A Call to Accountability – A Path to Growth

SPEAKER 02 : 0:01

Welcome to the In Touch Podcast with Charles Stanley for Tuesday, December 30th. Social media often celebrates people who make it on their own without depending on anyone else. But what if that me-only mindset is actually a recipe for disaster? Today, we’ll discover why God designed us to grow stronger together with the support of others.

SPEAKER 01 : 0:24

Now, what I want to talk about in this message is this whole idea of accountability. Now, let’s just define what is accountability. Accountability, in essence, is responsibility. It’s sort of like a check and balance system in our life that really protects us from from harm that we would do to ourselves or harm, for example, that someone else will do. So accountability in its very essence is a protective measure. It’s a way of life that God has given to all of us for many, many reasons. Some of them we will talk about here. And what it means is simply this. we live out this accountability by being open and free and by being willing to tell the truth and to share with someone else what’s going on in our life and to be willing listen not only an encourager to other people but that other people would encourage us and not only that that when we need to be brought to accountability about something and something needs to change in our life that that is exactly what happened and all of us have been there we’ve all been in situations and circumstances where we may have said something it did something that we didn’t we knew that it was not exactly right then what happens somebody brings us to accountability so here’s what i want you to see there’s nothing wrong with accountability accountability is a gift Accountability is the way God, one of the ways he chooses to protect us from ourselves because, you remember what Paul said to the Galatians? He said, now, don’t slip back into the slavery that you’re in. And then he said, now, you’re free, but don’t turn your freedom by being ungrateful. Unaccountable, forgetting that you’re accountable to God into the flesh, that is, to slip over into a life of sin. So while we are free in many ways, we are accountable, and that accountability naturally is of God. Now, there’s some requirements. And one of the first requirements is this. I’ve got to be trustworthy. Accountability is all about being trustworthy. and being honest and being dependable and being transparent and being aboveboard about things and thinking about the other person and what’s best. In other words, just anybody is not accountable. If you’re not trustworthy, it’s not going to work. If you’re not honest, it’s not going to work. And if a person finds themselves, for example, wanting to cover up and refuse to be sincere, then they’re going to have a problem. To be accountable, I have to have convictions. Let’s say that I’m an accountability group. There are four of us. It’s not going to do any good to have an accountability group if you don’t have honesty, transparency, openness, willingness to speak the things that you see, and have some conviction about things. If you have no conviction, there’s no accountability. Somebody says, well, I’m not a theologian. You don’t have to be a theologian. You just have to have convictions. The truth is, everybody is a theologian to some degree. That is, you have certain beliefs about things. And if a person says he’s an atheist, he’s just in the dark. That’s what he is. And if somebody says, well, I’m agnostic. I don’t believe in God. Well, let me just say this to you. If you think that relieves you of being accountable, you better think twice. Because the Bible doesn’t say you’re accountable to God unless you don’t believe in him or unless you have doubts about him. We are all accountable for our life here and now. And one of these days, we’ll stand before him and give a full account of our entire life. You say, well, what about all those things I’ve been forgiven for? Right? You don’t have to. He’s not going to bring up. In other words, if you’re a believer, when you stand before his presence, he’s not going to bring up, let’s say you did this on that day and this on that day. And I can remember. Earlier in life when I’d hear pastors talk about the judgment, this is what they’d say. They’d say things like this. When you stand before God, He’s going to have this movie before you, and He’s just going to play your life so that everybody in the world sees your sin. He’s going to judge you. It used to scare me to death. And I’d think, my goodness, what’s going to be on my film? But you know what? All of that was just ignorance. That’s all that was. Because that’s not what the Bible says. What I’m forgiven for? He’s forgotten. But you say, well, but now do you lose? Yes. When you waste time, you lose. When you waste finances, you lose. When you waste relationships and love, you lose. It’s not that he, in other words, the judgment is, I’m going to do this to you. But in the judgment, I think we will see what we lost. We go into heaven, we’re going to be blessed, and we will be rewarded on the basis of our conduct, our attitude, the way we lived our life, and what we’ve messed up on, we don’t get any rewards for that. And what we’ve done right, we will be rewarded. But there’s a day of accountability. And if a person doesn’t have the courage and the character to be what they ought to be, then they can’t be in an accountability group. So let’s put it this way. As a believer, you’re accountable to Jesus every single day. If you’re an unbeliever, you’re still accountable to God every single day. In other words, there’s no such thing as being unaccountable in the eyes of God. You may act like it and live like it, but what