Passionate Homemaking

I have also found this list of ques­tions by Donald Whit­ney to be of excel­lent use for eval­u­at­ing your spir­i­tual life, friend­ships, etc. espe­cially at the start of a new year. These are also great ques­tions for lead­ing in prof­itable con­ver­sa­tion as well. I find it very help­ful to write my answers in the front of my jour­nal, that way I can look back and re-​evaluate through­out the year.

Donald Whit­ney says:

Once, when the people of God had become care­less in their rela­tion­ship with Him, the Lord rebuked them through the prophet Haggai. “Consider your ways!” (Haggai 1:5) he declared, urging them to reflect on some of the things hap­pen­ing to them, and to eval­u­ate their slip­shod spir­i­tu­al­ity in light of what God had told them.

Even those most faith­ful to God occa­sion­ally need to pause and think about the direc­tion of their lives. It’s so easy to bump along from one busy week to another with­out ever stop­ping to ponder where we’re going and where we should be going.

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?

He continues:

So let’s eval­u­ate our lives, make plans and goals, and live this new year with bib­li­cal dil­gence, remem­ber­ing that, ‘the plans of the dili­gent lead surely to advantage’ (Proverbs 21:5). But in all things let’s also remem­ber our depen­dence on our King who said, ‘Apart from Me you can do nothing’ (John 15:5).

For the full arti­cle click here.