The Strange Gifts of God: The Gift of Accountability | Part 2

Welcome to the Awakening Church podcast.

We pray this message encourages you and provides the hope and light of Jesus Christ.

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My name is Roland, and I serve, I have the wonderful privilege and joy of serving as Awakening's Youth Director with all of our Junior High and High School students.

Thank you.

Thank you.

And if it is your first time here, either online or with us under this tent, I also want to say thank you so much for being here.

It is a great day to be with us.

I think it's no, there's no wonder, right, between the beautiful weather, the service time, and the increase of American flag apparel, that today is a different day in San Jose.

Today is uh the 4th of July, so happy Independence Day.

We will say it a million times today, I'm sure.

Um, and I hope however you choose to celebrate, you get to celebrate with uh friends, family, and other loved ones.

Um, so last happy 4th of July from us here at Awakening.

But I know the real reason why you all came to church today.

Today is actually a special day uh in my life for another reason.

You came to church today because today is mine and Ari's third wedding anniversary.

So thank you all for coming to celebrate with us.

We decided to bring you awakening branded pens.

There's coffee in the back.

Go crazy.

But really, thank you for being here.

Um but today, right, it it it I come from a family of immigrants.

Uh, immigrants that have so just believed in the story of America.

Um I've even have had relatives who have served in this country's military.

My dad served in the Navy for uh as many years as I've been alive now, so as you can imagine, today for for most of my life is a day that we've celebrated uh the freedoms that this country has afforded to many.

Today, right, it in the United States, in a Western culture, in a hyper-individualistic country, we celebrate all the freedoms that we have to do whatever we want, to say whatever we want, and to be whatever we want.

That's what we do on a day like today, right?

On the 4th of July.

And as you can imagine, for me, um, it kind of sounds a little weird when you put together uh independence, something we call Independence Day, and the day that I celebrate my marriage vows, right?

There's something about like tempering my personal freedoms on the 4th of July that sounds a little weird.

It sounds a little counterintuitive.

But uh what I want us to understand today is actually there's something really beautiful there, and that's where we're going this morning.

Um, that there's something uh that I remember and celebrate today when I remember my commitments and responsibilities and accountability to Ari that might sound uh that might sound backwards on a day like today, but in fact is probably one of the most beautiful things that God can gift us.

Um and I'm often reminded that my I have a need for accountability, right?

I know that on my own I'm not a great person.

Like I need other people's help.

Um I'm often reminded of my need for accountability when I need to decide what to eat for lunch.

If it were up to me, if I were still living with my roommate Nick, I'd probably eat pizza rolls half the month and McDonald's the other half.

And you and I both know that the consequences in the long run are not, they're probably not good in the short term either.

And I need accountability in my life to be told you need to eat a vegetable, you need to eat something green and not a shamrock shake.

If you've been following along with us the past few months here at Awakening, then you know that we've been journeying through the book of Acts together.

And as we come to a close, we're at this series that Chris started last week called The Strange Gifts of God.

And I love how we've been describing it.

This is how we've how we've been describing this series to to uh the people in our church.

Um it goes like this The Strange Gifts of God, in this series, as Americans, it is difficult for us to understand that a gift from God might include negative emotional experiences like loss, difficulty, and heartbreak.

And we learn that God offers us beautiful gifts in the most unexpected places.

I love that.

And in today's teaching, if you haven't, if you haven't caught it yet, we're gonna be looking at the gift of accountability, the strange gift that it is, and focusing on how God gifts us with that.

Can submitt our will to something outside of ourselves, sacrificing our our freedom, our autonomy, can it really be good?

Because we all laughed earlier, but I'm willing to bet most of us, for us, that doesn't sound good at all.

And that's where we're headed.

Accountability, right?

It's something that that's kind of odd in our time and culture.

Uh it's being responsible to someone else.

It's not something that is is really something that we really want to put at the top of our priority list.

Accountability, it's unusual to us because it is unusual.

It's so unusual.

It's something that we're not used to hearing about.

It runs against the grain of everything that we seem to be taught in our culture right now.

Right?

We're taught that being strong and successful, what that means is being independent, self-sufficient, and making decisions with whatever is consistent with whatever my heart and my brain are thinking.

