New Year’s Resolutions and Change for 2011

Some thoughtful pieces related to new resolve in the new year:

• Paul Tripp, Trading One Dramatic Resolution for 10,000 Little Ones
• David Powlison, On Making New Year’s Resolutions

• Martyn Lloyd-Jones, Saying No to Resolutions
• The Apostle Paul, My Know-Nothing Resolution

• Justin Buzzard, How to Prepare for 2011
• Matt Perman, Advice for Entering the New Year: The Yearly Review

The table of contents for Tim Chester’s You Can Change:

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1. What would you like to change?
2. Why would you like to change? (free PDF)
3. How are you going to change?
4. When do you struggle?
5. What truths do you need to turn to?
6. What desires do you need to turn from?
7. What stops you changing?
8. What strategies will reinforce your faith and repentance?
9. How can we support one another in change?
10. Are you ready for a lifetime of daily change?

Don Whitney:

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.

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?

Whitney writes:

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. For example, just by articulating which person you most want to encourage this year is more likely to help you remember to encourage that person than if you hadn’t considered the question.

Whitney also offers an additional 21 questions to help us “consider our ways.”