The Slight Adjustment

By Michael Griego on January 30, 2026 • ( 0 )

It’s been 30 days into the new year. You set new goals, objectives, and made promises to yourself and others, even God, with heart-felt sincerity and resolve. How’s it going so far? Time for a slight adjustment.

One month into the New Year and you may already be feeling frustrated with missing the mark and your drift back to old patterns.

You set new goals and objectives that seemed reasonable. You made promises to yourself and others, even God, with heart-felt sincerity and resolve.

But you’re concerned. It’s not going as well as you’d like. The enthusiasm of the new day (and it’s only been a month) is waning and seems so long ago.

What’s gone wrong? What happened? “Why do I do this – every year?” you say to yourself. “How do I fix this?” “How do I get back on track?” “Is there anything I can do here?”

Of course there is. And it’s very doable.

Even more so now that you see yourself in a humbled state after 30 days.

The Pitfall of Good Intentions
But let’s first put things in perspective. I had a teacher in high school who often made the following statement:

“The road to hell is paved with people who try or have good intentions.”

He would use this statement in the context of a student telling him that they “will try” to do a certain task. His point, albeit implied, is that it is not in the raw effort or intent, but rather in the clear and wise thinking and outcome.

And the same goes for our good and noble New Year’s resolutions and goals. We meant well, and we tried. But did we really think it through, the full implications of our goal and what was involved in fulfilling it?

Was it a nice attempt or was it do or die?

For most of us, fortunately, it was nice and good and worthy, if we could sustain it over time. Certainly worth a try!

But it wasn’t life or death. We’re not that intense.

Perhaps we should be.

What Are You Talking About?
I’m talking about seriously addressing the goals, targets, objectives you’ve set, whether they be general or specific, simple or complex, fun or serious, secular or religious, status quo or life changing. Could be about your health, marriage, friends, family, finances, employment, home, or your faith.

Let’s focus here on “faith” goals.

I meet with a group of Christian men each week and we reviewed an update of our New Year’s goals and resolutions we shared earlier in the month. For the sake of time and our group purpose, we focused on sharing spiritual goals. As one might imagine, all the men spoke of a commitment to any or more of the following:

Read the Bible daily
Read the whole Bible in 1-year
Pray more
Pray with my spouse
Pray with my children
Be a spiritual head of my household
Study the Bible more
Serve at my church
Go on a church mission trip

It’s a good list. Hard to knock it.

As we were reviewing our progress, and our misses, and then our good intentions and plans for improvement, I shared a slight adjustment that I was going to make going forward and challenged the men to consider and make this slight adjustment themselves to whatever goals they had established.

The Slight Adjustment
I recently watched an interview of Jamie Winship, a Christian ex-cop who practiced walking closely with God and hearing His voice in all aspects of his life. I’d summarize it by saying that this guy learned to be all in with God. Not a little, not a lot, but all in. It impacted everything he did. He learned to hear God’s voice (think sense, nudge, inkling, not necessarily an audible voice). It changed his life and impacted many in this physical world and this spiritual kingdom.

The takeaway for me, the slight adjustment I will make daily, in light of the own personal goals and objectives, is to weave the following framework into my prayers:

Invite God into your presence
- “Lord, be with me here, come into my presence right now…”
Submit your life to God’s will
- “Lord, under your authority, whatever I do today, whoever I meet, I surrender it all to you…”
Request that God use you
- “Lord, use me as a vehicle for whatever you want to do through me today…”
Ask God to lead you
- “Lord, make yourself clear to me, that I might “hear” you and obey…”
Thank God for what He’s going to do
- “Lord, thank you for what you are doing and going to do in my life today. Amen”

Our Christian life is not just living a life of good acts and intentions and trying to pray and read the Bible more. The challenge is to step into the adventure that is a full God-surrendered life that seeks His direction, His prompting, His will, His purpose.

Yes, a slight adjustment. But it’s a better way to live.

30 days into the New Year, are you living a better life?
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For every house is built by someone, but the builder of all things is God.” – Hebrews 3:4