waiting on a verdict you have agreed in advance to accept.

Ways that prosper call for acknowledging God with thankfulness; ways hedged with difficulty, for acknowledging God with submission. And the promise at the end is as wide as the trust it asks for: Those that put themselves under a divine guidance shall always have the benefit of it.