WELCOME 2024: FOUR QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
Posted by Kevin Carson | Jan 2, 2024 | Holidays, Self-Counsel | 0 |
WELCOME 2024: FOUR QUESTIONS TO CONSIDER
We have turned the page on
the calendar and have welcomed a new year – 2024. Of course there are practical
implications such as the simple thing of remembering to change the year when we
sign documents, such as checks. On the other hand, there are spiritual
implications of a new year as well. Let me suggest four primary questions that
will benefit you as you consider them in this new year to better gain
perspective. Use them to look back at 2023 to see what changes were made
in your life. Are things better or worse? Have you progressed or digressed? Is
there growth or no growth?
Once you determine the
answers to your questions, you can make a plan to go forward in the new year.
At the end of the day, it is not about resolutions; rather, the new year is
about next steps. Where can we move forward loving and worshiping Christ and
serving others? How can this year be a “next step” year?
Let me suggest four primary
questions with some additional commentary to help you assess the past year and
think forward to the next.
QUESTION 1: HOW HAS YOUR PASSION
FOR CHRIST CHANGED DURING THIS PAST YEAR?
Where does Christ fit in
your affections, thinking, and behavior? How often do you reflect on Christ and
the Gospel? Would you say you are more or less in love with Christ than the
beginning of last year? Do you think about the presence of Christ as you go
about your day in daily activities, responsibilities, and free time?
QUESTION 2: HOW IS YOUR PRACTICE
OF THE SPIRITUAL DISCIPLINES?
When you look at the past
year, how are you doing on your spiritual disciplines? How often do you read
your Bible, pray, and meditate on God’s Word? Are you more consistent now or
last year?
QUESTION 3: HOW OFTEN DO YOU
SERVE OTHERS?
What does your service to
others look like at the end of the year in relationship to the beginning of the
year? Have put invested an appropriate amount of energy in others? How do you
use the energy God grants you each day by His grace? Are you sacrificial in
your service? This year have you turned inward where you think primarily about
yourself or have you maintained a spirit of service toward others even in the
midst of a pandemic?
QUESTION 4: DO YOU REGULARLY
PRACTICE SELF-COUNSEL?
Are you taking time to do
any kind of self-assessment? Do you take the truth you know from the Bible and
apply it to and in your own life? Are you seeking to contemplate your walk with
God in the Spirit?
NEXT STEPS: WHERE DO YOU GO FROM
HERE?
Take these four questions
and spend a few minutes in prayerful consideration. This may take more than a
day or two in order to work through these four areas. Where you are weaker than
last year, in light of your season of life, what should you do to take the
“next step” in the coming year?
The great news is that God
has granted you everything you need in Christ to give all diligence to grow in
2024.
Grace and peace be multiplied
to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, as His divine power
has given to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the
knowledge of Him who called us by glory and virtue, by which have been
given to us exceedingly great and precious promises, that through these you may
be partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the
world through lust. But also for this very reason, giving all diligence,
add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, to knowledge self-control,
to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, to godliness
brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. For if these things
are yours and abound, you will be neither barren nor unfruitful in the
knowledge of our Lord Jesus Christ. (2 Peter 1:2-8)