Sunday, January 04, 2009

Review Questions 1

Part of my plan for the new year is to get back into the habit of a couple of hours on a Monday morning reviewing how things are going, and planning the week ahead instead of just ploughing into it.

Here's a list of questions which I picked up from the superb Arrow Leadership programme a few years go. This is one of several sets of questions which I use, the idea is to come back to these every 6 weeks or so, though often it's less frequent. I have them on a sheet of A4, and use a large notebook to jot down my answers/thoughts. The same notebook comes with me on retreats and quiet days, so that all the jottings go in the same place.

God
1. How is your relationship with God?
2. What have you read in the Bible in the last week?
3. What has God said to you in the reading?
4. Where do you find yourself resisting Him these days?

Prayer
5. What specific things are you praying for in regard to others?
6. What specific things are you praying for in regard to yourself?

Habits and lifestyle
7. What are the specific tasks facing you right now which you consider incomplete?
8. What habits intimidate you?
9. What general reading are you doing?
10. What have you done to play?

Relationships
11. How are you doing with your friends, spouse, children?
12. If I were to ask a close friend or spouse about your state of mind, state of spirit, state of energy level, what would the answer be?

Conflict
13. Are you sensing any spiritual attacks from the enemy right now?
14. If Satan were to try and invalidate you as a person or as a servant of the Lord, how might he do it?
15. What is the state of your sexual perspective? Tempted? Dealing with fantasies? Entertainment?
16. Where are you financially right now? Are things under control? under anxiety? in great debt?
17. Are there any unresolved conflicts in you circle of relationships right now?

Renewal
18. When was the last time you spent time with a good friend of your own gender?
19. What kind of time have you spent with anyone who is a non-Christian this past month?
20. Are you sleeping well?

Review
21. What challenges do you think you're going to face in the coming week? Month?
22. What would you say are you greatest fears at this present time?
23. Do you like yourself at the moment?
24. What are the greatest confusions about your relationship with God?

Subheadings are mine, to break the list up a bit - the original is just a list of 24 questions, and it works quite well like that, as life can't easily be broken up into boxes. At different times, different questions are more 'alive' than others, either to provoke action, prayer, or ring warning bells. I've been using this for roughly 7 years now, and it's still very helpful.

1 comment:

  1. Hmmm... I think it would take me 24 hours to work through that list, then it would be time to start again...

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