Day by Day - Mar. 10, 2010

Here are several very personal questions to help you know how severe we need to be with ourselves in order to "abstain from wickedness." Answer each one honestly.

• Are you regularly with a person of the opposite sex in inappropriate situations?
• Are you completely above reproach in all your financial dealings, including your taxes?
• Do you expose yourself to explicit sexual material?
• If you have a family, do you invest sufficient time with them?
• Do you tell the truth? How often do you lie (don't forget to count the little white ones)?
• How quickly do you say "I am wrong; I am genuinely sorry" when you have said or done something that hurts another?
• Do you hold grudges?
• Are you knowingly compromising in some area of your life, refusing to acknowledge the consequences that you will surely have to face?
• Have you formed a habit that is detrimental to your health or your job or your walk with Christ?
• Are you proud, selfish, arrogant?
• Have you taken credit for something that someone else did and should have been rewarded for?
• Do you return things you borrow?
• Have you failed to confess something to someone who should know of your wrongdoing?
• Are you abusing your mate or your children—physically or emotionally?
• Do you allow abuse to happen without seeking help?
• Do you regularly spend time in prayer and in the Scriptures?

Excerpted from Day by Day with Charles Swindoll, Copyright © 2000 by Charles R. Swindoll, Inc. (Thomas Nelson Publishers). All rights reserved worldwide. Used by permission.