you’re doing is just driving other people away because who can trust you? If you refuse to be accountable, you’re not trustworthy. Because we might ask ourselves the question, why do people do that? And it’s interesting that people who are unaccountable, when you confront them, they’re quick to complain, quick to accuse, and quick to excuse. Because they don’t want to give an account. And you’ve met people like that. Maybe somebody that you work around. And no matter what you try to do to confront them, they have an excuse. Or they’re critical. In other words, they jump to criticize someone else to defend their failure. Accountability is a wonderful thing because it motivates us and it energizes us. And it motivates us to want to do our best and be our best and look our best and count for God in some fashion. But you and I might ask the questions, well, why do people object to being accountable? Well, it’s real simple. They’re dishonest. That’s one reason. They’re dishonest. And because they’re dishonest, they don’t want to be accountable. For example, why do you think businesses have these Machines, of course, have different things. You punch in every morning. You punch in when you leave. Why don’t they just say, well, you know, we start at 8 and we leave at 5. Y’all come whenever you want to, leave when you please, but that’s the deal. No, because people are so dishonest, they get there 30 minutes after and leave 30 minutes before. There are a lot of things that you and I have to put up with because of people’s dishonesty and their unwilling to be accountable. And you see, we have so much freedom and liberty in this country. And when we don’t take responsibility, what happens is people make decisions that all of us suffer as a result. We’re all accountable. And it’s a good thing to be accountable. But people who are not, they’re dishonest, for example. Oftentimes they’re trying to cover up something in their life. Usually they have a little bit of rebellion in them. And usually they’re slothful. Because you see, if you don’t have any accountability, then why get up when you don’t feel like getting up and going to work when you just don’t want to go anyway? So, I think about people call in and say, I’m sick. Now, think about this. If you work somewhere and you’re accountable to be there at a And you just don’t feel like you want to go today. So you call in and say, well, I’m on sick leave. You’re not sick. You just lied. That’s what you did. And what you did is you sent a deceptive message. So the next day you come back to work and somebody says, well, what did you do? Man, I had most fun yesterday. Let me tell you what I did. You just shut your test on it right there. It is deception. It is lying. When you quit beforehand, it is deception. If you quit half an hour early, then you should say, duck my pay, 30 minutes I left earlier. How many folks will do that? Accountability is just being the person we claim to be. And of all people who ought to do that is believers. We ought to be absolutely as clean as we can possibly be about any and every circumstance of life. And some people are… They don’t want to be accountable because they fear a loss. Well, if I’m really honest about that, I may not have this opportunity. Well, if I’m really up above board about all this thing, I may lose this privilege. No, the more honest and on top you are and the more open you are, the more people trust you to do and to be the best you can. Who wants to be around somebody who’s untrustworthy? For example, do you want to tell the deepest part of your life to a gossip? No, you don’t. So listen to me carefully. A gossip is an untrustworthy person to whom you do not want to be accountable because what you openly share in your heart with somebody, something you’ve been through, some hurt, some pain, or some disaster, or something you’ve done in your life that you wouldn’t want anybody else to know about but somebody who’s a close friend because they’ll understand, and then they go tell somebody else, untrustworthy? gossip, sin, you name it. That’s not being accountable. That is taking advantage of somebody else’s reputation. To be a Christian is serious business. And to have a testimony is serious business. And so, one of the reasons that some people don’t want to give an account, it’s just pure old pride. I’m not having anybody tell me what to do. That is pure pride. Thank God. Every morning I wake up, I want Him to tell me what to do. Before I go to bed at night, I want Him to tell me what I did, or what I did not do, or how I failed in any way, or to tell me what a fantastic job I may have done. In other words, God holds us accountable. But think about this. Don’t you know that God, let’s put it this way. Let’s say, for example, that every night before you go to bed, here’s Jesus sitting on the side of the bed saying, well, let’s think about today. Here’s what I think he would want you to do. He’d want you to tell him what a good job you did. You did a good job. You did the best you could. And you were blessed during the day. And you just want to thank Him for being with you. No, but God isn’t a tyrant. He’s not a monster. God is this awesome, loving, heavenly Father who has given us principles to live by so you and I can have peace and joy and contentment and our needs met and be influenced and make an impact in somebody else’s life. He’s up to something good in our life. And we have to be accountable to Him. Now, when we lack accountability, here’s what happens. You can’t do your best. If you’re not accountable, you will not do your best in life. Secondly, you’re going to be wasteful. If a person’s not accountable for their money, you’re going to see something you do not need, you