Accountability: Part Two
January 12th, 2009 by Brett Wagner
Accountability: Part Two
Accountability Involves Other People
Hebrews 3:12-13 ESV
Take care, brothers, lest there be in any of you an evil, unbelieving heart, leading you to fall away from the living God. 13 But exhort one another every day, as long as it is called “today,” that none of you may be hardened by the deceitfulness of sin.
Limited Perspective
Moving on from the foundational understanding that our accountability begins with God, we also have to recognize that accountability does involve other people. Even with our best intentions to honor the Lord and pursue holiness, we will fall short in our efforts. As we seek to evaluate our own condition, we must recognize we have a limited perspective.
Lettuce in your Teeth
Allow me to illustrate with an illustration. Your morning routine probably included you looking in the mirror for some amount of time to asses your condition. Hair, face, teeth, clothes and general appearance were all checked. You did the best with what you had and eventually said, “I’m good.” But then at lunch time, you pulled out a turkey sandwich with big, leafy, green lettuce. While you enjoyed that wonderful sandwich, what you didn’t notice was that a piece of that leafy, green lettuce became stuck in your teeth visible for all to see. For the rest of the day, you went to class, worked out and talked with friends all with a nasty green blemish in your teeth. From your perspective, everything was fine. But for everyone else, it is clear you have some issues. All of the embarrassment could have been avoided if someone would have kindly told you, “I think you have something in your teeth.” That is the problem with a limited perspective.
The Need for Relationship
Because our perspective is limited, we all have blind spots and we are in need of other people to address those areas. We must learn that we cannot be healthy, growing and fruitful Christians all by ourselves. This is why the Bible so often speaks of the importance of relationship. After God’s work of creation and repeatedly declaring it good, there was one thing God said was not good: man being alone (Genesis 2:18). Added to that, the model given to us in the book of Acts is that of Christians purposefully meeting together to study God’s word, pray and be together (Acts 2:42).
A Culture of Independence
This idea of community is one we need to pay attention to as we live in a culture that fights against real relationships and genuine community. Take some time to observe how we can be prone to hyper-independence, how individuality is exalted and dependence upon others can be seen as a weakness. The self-made entrepreneur is the icon of American culture, but Scripture does not exalt such uber-independence.
Bottom-Line: Accountability Involves Others
The bottom-line is that you can’t watch yourself by yourself. If we do not have the help of others to see ourselves as we are, serious consequences await! We will soon begin to listen to our own arguments, believe our own lies and buy into our own delusions. We will forget God’s clear warning given to us in the book of Proverbs that “The way of a fool is right in his own eyes, but a wise man listens to advice (Proverbs 12:15). We must have those in our life who lovingly exhort as they address these blind spots in our lives.
Which leads us to the third point for next week: accountability prevents deception.
B- keep these going as they are much needed. Looking forward to part 3.
Amen! How important it is to have true friends who can & will speak to us in truth & love about the “big, leafy, green lettuce” in our lives.
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