Welcome 2023: Four Questions to Consider

Does any year compare to the last two we have had? As in 2020, this past year was also a life-altering, community-altering, world-altering year. Life as almost anyone on the planet knows continued to change to one degree or another this past year. The pandemic continued to create good opportunities for some but primarily placed incredible amounts of pressure on most. To imply or insist that the year did not leave its mark on many souls and in many families would be shortsighted at best and just wrong at worst. The Delta variant wreaked havoc this past year in ways we never saw in 2020.

As this year closes and we look forward to the next, there are four primary questions in the following sections that will benefit you if you consider them. I’ve shared these questions before; however, I do so again because of their help in order to gain perspective. Use them to look back at 2021 to see what changes were made in your life. Are things better or worse? Have you progressed or digressed? Is there growth or no growth?

Once you determine the answers to your questions, you can make a plan to go forward in the new year. At the end of the day, it is not about resolutions; rather, the new year is about next steps. Where can we move forward loving and worshiping Christ and serving others? How can this year be a “next step” year?

Let me suggest four primary questions with some additional commentary to help you assess the past year and think forward to the next.

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?

Take these four questions and spend a few minutes in prayerful consideration. This may take more than a day or two in order to work through these four areas. Where you are weaker than last year, in light of your season of life, what should you do to take the “next step” in the coming year?

The great news is that God has granted you everything you need in Christ to give all diligence to grow in 2023.

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)