31 Important Questions to Ask as You Prepare for the Year Ahead

Tumbling through waves, eating dinner, squinting in the sun, laughing as the sky turns periwinkle and red – bursting into simple moments of joy.

For my people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns that hold no water. Jeremiah 2:13

As I journaled and prayed about the new year, my mind spun backward to 2024 – what if I repeat the same mistakes I’ve made? Will there actually be good change? Am I going to have the capacity to write and create while also raising a baby and toddler?

My gaze and priorities this year could easily be myopically focused on the little corner of my own life, hewing out cisterns for my family that ‘hold no water’. This year I sense God calling me to forego ‘big picture plans’ and hold fast to His in my daily life. ‘Do not worry about tomorrow’ – Matthew 6:25-34.

Many days repeat themselves; I’m reading books to a toddler, making meals, tidying the house, heading out to the shops, possibly seeing a friend – life is mundane and simple. Simultaneously, my capacity feels limited and stretched in this season – pregnancy tiredness, toddler demands, and managing the house and my time without much ‘outside’ help. I realise more and more that all the more, my strength is found in God alone and He needs to be my fountain of Living Water in every area of my life.

God prepared me for a new season this year: I’m completely letting go of wedding and family photography to make room for blogging. It’s a huge step, and a decision that required a lot of prayer and ‘ohh but God, what if I just did both?’. My hands are full, my energy (physical and emotional) is limited while raising little ones. But I am so eager to be encouraging young women, creating a space of honesty and vulnerability and in doing so not shying away from sharing my own difficult moments too and what God is teaching me through them.

I stumbled across a free PDF which a friend shared. In it, there were questions to ask as we look forward to 2025. They were an encouragement to me. I tweaked a few things of what he shared based on how it suited my life. I hope you can go through and pick a handful to reflect on. I highlighted in bold my favourites for those who have 10 min max 😉

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 10 years? In eternity?
11. What’s the most important decision you need to make this year?
12. What area of your life most needs simplifying, and what’s one way you could simplify in that
    area?
13. What’s the most important need you feel burdened to meet this year?
14. What habit would you most like to establish this year?
15. Who do you most want to encourage this year?
16. What is your most important financial goal this year, and what is the most important step you can
    take toward achieving it?
17. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your work life this
    year?
18. What’s one new way you could be a blessing to your pastor (or to another who ministers to you)
    this year?
19. What’s one thing you could do this year to enrich the spiritual legacy you will leave to your
    children and grandchildren?
20. What book, in addition to the Bible, do you most want to read this year?
21. What one thing do you most regret about last year, and what will you do about it this year?
22. What single blessing from God do you want to seek most earnestly this year?
23. In what area of your life do you most need growth, and what will you do about it this year?
24. What’s the most important trip you want to take this year?
25. What skill do you most want to learn or improve this year?
26. To what need or ministry will you try to give an unprecedented amount this year?
27. What’s the single most important thing you could do to improve the quality of your commute this
    year?
28. What is something you want to understand better this year, and what will you do
    about it?
29. If those who know you best gave you one piece of advice, what would they say? Would they be
    right? What will you do about it?
30. What’s the most important new item you want to buy this year?
31. In what area of your life do you most need change, and what will you do about it this year?

31 Questions by Donald Whitney

Donald S. Whitney is associate professor of biblical spirituality and senior associate dean of the
School of Theology at the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

I hope these questions encourage and inspire you! If you have a minute, simply deeply reflecting on one could change the course of your day, week or month… it’s worth waiting on Him. Sitting in silence and reading God’s word, we often hear the depth of God’s call on our lives.