inventory

Since New Year's, I've been reading the books of Ezra and Nehemiah, maybe the first time I've ever read them in their entirety (yet another thing to look forward to with the read-the-Bible-in-a-year plan!).

The accounts of the nation of Israel returning home after captivity are both exciting and saddening.

It made me sad to read the story of the people rediscovering the law and re-instituting the feasts and holy days. Why did they have to forget? Why did they have to stray away? Why did they have to take the good covenant they had and break it?

Even then, though, the people's repentance for sin and their joy in returning to God is really worth celebrating. And it's an honest depiction of human history: we forget; we stray; we abuse and break good gifts. Yet, in God's heartbreakingly good grace, we are often allowed new beginnings.

If you find yourself at the threshold of a new beginning, or if you think you'd be helped by taking an inventory of where you've come in the past year and where you plan to go in the next, here's a list of questions to consider. I'm listing the first 10 here; the link will lead you to 21 more.

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?