Like that, whatever I'm feeling, whatever is about me, that that's what being successful is about, is following those things.

And we even said it a few times today, right?

That a mantra that we live by is you do you and I do me.

Right?

You do you and I do me.

We've all heard that, probably at least four times today.

And implying that whatever decisions you or I make, that they should be inconsequential to another person or another community, so long as we are happy.

Right?

You do you, I do me, and as long as we're happy, who cares?

Because I'm free to do whatever my heart desires as long as it's legal.

It's funny what you notice when you're preparing for a sermon.

Uh, I was scrolling on social media the other day, and one of my friends, their social media bio, all it said was, I want I'll I'll read it so I don't mess it up.

All that it said was, I do what I want.

Short, clear, concise, and to the point.

I do what I want.

And hearing that, right, doesn't that sound like people that you know?

I do what I want.

Doesn't that sound like uh many of us?

Doesn't that sound like you or me?

We just want to do whatever we want and keep it that simple and that short.

Another lens to consider when we're thinking about accountability uh is that of authenticity, right?

Being real, being true to yourself.

And what we've told ourselves is we believe that whenever someone explicitly influences us, good or bad, that it's not really consistent with who we actually are.

That we would call that inauthentic or being fake.

Like I can only be my true self if I freely do what I think of in my heart and in my mind.

And hey, there's there's a lot of good that has come out of this understanding of ourselves as individuals, but we've swung the pendulum pretty far, too far, I'd even argue, right?

When followers of Jesus, when we as as Jesus followers are allergic to the ideas of obedience and submission.

Obedience and submission, words that can be associated, right, with accountability.

We don't like them.

It doesn't sound good to us, it sounds bad to us, it sounds like something that should be illegal.

And I think I've belabored the point about how we don't naturally move towards accountability, but the truth is uh we have to understand something.

If we're gonna call Jesus Lord, we have to understand what that really means.

Saying Jesus is Lord of our lives is simply that.

It means we are not in complete control, nor should we be.

That when we talk about biblical accountability, we have to remember it starts with knowing that we are all accountable to the creator of the universe.

And because the creator of the universe has lovingly created you and me, he knows what's best for us.

And we admit when we say Jesus is Lord that we often don't know what's best for ourselves, even when we fool ourselves into thinking that.

And because of that, whatever he says goes.

The same way that I call Jesus Lord, right, is kind of like when I call our wife.

There's an accountability, there's a responsibility to the other party.

I'm accountable to her, I choose to submit to her.

Knowing that I'm responsible to her, knowing that, uh, knowing that when I do that, I'm actually better off for it.

Just like I'm accountable to Jesus, that my decisions should be influenced by his spirit, his people, and his church, and my life is better off for doing that.

Both instances, right?

My life is not my own, it's not solely mine, I'm not exercising just my freedoms.

Um, I'm actually submitting it to someone else's, and it's and I'm better for it.

And do you realize that that is the Christian life?

That we are held accountable to Jesus, but also to the people he puts in our lives, the people that he puts around us.

Here's a good litmus test.

Uh for uh here's a good like way of understanding how we enter into this conversation at this point of the sermon.

Hebrews 13, 17, uh your Bibles, your scripture, it reads this obey your leaders and submit to them, for they are keeping watch over your souls and those who will have to give an account.

Right?

Who loves that?

I know I don't love that.

But as you hear that, don't you get a sense of where your heart is in this moment when it comes to ideas of obedience to Jesus or accountability to his people.

See, there's something in the gift of accountability that Jesus wants us to experience.

He knows that's true for all of our lives.

And I know it's true of myself.

I often want to reject that.

I think it's bad.

I think I know what's best for me.

See, we hide under the veil of authenticity and freedom, and we use these as licenses to just do really poor things.

Uh, we put our lives in danger of leading lives that will lead to ruin, is how we'd read it in the Proverbs, right?

We fall for fool's gold when we as Christians uh think that leading lives without accountability and place freedom on a pedestal that that's good for us.

When we think that that freedom is our number one priority, we replace God and we think that's good for us.

And it's no wonder when we look around and we see the rest of the world that that we don't look any different, that we that the that the rest of the world looks no different than us.

It's because we've had our priorities misplaced.

