Ten Questions for the New Year

Don Whitney has ten good questions to ask ourselves as the calendar rolls over to 2010. He says, "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."

I will be thinking through these questions as well as his twenty-one additional questions, probably posted over at my blog in the first few days of January. Maybe they will be useful for your consideration as well:

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?

(HT: Justin Taylor)

What to read in 2010?

My apologies! I've been away from the blog for a while. Hopefully I will be on here more in the new year.

I've been thinking about what books I want to try to read in 2010. This list will no doubt change as new books are released, but here are twelve that I am eyeing right now:

- Collapse (by Jared Diamond)
- Made to Stick (by Chip Heath & Dan Heath)
- The Art of the Start (by Guy Kawasaki)
- Love Is An Orientation (by Andrew Marin)
- A Community Called Atonement (by Scot McKnight)
- Dreams from My Father (by Barack Obama)
- On the Brink (by Henry M. Paulson)
- Drive (by Daniel Pink)
- Mechanistic & Non-mechanistic Science (by Richard L. Thompson)
- The Lost World of Genesis One (by John Walton)
- The Resurrection of the Son of God (by N. T. Wright)
- Surprised by Hope (by N. T. Wright)

What about you? Are there any books you are looking forward to reading in 2010?