know you don’t need it, but you’ve got to buy something. When people are not accountable, let’s say in a marriage, for example, you want to break up a marriage, get fussing over money. Money breaks up a lot of marriages because somebody does not want to be held accountable for the way they spend their money. And what this parable’s all about is accountability. Then, for example, I think about one of the aspects of it is a person spiritually is not going to grow much until you are accountable to somebody in your life. When I grew up, who was I accountable to? My mother. And she made me accountable to her. When I came home at night, she wanted to know where I’d been. And who I was with. Now, she wasn’t being critical. She would say, well, where have you been? She had this very quiet way of getting straight to the truth in me. And once in a while she’d say, well, tell me what you want me to know. Do you know what that did to me? It motivated me to tell her the truth. I couldn’t lie to her. And she didn’t say, tell me the truth. She’d just say, well, tell me what you want me to know. Well, a few times I probably wasn’t as honest as I should have been, but she got to me with that. Everybody needs to be accountable, and we need to know how to approach accountability. You don’t say to your children, all right, tell me where you’ve been, who you’ve been with, and what you did, and what time. That’s not the way to show accountability. In other words, there’s a loving way to do it, but the issue is we are accountable. And that refusing to be accountable is tragedy. Accountability goes to every place in our life. Starts at our home, husbands and wives and children. In the schools, we entrust our children to so-called Christian colleges. And I could give you a list of quotes that you’d hardly believe out of Christian schools. Well, one of the first things the professor says, I am an atheist or I am against Christianity and I think it’s stupid. Two out of every three students who leave their church to go to college with their faith, two out of every three leave the college or the university having thrown their faith aside. That is tragic. Somebody’s not accountable. They are deceptive to call themselves Christians, and they are untrustworthy. And you as a parent have a right and a responsibility to ask for accountability that you call this a Christian university. And one of the first things the professor says that he’s not only not a Christian, he doesn’t believe in God, and the Bible is an antiquated book. Remember, that’s your hard-earned cash you paid them. Accountability is a law of God. And that’s why you as a parent cannot keep quiet. We as citizens cannot keep quiet. We have responsibility to call for accountability in a godly fashion. whether it’s in a large group of people, or whether you write, or whether you call, or whatever you believe, and however you choose to do it, the one thing we are accountable for is what we know is the truth. Can you sit silently knowing that these things are going on that affect your family, listen, and your children, and your grandchildren, and say, well, somehow it’ll all work out. I’m not telling you what to do. I’m just simply saying this. You ask God, how should you respond in this day and time, in a critical time in the life of our nation, and in all of our lives personally. It’s a critical time. Accountability is the principle of the Word of God. And we’re all accountable to Him. And there are people out there who represent us who are accountable to us. We’re accountable to each other to live a godly life. And we’re accountable to the Lord Jesus Christ to get His message of truth to the world. What a wonderful, exciting day to be alive. And knowing that you have the truth that can transform a person’s life and change their eternal destiny. that when they die, they’ll go to heaven. Because Jesus went to the cross, paid their sin debt in full. That message, we’re accountable to God to get to the whole world. We are accountable to God to do our best and all that we can do for having the wonderful privilege of getting it out there. Amen? Now, you may be here and you’re saying, well, so what am I to do? Well, here’s what you ought to do. If you’ve never trusted Jesus Christ as your Savior, then you have already been acting irresponsibly. You’ve rebelled against His authority. You need to ask God to forgive you of your sins, whatever that is, and tell Him that today, wherever you are right now, that you do believe that Jesus went to the cross and died on the cross for your sins, and you’re accepting Him as your personal Savior. You want to be accountable. You want to do what’s right. You want your life to be the kind of life that makes a positive impact upon your family and those around you, where you work and among your friends. These are serious days. to be a godly person. It’s what He requires of us. And remember this, whatever He requires of us, He provides. Amen? Father, how grateful we are that You do hold us accountable. Thank You for the Spirit of God within us that convicts us when we’re wrong and encourages us when we’re right. who motivates us to do our best and warns us against evil. Teach us how to be the kind of believers and the kind of citizens and the kind of parents we need to be in order for you to accomplish your purpose and your plan for our lives. But we ask it in Jesus’ name. Amen.

SPEAKER 02 : 19:02

Thank you for listening to part two of A Call to Accountability. For more inspirational messages like this one, visit our online 24-7 station. And if you’d like to know more about Charles Stanley or InTouch Ministries, stop by intouch.org. This podcast is a presentation of InTouch Ministries, Atlanta, Georgia.