But instead, what we see, what we'll see here is there's a beauty when we choose to come under uh Jesus' Jesus' authority, whether we agree with it or not, whether we like it or not, whether we understand it or not.

We become accountable to him and his bride, the church.

When we say yes to following Jesus, that that following him isn't just you and him or you and a podcast.

It's you, which is part of the church and Jesus.

So when Jesus says we need accountability in our lives, it's not to restrict us, it's not to take away any of our freedoms, but instead, in biblical accountability, we find the full and blessed life that Jesus promises us.

That the create that we get to pursue the life that the creator has intended for each one of his children, which and we find a freedom that is far better than the one that we try to pursue here.

It's freedom in Christ.

So when we talk about account of biblical accountability, though, let's be clear.

I'm not talking about some tyrannical or or totalitarian pursuit where you're put under the watch of big brother and you have no free will at all, you don't make any decisions on your own.

But it's needed on the other end of the spectrum, where it's our own, the lens that we wear, hyper-individualistic, autonomous view of life, value of personal liberties over everything else, and where our mantras, you do you, and I do me.

It's neither of those things.

Instead, God is interested in something more in the middle.

He's not interested in domineering leadership in our lives, nor reckless lone wolf living.

Rather, he has something far more beautiful in the middle, and that is the gift of accountability.

And in a church with healthy accountability, right, what does it what does it do?

What does it produce?

What is accountability good for?

Accountability, it's better than it's like kind of um cheaper fake version, which we some of us call cancel culture, right?

What what what biblical accountability does is it makes us more into the image of Jesus.

It shapes us, it starts to make us sanctified, or what the Bible's like how the Bible calls being made more in the image of Christ.

That's what accountability does.

It doesn't just end in death.

So there's this story in Paul's life.

There's this story in Paul's life that we often overlook when we read the book of Acts.

One that I'm sure uh if I've asked you if you've read through the book before, that you've probably just glossed over.

But in this short story, I love this story on it on a morning like this, because what we see is what happens when our urge for autonomy is met with the gracious gift that God gives, which is accountability.

And this day, where Independence Day meets my wedding anniversary, is just that.

We see what happens when our urge for autonomy meets the gracious gift of accountability.

So, church, we'll be turning to Acts 21.

Um, so if you want to turn to it in your Bibles or your phone apps, or if you don't have either of those, it'll be in your bulletin.

But as you turn there, I want to give you a little bit of context about what's going on in this story.

What's happening as we jump into this part uh of the Acts of the Apostles, of the Apostles.

Paul, if we remember, has been called by Jesus, his life is radically changed.

And what's happening, he's traveling all over the Middle East with this newfound life in Christ.

And he's just preaching the gospel everywhere he goes.

He he so understands the good news of Jesus that all he wants to do is live as this like missionary, church planting um guy in the Middle East, uh, going all over the world, uh doing whatever it takes to share the good news of Jesus.

And Paul, he's an interesting character in this book.

He's an interesting character because, again, on quick reading, he kind of seems like this rogue character, kind of going off and doing his own thing, going off on these heroic adventures where danger is around every corner, where he's equipped with only the gospel alone.

Uh, and for all intents and purposes, right, Paul would be like an American hero today.

Lone wolf, self-made, gritty.

Um, there would be like a Hollywood, there'd be Hollywood films, a Netflix series on G.I.

Joe Paul is kind of how we'd look at it.

But this seemingly self-made, lone wolf, gritting his way to success story, it's anything but that as we take a closer examination.

But as we hear this story, Paul is anything but G.I.

Joe Paul.

And instead, leading up to this moment in verse 17 where we'll start, Paul, what he's trying to do is he's trying to get back to the church in Jerusalem.

And actually, before verse 17, if you read before it, uh, there's actually people advising him not to go back, saying that if he goes to the church in Jerusalem, Jerusalem, it'll be bad for him.

It'll end up not being good at the end of the day.

But Paul, knowing the power, the impact, and the necessity of Jesus' church, knows he needs to be, uh he needs to be there.

And what he does is he chooses to accept and receive the gift of accountability.

So we'll start in verse 17.

Uh, when we, Luke is writing this, right?

Luke is taking account of what's going on.

So Luke writes, when we had come to Jerusalem, the brothers received us gladly.

On the following day, Paul went in with us to James, and all the elders were present.

