While New Years resolutions can be rather trivial and meaningless the coming of a new year can be a helpful opportunity to thoroughly examine one’s life and reevaluate one’s direction. While I can’t say that I have kept all of the goals I set for 2006, I am thankful for the process of evaluation and the change that was wrought in my life by God’s grace. Carving out an hour or two to do this can help us see sin in our lives and areas where we need to grow in the coming year. 

 Here are a couple of resources that might be helpful if you decide to do this.

      Donald Whitney- “Ten Questions to Ask on the Start of a New Year or on Your Birthday“- Whitney gives the ten questions below and then adds 21 others you can view within the article.

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?

A friend of mine, Sean Higgins, has entered a post entitled, “Four Identifiers of Christ-like Resolutions“, which also is quite helpful even in bullet form. 

1. They Deal with Sin

2. They Depend on the Cross

3. They Demand Living by Faith

4. They are Directed by the Book

One other thought in light of Sean’s comments: In doing this we must guard against this  congratulating ourselves in self-righteousness or seeking to be perfected by the flesh. This is an opportunity to work out our salvation in light of the fact that Christ has saved us and God is working in us. 

This entry was posted by Tim Pickard on Tuesday, January 2nd, 2007 at 5:50 pm and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.