Accountability - By Dr. Charles Mahlangu

Small group/Discipleship/ Married couples/Men’s and Women’s Fellowship Groups
The writer of Proverbs says: “Iron sharpens iron, one man’s face is made wise by another.”
The writer of Ecclesiastes says: “Two are better than one, better still, a cord of three is not easily broken.”
What is an ‘accountability’ relationship? What does it look like?
Who is in it? You and one or two or three believers. You and ---
 A person or persons to meet with at regularly observed times, say once a week.
 A or persons to help keep you in line with your spiritual fidelity and intimacy with God.
 A person or persons who are mature.
 A person, persons dedicated to your progress.
 A person or persons to ask, demand ruthless introspection.
 A person or persons who have been granted authority by you to remove the masks of your soul.
 A person or persons to make you aspire for excellence in all segments of your being.
 A person or persons to covenant with to be absolutely sincere and truthful, even when it agonizes to do so.
 A person who will sit with you face to face and hands with hands, and demand to look into your eyes.
 A person or persons who will be the instruments of God to minister to you.
 A person or persons who will help steer you away from your blind spots.
 A person or persons who would be called upon to reprove, rebuke and ask for deeper motives that drive you.
 A person or persons to pray and intercede for you.
These are recommended resource questions to use in this accountability partnership. You will ask each other these questions. You will each answer your partner.
1. Do you love the Lord with all your mind, all of your heart and all of your might?
2. Are you conscious of an area that inhibits you from loving your God with all your being?
3. Do you love your wife as Christ loved the church?
4. Do you honour your husband by submitting to him as the church submits to Jesus Christ?
5. Where is the evidence to support this claim?
6. What stops you from obeying God in your marriage?
7. Are you currently free from any sinful habits of the mind and heart?
8. Are you consciously seeing the power of God to keep your heart and mind pure at all times?
9. Are you joyful in your marriage as you glorify God?
10. What do you do habitually to stay and walk consistently in the light with the Lord?
11. How often do you pray alone with your spouse in uninterrupted intimacy?
12. What do you do habitually to take each other out in order to guard your intimacy?
13. What did you do this week towards your spouse to express unconditional forgiveness?
14. What do you do to build up intimate communication with your spouse?
15. What do you do habitually to spend time alone with your spouse?
16. What do you do habitually to build yourself up in your most holy faith?
17. What do you do habitually to stay saturated with the Word of God in your heart and mind?
18. The fruit of the Spirit is self-control: How do you help your neighbour develop the non-negotiable character
of Christ-likeness?
19. Is sin creeping into your heart and mind?
20. How have you guarded your heart and mind from pride and arrogance this past week?
21. What temptations seem to follow you repeatedly?
22. Which introspective questions give you great discomfort? Describe why this is so.
23. Are you consistent in regular tithes and sacrificial giving in the church?
24. Who is holding you accountable about personal and marital challenges?
25. Who do you meet with at weekly appointed times to watch over your spiritual progress?
26. Who is holding you accountable about your personal devotion to the Lord?
27. Which group of men or women do you meet with weekly to whom you are accountable?
28. What book are you presently reading to keep your mind sharpened and challenged?
29. What kind of devotional resources do you use as a couple?
30. Describe the different prayer contexts you practise in your marriage.
31. What do you currently do to help your spouse regularly fellowship with believers of his/her gender?
32. What do you currently do to stimulate your spouse to hunger for reading spiritual books?
33. Is laziness creeping in, paralysing you and causing you to neglect giving your spouse undivided attention?
34. Is laziness creeping in, so that you choose viewing television rather than giving attention to your spouse?
35. Are you slowly allowing the wicked entertainment of pornography viewing and reading to get you
addicted to gross inner impurity?
36. What do you currently do to keep your heart protected from pornography?
37. Do you disclose your struggles of pornoraphy with your spouse?
38. What do you do to avoid inflaming your mind with lust, covetousness, and sexual immorality?
39. As a single man or woman, what do you do to gymnasticize yourself for the purpose of purity, godliness, and holiness?
40. What do you do to develop “staying power” of this capacity for purity, godliness, and holiness, in a moment-by-moment, step-by-step way?
