Description:
We will be reviewing what it means to grow and why is accountability needed.
“Blessing on each man who recognizes his need to keep growing. Much of life is surely just showing up and realizing your needs. It’s easy to get off track and accountability helps you stay focused.”
– C. Marsh Bull
Accountability Study
LESSON 2 – Accountability Needed?
(www.mensgroup.org – “Original Study”)
PRAY: A suggested opening prayer for small group members or individuals to invite God to connect as we seek Him in His Word. Feel free to add your own words, “in prayer.”
Father, we know that we can stagnate in our lives but we also know that growth can deepen our relationship with You and others. Help us to understand how we can do this with Your help.
OPENING QUESTIONS:
1. What’s the difference between growing and stagnating?
2. On a scale of 1-5, with 1 being putting no effort into your life and 5 being incremental growth every day, how would you rate your present growth?
SCRIPTURE PASSAGE:
What will I do when God confronts me? What will I answer when called to account? (Job 31:14) And the child grew and became strong; he was filled with wisdom, and the grace of God was on him…And Jesus grew in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and man. (Luke 2:40, 52)
LESSON:
It has been said that most adults stop learning around the age of forty. If the average life span of an American is late seventies into their eighties, isn’t that a lot of time to be operating out of thirty-to-forty-year-old information? Think about that. How have you challenged yourself to learn recently?
The whole idea of nature is growth. Every vegetable, fruit, plant, tree, animal, fowl, fish, and sea creature grows with the nutrients that God provides. All go through the process of infant to maturity and then repeat the cycle by reproducing in their own image.
Think about your cell phone or computer, what do you do when it suggests it is time to update? If you ignore that notice you will get further and further behind in updates. That is when your system starts to have problems. Instead, I’m sure you would patiently wait for your system and programs to update. We don’t like to be left behind.
Our lesson verses suggest that God will hold us to account to mature, and the example of Jesus is plain, he grew in four areas: physical, mental, spiritual, and relational. How are you doing with those for a start?
Searching in a Bible concordance for the use of the words grow, growing, grows, and growth, we can identify a total of 111 times these words are used. Just a few of these help us to understand the need for growth:
· Our hope is that, as your faith continues to grow our sphere of activity among you will greatly expand (2 Corinthians 10:15). In summary: Continue to grow.
· Instead, speaking the truth in love, we will grow to become in every respect the mature body of him who is the head, that is, Christ (Ephesians 4:15). In summary: Grow to look more and more like Christ.
· Like newborn babies, crave pure spiritual milk, so that by it you may grow up in your salvation (1 Peter 2:2a). In summary: Mature in your understanding of all of what salvation provides.
· But grow in the grace and knowledge of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ (2 Peter 3:18). In summary: The direction of our growth is tied to our Savior.
· They have lost connection with the head, from whom the whole body, supported and held together by its ligaments and sinews, grows as God causes it to grow (Colossians 2:19). In summary: God is challenging us to grow, not disconnect, from Christ.
Second, with all this information about growth, how would being in an accountability friendship help you to stay in the growth process? Your accountability partner is there to help you grow. He is ready to ask you questions that you have written out about how you want to grow in various areas of your life. He will ask questions like this, if you desired to grow spiritually, “Well John, you desire to grow, so what is your plan to grow your spiritual life?”
We grow because we are encouraged, challenged, and recognize that we have weaknesses. Your accountability friend wants you to come out from behind your mask and address the needs in your life healthily.
We all need this, so be one who admits your limits and failures and connect with a person that has dedicated time to being with you regularly. If you’re not serious, he will call you on it and that’s a good thing. He has your back and desires God’s best for you.
In the suggested additional resource area below are some personal questions in six areas of your life you can consider possibly as questions you will use in your meetings. Check them out.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:
1. How about the forty-year mark of your life, if you have reached it, how are you still learning, or how have you stopped learning?
2. Who has challenged you to grow your life?
3. How would you feel if you were in a steady pace of growing your life?
APPLICATION:
1. What is holding you back from growing?
2. As you walked through this lesson, what became important for you about growing?
3. What would be your first step forward to expand your growing process?
CLOSING PRAYER:
Father, I ask that you will help me to determine if it would be good for me to have an accountability partner. I ask that you would help me to see my soul more clearly and help me to find the partner that would be best for me.
Suggested Additional Resources:
Possible accountability questions
Answer the following questions only after a time of reflection. Put down your first impression. Then, search them out or add additional information as you continue to reflect. No answer should be “yes” or “no” but necessitate a statement of at least a sentence in length.
Mental area:
1. What avenues am I currently pursuing to stimulate new thought in my mind?
2. What am I currently learning through my daily reading material?
3. How much time am I currently spending each week as a spectator in things such as TV, movies, sporting events, etc.?
Social area:
1. What am I learning about my ability to mix well in groups of people?
2. In social encounters, how am I normally acting? Passive or active? Explain: Am I waiting for individuals to come to me rather than go to them?
3. How many individuals have I deepened my relationship with in the last six (6) months on a “one-to-one” basis? Was it their initiation or mine for this?
Financial area:
1. What is my present desire related to having a budget (written or unwritten), and if I now have one, am I staying within the guidelines I have set for myself?
2. In what areas is it extremely hard for me to control my spending? (food, clothing, car expense, etc)
3. What is my preparedness for any future financial difficulties? Or am I living “on the edge?” What is the cause of my unpreparedness, me or other influences?
Physical area:
1. What present actions am I doing concerning my physical health? Continued exercise, or coasting on past strength?
2. What part of my present physical anxiety might be related to pressures from other areas of my life?
3. What is the improvement that I feel is necessary in this area of my life?
Family area:
1. What family relationships am I seeking to continue to develop? (Deeper understanding of my father, mother, brother, sister?)
2. How far do the walls of my “family” extend? (Only to parents, brothers and sisters by birth?)
3. What are five (5) strengths in my family history that could help me in the future?
Spiritual area:
1. How would I assess my growth spiritually in the last 12 months?
2. What new spiritual challenges have I enacted in my life in the last 6 months? (If none, to what do I attribute that?)
3. What is one (1) area of study I would like to pursue in the Bible this year?
Emotional area:
1. What am I a slave to?
2. What is my motivation for serving God? (Duty, Dread, Devotion)
With these questions answered, meditate on and develop a direction for the next twelve (12) months to implement continued growth for yourself. Make sure that what you do is measurable and you can be held accountable for it by another person.
Give five questions to your accountability partner to ask you every time you meet, and give him permission to ask the sixth question, “Are you telling me the truth?”
Continue to Lesson 3 – Accountability Benefits
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