Real quick, think of James like as, think of him as like the main leader of the church in Jerusalem, like the lead pastor or the bishop.

He's kind of like the lead guy there.

And and Paul and his crew, they're going up to him and they greet him.

And what does it tell us?

Verse 19, after greeting them, Paul related one by one the things that God had done among the Gentiles through his ministry.

And when they heard it, James and the church in Jerusalem, they glorified God.

And they said to him, You see, you see, brother, how many thousands there are among the Jews who have believed.

So what happens?

Paul goes over, he makes it to Jerusalem, he shares about all the things that God's doing.

Everyone is exuberant, everyone is excited, everyone is joyful about the work that God is doing in Paul through Paul and in his ministry.

And the story goes on.

They're all zealous for the law, and they have been told about you that you teach all the Jews who are among the Gentiles to forsake Moses, telling them not to circumcise their children or walk according to our customs.

What then is to be done?

They will certainly hear that you have come.

So, what's happening here?

Well, what James does in the next few verses is that he kind of takes Paul aside.

He takes Paul aside and he's kind of uh anticipating on what's happening.

And he's knowing that they're going to be this like fundamentally religious sect of Jews that are gonna be really suspicious with Paul and what he's doing.

And what James does in these few verses is he offers advice to appease them by participating in like basic cultural customs.

So verses 23 to 25 is James giving Paul these instructions.

And I kind of imagine Paul in this moment, right?

If we were putting ourselves in his place, one want asking questions like, as James is like listing all these things to do, asking, like, do I do I do this?

Is this really good for me?

Would this be authentic of me?

What what benefit what benefit does this have on my ministry?

Well, what do I have to gain out of this?

I I can see all these things that that if we were in his shoes, might ask.

Maybe he asked them too.

But what happens?

Verse 26 says, Then Paul took the men, and the next day he purified himself along with them, went into the temple, and fulfilled the offering presented for each one of them.

So what happened?

What happened?

Translation, right?

Paul went and did exactly what he was told to do.

James gives him all this instruction, gives him this advice.

Paul listens and does exactly what he is told to do.

So with this passage in mind, I want us to see three marks of healthy accountability and what does it produce in God's people and Jesus' church?

The first thing in verses 17 to 20, what do we see?

The first thing that we see in the text is that there is shared joy.

Right?

Paul comes back to the church in Jerusalem, shares everything about what's going on, brings back all these stories about how God's doing miraculous things.

People are coming to believe in the gospel of Jesus, lives are being changed, miracles are happening.

And what happens?

Everyone is so excited, everyone exuberant, everyone is so joy-filled.

They have shared joy.

And when we talk about accountability, this is where we have to start.

And this is so good.

I love that this is how the story starts.

I love this.

Because through social media algorithms, right, the the polarization of our politics, uh, divisive news headlines, or whatever else, whatever else you can think of, our culture, that the world around us continues to tell us that we are different, that we make people into the other, that we're told who the enemy is and what we're supposed to hate.

And every time, we're never the bad guy.

We're told who's the bad guy, why we should hate them, and we're never at fault.

And it's no wonder generations like mine find it difficult to yield to our church, uh, to any church community, to let alone legit and godly authority.

Because for the most part, we as a people are rightfully suspicious of.

Of power and structure.

Bad things can happen by fallible human creations.

But the bottom line is this that we are taught, no matter where we fall ideologically, is that if someone has power and we don't, that we should be suspicious of it, that we can't trust it.

But what I love that Jesus does, He turns that kind of all upside down.

And we see in Jesus, the one who has all power and all authority, he lays it all down in humility.

Right?

So in him, all power and authority that he possesses, we can actually trust.

So when he says we have to be accountable, that he knows that he's doing it by starting with a shared joy that we have with our brothers and sisters.

One of the closest friendships that I enjoy right now is with my friend Ryan.

Asian Ryan.

I have to kind of be clear because sometimes people get confused around here.

Ryan Lee is a former protege, and he's one of my closest friends right now.

And my friendship with him, right, it started a couple Christmases ago, uh, where we were serving in this preschool classroom together.

And it really started with just this off-handed comment about sports, and then ended up talking about basketball, and it soon started to accelerate.

Like then one week I saw him with his Steph Curry MVP hoodie on, and then we shared this mutual affection for our favorite warrior.

