When I was a college student there was a passionate missions pastor at our church that had a profound influence on how I thought about the world. This pastor shaped my understanding of the will of God, the global mission of the church and how to reflect upon my spiritual health at the beginning of every new year.

I walked into the church offices one day and he handed me a print out of Donald Whitney’s Ten Questions to Ask at the Start of a New Year. Since that fateful day, I have reflected on these questions every new year since then.

I pray these questions stir you on towards greater spiritual health in 2019!

Donald Whitney’s 10 Questions

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 10 years? In eternity?

There are 21 more questions if you really want to go for the deep dive, which you can find here. As Whitney says, “The value of many of these questions is not in their profundity, but in the simple fact that they bring an issue or commitment into focus.”

He also gives us these wise words: So let’s evaluate our lives, make plans and goals, and live this new year with biblical diligence, 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).