Accountability

When Christian Herter was governor of Massachusetts, he was running hard for a second term in office. One day, after a busy morning chasing votes he arrived at a church barbecue. It was late afternoon and Herter was famished. As Herter moved down the serving line, he held out his plate to the woman serving chicken. She put a piece on his plate and turned to the next person in line.

“Excuse me,” Governor Herter said, “do you mind if I have another piece of chicken?”

“Sorry,” the woman told him. “I’m supposed to give one piece of chicken to each person.”

A group of men gathered one Saturday morning to help paint a friend’s large, two-story home. Toward the end of the day when the job was almost complete, a small bit of trim, which could not be seen from the ground, remained unpainted. One of the men said, “Since nobody can see that piece of trim, I guess we don't need to paint it.” “Not true,” said another of the crew as he went for a ladder. “God sees it.”

Source: Turning Point Daily Devotional, 5/24/2004

Submitted by the homiletics class of West Coast Baptist College

John Kenneth Galbraith was a noted economist in the early 1900s who was called upon by many dignitaries to help sort the economic markets. He wrote the following story in his autobiography about his housekeeper:

In Rebuilding Your Broken World, Gordon MacDonald suggests twenty-six questions to help develop accountability and invite feedback. If we desire to grow, we should submit our selves to a spiritual mentor and answer these questions honestly.

1. How is your relationship with God right now?

2. What have you read in the Bible in the past week?

3. What has God said to you in this reading?

4. Where do you find yourself resisting Him these days?

5. What specific things are you praying for in regard to yourself?