Uh, then it turned into finding out that we both went to San Jose State together at the same time, and even lived in the same dorm, and all these things just started to happen.

Uh, on and on and on.

And all of a sudden, a few weeks passes, and you just you can't catch us.

A week doesn't go by where we don't play basketball for hours and drinking ices together.

Like that's how quickly our friendship happened.

And I share this because the the start of this friendship reminds me of something that C.S.

Lewis says about the origin of friendships.

This is what he says.

C.

S.

Lewis writes, friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, what?

You two?

What, you two, right?

What he means by this is that the beauty of shared interest, what can come out of that is relationship.

All the you twos in life, right?

They form bonds that were not previously there.

When we start to have those moments of saying, what, you two?

Uh and we all know this is true, right?

Groups of all sizes, varying levels of intimacy.

We see that in CrossFit, specialty coffee snobs, gaming communities, sports fandoms.

Like we know that's true, right?

There's obviously something shared and there's just this connection.

But with that in mind, right, now think of the church.

All those under the leadership and the authority of Jesus.

And something that that the gospel that changes everything in our lives to our deepest core.

How much more do the U twos in our lives and in our communities should those abound?

How much deeper do those U twos go?

Because the same gospel truth that changed my life is the same gospel truth that changed your life, is the same gospel truth that changed your brother or sister sitting next to you's life.

That in the church, we have a shared joy.

We can't forget that.

We can't forget that.

Now, this is ingenious when it comes to the accountability community that Jesus is trying to form in his church, right?

Because as a Jesus, Jesus follower, we can vote for one side or another, we can be rich or poor, we can have different skin colors, whatever it is.

But what we all share at the very core is the blood of Christ, right?

His grace and his mercies that we all need in our lives, that we all eat at the same table of communion, that we have shared joy about Jesus' work in our lives and in others.

And this couldn't be more evident than when I was a freshman at San Jose State, right?

You couldn't pick like six or seven more different college freshmen and get them together, and all we did 7:30 on Tuesdays was just in Washburn in the Washburn Lounge was just open up our Bibles and study it together.

You couldn't pick seven more different people, seven people I would argue I would never hang out with on my own choosing.

But that's the beauty of the shared joy that we have in Jesus, is that through that time, spending together, opening God's word, what happened is that I started to turn these people that were the other, the ones that were not like me, did not like all the same things I liked.

Instead of just seeing them as the other, I saw them as image bearers of God.

See, the the road to accepting accountability in our lives, it has to start with remembering that.

That in the church, we are given the opportunity to follow Jesus with all people, with all different kinds of people.

That we have the most important thing in common, that is Jesus.

That we all rejoice when new life is proclaimed in baptism, when students take steps of faith in our ministry, when when college students live so counter-culturally, when people in our group take steps of faith, we all get excited.

We all know that there's a shared joy and a shared purpose when we love and care for the marginalized, the widow, and the orphan.

When things like the Del Mar Pantry happen, we all share that joy together.

And in biblical accountability, that's what we have to start with.

Is that as the bride of Christ, we have a shared joy.

The second part, so after Paul and James and the church in Jerusalem, they all establish that shared joy together.

They they like they're all excited about what Paul's doing and is gonna continue to do, the story moves to verse 21, right?

Where James is now giving Paul all this instruction.

And we see the second mark of biblical accountability, which is shared trust.

And what's happening here, right, is we see a seasoned church leader, James, and this younger, like, we'll call it a church planner, Paul.

What we're seeing here, it's shared trust.

As James gives Paul advice as he considers all that's going on, as he thinks about his circumstances, he's sharing trust that Paul will carry out uh this advice.

He's sharing, James is trusting Paul that he'll listen to him.

That that James took the time to consider all that's going on, all the circumstances, and try and and and try to join God's vision into what's going on in Paul's life.

And he trusts him with it.

And James, right, being a wise spiritual leader, he doesn't do it coercively.

He doesn't make any decisions for Paul.

And he doesn't use like spiritual language to just to fluff anything up and to be divisive.

No.

It's evident, right?

We all know that accountability, it doesn't work when there's no trust, when trust isn't shared.

So that's from the leader, from the mentor or the pastor or authority figure, group leader, whatever you want to call it, down to Paul.