41. How do you deal with the temptation to masturbate?
42. Share how you overcome the drive to masturbate.
43. When was the last time you were driven to pornographic inflammation of heart and mind?
44. Explain what you do to guard against the invasion of the temptation to dissipate your time and resources with the lust of eyes, flesh and the world. Please share your thoughts on this.
45. Are you faithful to disclose to your accountability praying partner the fears that haunt your soul?
46. Are you faithful to disclose to your praying partner the private weaknesses of your heart and your mind?
47. Are you faithful to disclose to your praying partner personal problems with financial mismanagement causing major conflict with your spouse?
48. Are you faithful to disclose to your accountability praying partner your sinful inclination to defraud the Lord of tithes and offerings to church, Christian organizations and missions?
49. Are you brave to obey God and make your sister or brother the one you will be accountable to so that God can use them to sharpen you to walk more intimately with God? For “Iron sharpens iron” Proverbs 27:7.
“The man’s face is made wiser by another.”
50. Scripture warns us against provoking and exasperating [breaking the hearts] of our children. How are you repairing the emotional and psychological damage caused by careless wounding words? Disclose this sinful habit to your accountability partners. Be vivid in your explanation.
51. What do you currently do to nurture your children in the admonition of the Lord?
52. Are you spending time building up your intimacy with your children? Describe how.
53. Are you striving to be guided, led and directed by God in your life?
54. When was the last time you were attentive to God?
55. When was the last time you believe you heard from God? Please explain.
56. As best as you know this, are you manifesting the fruit of the Spirit in your character, right here, right now?
57. Which fruit of the Spirit has been evident this past week? Discuss the evidence from others around you.
58. We are solemnly charged: Do not be overcome by evil; Overcome evil with good. Have you carried this out during the past week or so?
59. We are charged: Hate what is evil. Please show how this is taking place.
60. How do you deal with the cancer of bitterness in you inner being?
61. How do you deal with hidden resentments against specific people?
62. Happy is a person who goes to bed each night with a broad smile on a face that is freed from unresolved issues, conflicts and grudges against any person anywhere. Please show how you have lived according to this rule, during this past week.
63. Describe how you use scriptures as a defensive capability each day of a normal week.
64. Describe how you use scriptures, hymns and spiritual songs for inner meditation and intercession.
65. Share how you deal with raging evil attitudes that attack you.
66. Share your personal encounters with pulling down strongholds, casting down imaginations, making every thought captive to the obedience of Christ.
67. Share how you resist the Devil so that he flees.
68. When was the last time you consciously resisted the Devil?
69. How did you fulfil the command to love your neighbour as yourself, during these two weeks [or month]?
70. Where is the evidence?
71. What did you do this past week that demonstrates your obedience to the Great Commission?
72. How do you share your faith with unbelievers?
73. Are you effectively freed from bitter conflicts, unresolved disputes, disagreements, with parents, siblings or relatives?
74. What are you doing concretely to initiate reconciliation and resolution of all outstanding barriers with parents or siblings?
75. Who have you enlisted to help you deal triumphantly with all your past conflicts with all known human beings in your life?
76. Is the time spent on entertainment pleasing to the Lord? Explain your response vividly.
77. When was the last time you initiated reconciliation by going to the one you believed had something against you?
78. Describe the time when you initiated reconciliation by expressing unconditional forgiveness from the heart to one against whom you had harboured grudges.
79. What persistent prayer needs for your children can we intercede for, on your behalf as well as your children?
80. What persistent prayer needs for your spouse can we intercede for, on your behalf?
81. What persistent prayer needs for your personal life, can we intercede for, as we present you to the throne of God?
82. Job says he has made a covenant with his eyes: to overcome impurities by lust, covetousness and sexual immorality. What structures do you put in place to concretize the covenant of your eyes?
83. Please give a specific account.
84. Describe what you do to lock your eyes from lusts and impurities.
85. Do you share you inner battle of the eyes for desire for eroticism?
86. What battle strategies have you put in place to at long last moment by moment kill, mortify, put to death, get rid of raging lusts of the eyes, the flesh, the mind, the heart, as a solemn, life and death pledge?
