I first experienced accountability with my friend Chris. We met in the dorm in college, where he was my RA, resident assistant, in charge of my dorm section my sophomore year. We started meeting weekly to ask each other accountability questions. We wrote out lists of questions we wanted the other person to ask us, then each week we would meet, ask each other the questions, and pray.
In the previous posts this week, I’ve primarily been writing about the Bible’s teaching regarding reactive accountability. Reactive accountability is when we react to someone who has sinned. Accountability can also be quite helpful in a proactive sense. Proactive accountability is when a person volunteers to submit themselves to accountability. They desire accountability.
That kind of small group accountability is rooted in the biblical teaching of building one another up in discipleship to Jesus, as well as in the admonition to confess our sins to one another.
For me, that was and still is Chris. We both graduated college in 1996, and we have continued to meet ever since. We don’t have the sheets of questions anymore, but instead have a open, honest discussion about our lives, which have changed significantly over the past 30 years. Marriage, parenting, jobs, health. We still meet every couple months or so in person, with lots of texting and phone calls in between. We have found this a very encouraging accountability.
Certainly family members have a natural built-in accountability as well. You likely spend more time with your siblings, parents, or spouses, than any other people. There is a phrase in scripture “iron sharpens iron,” and that is perhaps most true when it comes to family. Family iron sharpening iron is a natural built-in accountability. Often times we push hard against it. We might not like it, at all, when our family members try to hold us accountable.
Proactive accountability is extremely beneficial, however, whether with friends or family or church family, when we nurture humble, teaching hearts. That humility is the raw material for accountability to do its good work in our lives.
In this podcast, a gentleman reveals how he and his family so deeply wanted to be in accountable community, that they were even willing to submit their major financial decisions to their friends. Every expenditure of $1000 or more went before the group of friends. It was a small group of trusted, godly friends, and they made a group decision about those expenses. That’s accountability.
In our society we tend to believe that people who aren’t good with money need to be held accountable with their expenses. We also believe that those who are good with their money have developed the right habits about money, and they don’t need to be held accountable. What this means is that the people with very little money have accountability, but not people who have moderate or large amounts of resources. Because our money is actually Jesus’ money, we stewards of Jesus’ would be wise to submit ourselves to financial accountability, particularly if we have a lot of money.
It could be choosing to place accountability software on internet devices. It seems to me that disciples of Jesus who are on the internet would be very wise to submit themselves to internet accountability, on all their devices.
So who is holding you accountable? Will you consider being proactive, inviting someone to hold you accountable? Will you meet with an accountability partner or small group to regularly ask, “How goes it with your soul?”
Engaging Scripture 