Faith . Hope . L O V E .: Accountability ↘

A friend shared some common misconceptions about accountability that he learned from a UR seminar..

WHAT IS ACCOUNTABILITY?
Accountability is an active participation in giving and receiving from other believers.
- Teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training in righteousness
- It’s the key to understanding your sin (especially pride)

BAD FORMS OF ACCOUNTABILITY

1. Eating together
- Meeting up with each other and spending time together is not accountability. The little prayer before the meal is not accountability!

2. Talking Nonsense
- Meeting up and talking about boys/girls or any other nonsense is not accountability! Things like sports or other interests are things you can talk about with anyone. Don’t talk nonsense. Conversations that don’t go anywhere is not accountability.

3. When it does not involve teaching, rebuking, correcting, and training, it is not accountability.
- Listening is not accountability. Just because you sit there, listen, and “relate,” doesn’t mean that you’re keeping that brother or sister accountable. Anyone can listen.

4. When you do not accept wisdom, it is not accountability.
- Your heart must be open to wisdom. Don’t be a stubborn sinner.

5. Inconsistency
- Accountability must be consistent. Meeting once every six months is not good enough. Consistency is important! Always be available for your brother/sister and meet regularly!

6. “I support him/her” method is not accountability
- Don’t be sin supporters.
- You are strengthening their ability to sin
- Don’t give them a way out to sin
- Remember, they just want that support, but once you give that support, that “I got your back,” you can lead them to sin

7. “Give them some time” method 
- You can’t let them “be destroyed a little bit” and decide to save them later
- You can’t say, “we’ll see what happens” when they are blatantly in sin
- It’s like a kid who has a gun or a person cutting themselves. You don’t wait, you take it away right away!


GOOD FORMS OF ACCOUNTABILITY

1. You must have humility
- Humbly recognize your need for others
- You need people around you to look out for you and to tell you what you’re doing wrong
- Doing everything by yourself will lead to limited growth. In other words, you won’t grow
- You can’t watch yourself by yourself. That’s dumb.

2. You and others must aggressively participate
- Don’t assume that by merely attending an accountability group or by doing things with them, you are being held accountable. That’s not accountability.
- Aggressively participate and satisfy God by growing in holiness.
- Welcome correction in your life
- Share your sins
- Cream cheese example. So one day, a friend ate a bagel and got cream cheese on his face. No one told him all day and simply laughed at him and talked behind his back about how absurd he looked with cream cheese on his face. Then, another brother pointed out the cream cheese on his face. *Up to this is NOT accountability!* You must address why that brother always gets cream cheese on his face and help in to never get it on his face again. You must walk with him and straight up tell him that he’s a dirty eater and further address steps in which he can take to prevent that and you need to make sure that he is taking those steps—aggressively participating to prevent the next time when he walks around campus all day with cream cheese on his face.

WHY HAVE ACCOUNTABILITY?
- Without accountability, people die.
- There is no such thing as a compromise to sin. It’s black and white. In Acts, Simon the Sorcerer tries to purchase the power of God with money and Peter says a straight up black and white answer: NO. He gets clear and straight to the point. This is the type of accountability we need to accomplish.
- Why let a brother or sister you love so much continually live in sin? What are you waiting for? Correct their sins and accept their correction of your sins.
- Accountability is also necessary because we are blind to sin. We need assistance to see sin in our lives. Our main inclination is to sin so we sometimes don’t see it. Through accountability, we are reminded of the things we should/shouldn’t be doing.
- We are spiritually blind
- Accountability helps us to APPLY the truths we know instead of just filling our brains with knowledge

ChristineArumPark!!!!