87. What battle strategies have you put in place to normalize the culture of blood, sweat, and tears effectively overcoming the inner battle of lusts of eyes, the flesh, the mind, the heart, as a solemn, life and death pledge?
88. Name those helping you make this covenant of purity, godliness, integrity, as step by step, moment by moment resounding reality by the power of God.
89. Do you share this covenant with your spouse?
90. Do you share this covenant with your sister or brother?
91. What are you doing to share this victory over personal sinful habits of the heart with the younger believers who desperately long for edifying companionship that capacitates them to grow up in the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ so that they would acquire skills to resoundingly triumph over the ongoing battle of the lusts of the eyes, the heart, the mind?
92. Describe what you do to make every thought captive. Paul to the Corinthians: We have divine weapons to pull down fortresses of strongholds, to cast down imaginations, to make every thought captive to the obedience of Christ, to make obedience to Jesus Christ complete.
93. The apostle spoke of the peace of God that guards minds; how does this happen concretely in your life?
94. Describe various strategies you practise to render your heart and mind impenetrable to sin.
95. Give an example of what you did this past week, to guard your heart and mind against sin.
96. Since each one is gifted by God to serve, what are the gifts you see operating in you?
97. Can you establish from five people who know you quite well, what your spiritual gift [gifts] is [are]?
98. Where, or how are you using these gifts?
99. Please substantiate this from five sources.
100. When was the last time you used this gift?
101. Please furnish the evidence.
102. What are you doing to promote gift awareness in the body of Christ?
103. Please show what you are doing to sharpen the abilities, talents, gifts God, the Lord, and the Holy Spirit most definitely imparted to you for the benefit of others in this world.
104. Share about people who are helping you serve other people in your life.
105. Paul challenged the saints: “Owe no man nothing except the debt to love…”
106. Are you conscious of any outstanding debt to a neighbour?
107. What are you doing to rid yourself of excessive, moderate, and embarrassing debts?
108. Who are you disclosing this problem to with the motive to remain accountable to somebody?
109. Who is helping you deal with outstanding relational debts?
110. The divine principle charges to forgive, even as God in Christ forgave us, always, as a matter of life.
111. Describe the most recent acts of carrying the charge to forgive anyone who has wronged, or sinned against you.
112. How have you announced this act of officially letting this person know?
113. What are you currently doing to promote the awareness of others becoming accountable to fellow-saints?
114. As an older believer, which younger woman have you committed yourself to pour your life into, in order to build them up with spiritual resources needed for growth and maturation?
115. How are you investing in this next generation of Christian women/men?
116. Please share your insight, experiences in this answer.
117. What inhibits you from transferring by passing on to this next generation of Christian women/men, all that the Lord has given you by grace, to benefit others?
118. What are you currently doing to enable you to pass on to the next generation of younger believers what is vital and guaranteed to impact them in this life.
119. Who sees to it that you are fulfilling this life responsibility?
120. Which younger couple do you make yourself available to, in order to pass on desperately needed biblical, spiritual, marital resources to effect growth and Christ-likeness in their own lives, as individuals and couples?
121. How often do you meet?
122.How could you effectively improve this relationship?


WHY ACCOUNTABILITY IS HARD
1. Fear of having my space invaded.
2. Fear of embarrassing myself.
3. Fear of losing control.
4. Fear of disclosing my heart to another person.
5. Fear of being helplessly probed.
6. Pride.
7. Enslavement.
8. My weaknesses will become public knowledge.
9. It’s not my nature to disclose my inner core.
10. I lose personal rights and privacy.
11. Accountability requires persistence and consistency, once established.
12. Demands absolute sincerity and truthfulness which pride and arrogance find so distasteful
13. Calls for high-level confidentiality on which trust is based.
14. It’s the ultimate classic display of humility of mind: I acknowledge my need for the neighbour without whom I cannot reach prescribed growth.
15. God is using my neighbour as an instrument to melt, mold, crush, smash, and grind me to the shape of His design.
16. The focus is on me exclusively, rather than the weaknesses of the neighbour.
17.For professional preachers and teachers it is difficult to shut up and listen to others with our hearts.

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