Questions For The New Year

A new year just seems like a good time for reflection, for self-evaluation, for New Year's Resolutions, for change and for looking and planning ahead.

Here are some "tough probing" questions (from Don Whitney) 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?

Paul Tripp says that we often need to commit to live in the small moments of our daily lives. We need 10,000 little moments to bring forth significant change (rather than expecting one big dramatic personal decision to bring forth change):

• 10,000 moments of sin confessed and sin forsaken

• 10,000 moments of humble submission

• 10,000 choice points of obedience

• 10,000 times of forsaking the kingdom of self and running toward the kingdom of God

• 10,000 moments of foolishness exposed and wisdom gained

• 10,000 moments of personal insight and conviction

• 10,000 moments where we abandon worship of the creation and give ourselves to worship of the Creator.

Resolutions? No!  Spiritual Depression by Martyn-Lloyd Jones is a book for all Christians—for the daily spiritual depressions we all face this side of heaven. He ends his second chapter with these challenging and refreshing words:

Would you like to be rid of this spiritual depression? The first thing you have to do is to say farewell now once and forever to your past. Realize that it has been covered and blotted out in Christ. Never look back at your sins again. Say: 'It is finished, it is covered by the Blood of Christ.' That is your first step. Take that and finish with yourself and all this talk about goodness, and look to the Lord Jesus Christ. It is only then that true happiness and joy are possible for you. What you need is not to make resolutions to live a better life, to start fasting and sweating and praying. No! You just begin to say:

I rest my faith on Him alone

Who died for my transgressions to atone.