ohhyemin:

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
 

This really was a wake up call.
Made me wonder.. Do we really have true accountability?

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I used to believe this. ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

True accountability acts in grace, not in accordance with the law. The law will correct you, but grace will love you for everything you are. With all your flaws and gunk and all your vanity, with all your love and passion— Grace is hugging your robber or your murderer. 

And in this great love and mercy, we’re changed. Can love in itself change a person inside out?

I think a part of it is culture. Korean culture LOVES to correct. I’m not against correcting, I think a hard rebuke is still necessary at times. But we have to go through a deep self-checking within ourselves..

Am I acting out of spite or unforgiveness? Am I just lacking in love and want them to conform to norms of society or what I presume is acceptable? 

Love covers all things.

MORE IMPORTANTLY. How do you “call out sin” in someone, when God removed sin from inside of you? How does, in our death and resurrection in Christ and THROUGH the Cross leave the very essence of evil inside of us? Aren’t we married to Christ? Isn’t it Christ that lives in me the hope of glory? We’re just dead men and women possessed by a man named Jesus.

How does God leave the very essence and manifestation of PRIDE (sin) inside of us, to bring us to humility? How does God leave the very essence of EVIL inside of us to bring us to good? He doesn’t. He killed it, and we live in Christ now.

So what are we keeping each other accountable of? It’s the hope entrusted within us, Christ the magnificent and dazzling. 

True accountability acts in prophetic calling. It calls out the best in us. It says “don’t act below yourself. remember who you are.” 

It says, “Remember these promises that God spoke over your life? Remember that God promised you this and this, that you’re to do this and that.” This is who you are, the crap you’re doing, its the old you. 

What shall we say then? Shall we who died to sin live in it any longer so that grace would abound? NO! How can we who died to sin still live in it?

Accountability is a community that’ll see the treasure inside of you, that’ll say “Hey my ceiling is your floor. Run harder, run faster, you aren’t called to mediocrity, and I’m going to do everything I can to get you to the greatness you’re meant to fulfill.”

Why?

Because Jesus is worth it, and Christ in us the hope of glory manifests so that we would be light and salt of the Earth.

If you aren’t experiencing this type of accountability, it’s probably because there isn’t a good prophetic culture in your community. In my own personal life, God’s promised me a lot of things.

He told me I’m going to UCSD

He told me that I’ll be going to China

He told me that I should study film because I’d enjoy it

He told me that I’m great with people

etc.

And it’s in the hardest times, my darkest moments, when I’m crapped up in sin and just sitting in the miry clay waiting for someone to tell me that I suck and need to repent, that God… In his infinite mercy, comes and finds me and tells me the very thing that I hate to hear the most. 

“I love you.” 

Why? Cause it kills me. Cause I realize that the measuring stick that God measures me against is with Jesus.

And Jesus… is… gooooood.

And it kills me to believe that people love me more than I love myself. That they believe in me more than I believe in myself. And that’s the difference.

You get saved when you believe in Jesus, but you’re utterly transformed when you realize that Jesus believes in you. -Kris Vallotton

http://yohan-yohonian.tumblr.com/post/3102775481/this-is-who-you-are

http://yohan-yohonian.tumblr.com/post/3085774010/persecution-accountability-destiny-1-2