As we hit the middle of 2022, I thought it would be a good idea to go back to the four questions with which we started this year. These four questions we suggested you ask as we began 2022 from 2021. Now that we are halfway through the year, it is worth looking at these same four questions again to reconsider where we are again. In addition to the four questions, you will notice my familiar question to summarize it, “What’s the next step?”
Once you determine the answers to your questions, you can make a plan to go forward in the second half of this year. Where can we move forward loving and worshiping Christ and serving others?
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?
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?
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?
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. Do not neglect an opportunity midyear to do a heart and life check to see where you are, where you hoped to be, and where you are going.
The great news is that God has granted you everything you need in Christ to give all diligence to grow in 2022. With these wonderful resources, greet the second half of 2022 with the power of the Spirit in union with Christ.
2 Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and of Jesus our Lord, 3 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, 4 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. 5 But also for this very reason, giving all diligence, add to your faith virtue, to virtue knowledge, 6 to knowledge self-control, to self-control perseverance, to perseverance godliness, 7 to godliness brotherly kindness, and to brotherly kindness love. 8 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 1:5-8)
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Image Credit Mikhail Pavstyuk