The Big Questions for 2010

            My friend Don Whitney, who teaches spiritual formation at The Southern Baptist Seminary in Louisville, has published a list of questions he commends to every Christian for consideration as we begin this new year of 2010.  Here are four of the 10 questions Dr. Whitney listed in his wonderfully thoughtful blog post:

 

1.       “What’s one thing you could do this year to increase your enjoyment of God?”

 

2.       “In what spiritual discipline do you want to make the most progress this year, and what will you do about it?”

 

3.       “What is the single biggest time-waster in your life, and what will you do about it this year?”

 

4.       “What single thing that you plan to do this year will matter most in ten years?  In eternity?”

 

At the beginning of the year I always think back to the personal “Resolutions” Jonathan Edwards wrote in 1722-23, when he was 19 years of age.  Consider just resolution number one, on which the other 69 resolutions are all based:

 

“Resolved, That I will do whatsoever I think to be most for the glory of God, and my own good, profit, and pleasure, in the whole of my duration.”

 

Note carefully that for Jonathan Edwards, those actions which are most for the glory of God and most for his own good and pleasure are the same actions!  This so for two reasons: 1) God’s people find their highest joy in living for God’s glory, and 2) as the Christian organization Desiring God Ministries likes to put it, “God is most glorified in us when we are most satisfied in him.”