But what about from uh or when they lack trust, right?

What else does it look like when a spiritual leader lacks trust?

It feels dictator-esque, right?

It's like trying to micromanage your spirituality.

It doesn't work that way.

That's not how God's kingdom uh grows us.

The shared trust that James had in Paul was evident when he carefully considered Paul and his situation with thoughtful instruction.

What about the other way, right?

Going upward from Paul to James.

And this is a little bit trickier uh because trust is a really is it's a hard thing to talk about in just a small moment.

It could be a whole sermon or a whole sermon series uh on discerning who can we actually trust.

If we're supposed to trust uh leaders in our lives, the church, who do we trust?

And man, we don't have enough time for that, but I I want to say, I do need to take some time to say that it's nuanced, that there's real hurt, that there's real heartbreak, that there's real betrayal uh that we've that that we can experience.

And for some of us, we just have to be real on why it's hard to trust.

It's because we have had real hurt, real trust broken.

And the the hurdle that we have to get over is letting God heal that, is acknowledging that, that it's hard for us to trust people because we've been hurt before, that we've lost trust before.

And that and that when God heals that, what he will do is allow us to start trusting the people that him and the people that he puts in our lives again.

But here are a few things to consider when trying to figure out who is it that we can trust?

Who what kind of spiritual leaders can can I uh submit my life to that that I can hear and obey?

Uh first, right, trust requires people of character.

Uh, or how how we in the church would understand it is spiritual maturity.

And really the only way to suss that out in a person is through time, is through spending time with someone.

It's it's serving at church together, it's being in a group together, it's going out grabbing coffee together.

That it in time, right?

Like that Bible study I talked about, that's where you really start to figure out uh if there's a faith that you can admire in someone.

You might not agree on everything, but you know you have shared joy, and you can say that there's a spiritual maturity in this person or a character that you can trust.

Second is a little cheat code that we have at Awakening.

Uh here at Awakening, we have something called the Leadership Essentials.

And our church so values trust and accountability that all of our leaders, we take them through this thing called the leadership essentials, where we highlight the call to leadership and we ask all of our leaders to be held accountable to this call.

Um and man, what a what a cheat code we have here to say that this is at least the standard that we're asking our volunteers or our leaders to go or to live up to.

And the question is are to find someone that you can trust is are they being held accountable to someone else?

Are they themselves accountable?

Um, so here how we do that is we call it the leadership essentials.

One more on this little quick aside on on how do we find leaders to trust is asking this question.

Do they love like Jesus?

Do they love like Jesus?

The people that God puts in our lives, they're not our Lord and Savior.

But what they can do is point us to Jesus.

That we might not see everything eye to eye, but given the time, given the disagreements, given the the things that we need to hear, do we still get the essence of Jesus from them?

Do we get that they're they're leading like servants?

That they're going to be tender but full of truth.

Are they going to love like Jesus?

Are they gonna love us like him?

After we get all that, it's still hard for us, right?

Even when we do have trusted spiritual mentors, leaders, group leaders, whatever it is, uh, but we don't trust the guardrails that that we put or that people other people put in our lives.

Why we want our rights and we want to do whatever we want.

Happy Fourth of July.

We learn lean so hard into that perspective that we forget what what what external authority is is supposed to do, at least, right?

Is to keep us safe, to keep us in check.

Like we don't just let anyone drive a car.

There's a reason that Olivia Rodrigo had to sing about getting a driver's license first before the rest of the song.

It's it's to protect us, it's to protect people.

So we have to remember what when there's guardrails, when we look at God's scripture, what's happening is God's not just trying to rein in our freedoms.

He's trying to protect us, he's trying to love us.

So when it comes to the gift of accountability, we've kind of shortchanged ourselves in maturity to Christ, in that spiritual maturity, and growing in character through the gift of accountability.

Why?

It's because we don't we don't we don't have shared trust.

And two ways I've seen this, just two ways that uh I've seen this, is one, we choose what we call in the church uh accountability partners.

Right?

We we pick people who actually just agree with us.

We'll like blurt everything out we have, some qualm we have with someone else in the church, someone at work.

We just we have an accountability partner that we go to and tell them all that's going on, but we know at the end of it all they're just gonna agree with us.

