10 Questions To Ask In The New Year...

I'm a big proponent of reexamining, rechecking, reflecting...just all the "re's" I guess...at the end of one year and the beginning of another.

It's a perfect time to really look back and assess our spiritual strengths and spiritual weaknesses (the good, the bad and the ugly). It's a perfect time b/c it seems that our culture/our world still moves a little slower than normal coming off the Christmas holidays and it allows us a chance to take a spiritual breath and to spiritually think.

So here's some help to that end...

Don Whitney:

The beginning of a new year is an ideal time to stop, look up, and get our bearings. To that end, here are some questions to ask prayerfully in the presence of God.

1.What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?

2.What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?

3.What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?

4.In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?

5.What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?

6.What is the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?

7.For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?

8.What’s the most important way you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?

9.What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?

10.What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years? In eternity?

Please pray through these by yourself and then make "yourself available" to sit down with your wife/husband and talk and pray through these together. It would make for great table talk during date night. As a matter of fact Stephanie and I will be doing just that this Friday, so we will be talking through these together.

Whitney writes:

The value of many of these questions is not in their profundity, but in the simple fact that they bring an issue or commitment into focus. For example, just by articulating which person you most want to encourage this year is more likely to help you remember to encourage that person than if you hadn’t considered the question.

You can read the full (31 Questions) list here.

(HT: Justin Taylor)