Ask the Ten
Donald S. Whitney, professor of Biblical Spirituality and Associate Dean of the School of Theology at The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, posed 10 great questions we can ask ourselves as we prepare to exit one year and walk into another.
I suggest you answer the following questions and share your responses with your spouse or family or a good friend or someone in your small group or Bible study. Then ask them to pray for the implementation of your responses in a way that honors the Lord and blesses others around you.
Here are the 10:
What’s one thing you can do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
What’s an impossible prayer you can pray?
What’s the most important thing you could do to improve your family life?
In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year?
What’s the single biggest time-waster in your life, and how can you redeem the time?
What’s the most helpful new way you could strengthen your church?
For whose salvation will you pray most fervently this year?
What’s the most important way, by God’s grace, you will try to make this year different from last?
What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
What single thing can you plan to do this year that will matter most in ten years? In eternity?
Let’s pray this prayer together as we anticipate another year to seek first the Lord’s kingdom. “Lord, You are my perfect heavenly Father who knows me, loves me, and is planning the best for me. I am weak, sinful, and need to grow into your likeness. Please cleanse my heart, fill me with your Spirit, and help me live each day for Your will. May you be honored by my life this new year and those around me be blessed by my walk in Christ. You alone are worthy of my best in every endeavor of life. Thank you for always being faithful and true. In Your Son’s name and for glory, Amen.”
Here is the article Professor Whitney wrote about these ten questions, Ten Questions for a New Year.
Listen as well to this great song we are planning to learn and begin singing in January as we focus on God’s hope-filled future for us, Hymn of Heaven by Phil Wickham.
Pastor Jeff