Last week, I outlined three resolutions that I feel every worship leader should make this year in order to see improvement in worship in our churches. If you did not read that post, please take time to do so now. Also consider joining pastors, worship leaders, and worship teams/choirs across the state as we work together through an 8-week devotional guide (details in last week’s post).

On this first week of the new year, I think it is a great time for each of us to evaluate our lives and how we can impact eternity in a greater way in 2011. It is so easy for us to get bogged down in things that really don’t matter much.I have included some great guiding questions below from Donald Whitney, a professor at Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, that can help us in this journey. Please take some time to reflect on these questions this week and make some plans for the coming year.

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.

  • What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?
  • What’s the most humanly impossible thing you will ask God to do this year?
  • What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your family life this year?
  • In which spiritual discipline do you most want to make progress this year, and what will you do about it?
  • What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?
  • What is 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 you will, by God’s grace, try to make this year different from last year?
  • What one thing could you do to improve your prayer life this year?
  • What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years?  In eternity?

Copyright © 2003 Donald S. Whitney. All rights reserved. www.BiblicalSpirituality.org

In addition to these ten questions, there are twenty-one more to help you “Consider your ways” in the original post.

For reproducible copies of this article for your church or worship teams, go here.

I welcome your comments.