We share some of the hard stuff in our lives, uh, but we share with people who we know aren't gonna give us anything difficult to hear.

Then maybe they're better known as gossip partners, right?

But what it ultimately comes down to is it comes from us lacking God's spirit moving in people to trust them to help shepherd us.

We'd rather pick people uh that will shepherd us the way we want to be shepherded.

The second thing, the second way I've seen uh a lack of shared trust is this is just not being accountable to any real people in our lives.

Well instead, what we do is we let podcasts dictate our spiritual growth.

We let some pastor on YouTube uh tell us what to do, or some new trendy Christian book uh inform our lives.

We let these things pass through us all day long.

Why?

Because they don't talk back to us.

Right?

Why do we do these things?

Because we know we can trust these things.

It'll agree with us.

It's consistent with whatever Western liberal, conservative, whatever view we have on life already.

That's why I love podcasts.

Is when I find a podcast that isn't agreeing with me or sharing something I don't like, I just pick a new one.

And that's what we do.

We don't help hold ourselves accountable to real people in our lives.

And friends, my whole point is this, right?

Is the reality is that we are becoming someone, whether we know it intentionally or not.

That there are communities around us, digitally or embodied, that are shaping us and are affecting our becoming.

So my question today isn't just who or isn't just are you accountable to anyone, but who are you accountable to?

What are you accountable to?

What is it forming in you?

Have you considered that?

What are they helping you to become?

Right?

So in this passage we see the gift of accountability.

It starts with shared trust, or it starts with shared joy, moves to shared trust, and what do we see that it produces?

It's it's shared fruit.

Paul and the homies right that they're all ecstatic.

James gives them some instruction.

What happens, verse 26?

Paul took the men and did exactly what he was asked to do.

Paul listened to James' advice, and this is really important because sometimes we get to the point of having shared joy, shared trust, sit down, uh, hear what we need to hear.

And I've worked long enough with college students, now junior high and high school students, where this happens with students of mine, and I do this with other people as well, is that we do all of that, we hear good advice, we nod our heads like everything's right, and that this is this is the this is gonna be the time, and we walk away unchanged.

We don't listen to their advice, we don't trust that God's doing, we don't want the shared fruit.

We don't want the shared fruit.

I see this so many times.

And as I've thought about that, what why it happens for my students or why that happens in my life, why I hear good advice, nod my head politely, and be like, this is good, thank you, thank you, Pastor.

And then walk away unchanged, it's because of this.

Is I've realized for me, it's really hard to imagine a good life without getting the things that I want.

It's hard for any of us to imagine a good life where it gets better when we are asked to give something up, where we have to change a habit that we like having.

That we can't, we can't, in our realm of possibilities and imagination, it's hard for us to think that giving up something or or dying to ourselves is gonna produce something good.

Uh a word that's often translated as listen in your in the Old Testament is this word Shema, right?

It's this Hebrew word that the Bible uses and and often in your Bibles it'll say listen.

And I love how it's actually how it's maybe better translated because it's better translated as not just like listen, but Shema is hear and obey, right?

Hear and obey.

And isn't that the essence of following Jesus?

Like he doesn't just say, hey, uh now that you're following me, go do your thing.

Do whatever feels right.

And hey, if if if if it sounds good to you, go for it.

No, instead, he asks us for sh this way of listening, which is Shema, to hear and obey.

And what he says, right, is to come follow me and to die.

That to follow me is, hey, there's your cross, go pick it up.

Be ready to die to yourself.

Hear my instruction and obey.

And if I'm completely honest, I know oftentimes I don't want to die to my ideals.

I want to keep living the cush American life that I've I that I have.

Uh but Jesus knows that the abundant life is not the path that I'll often pick for myself.

That what needs to happen is I need to die so I can truly live.

Right?

And Paul shows us that he understands this.

I don't know exactly what he was thinking, but he chooses to die to himself and listen to James' advice.

See, the fruit of increased faith is produced in Paul's life when he says yes to that, when he says no to himself and yes to spiritual authority.

And the power of the gospel, it's witnessed by the church.

Shared fruit for everyone, right?

What everyone sees, it's amazing.

Steps of faith are being taken.

That when we die to ourselves, that death, it fertilizes the soil.

So what can come out of it is good and healthy fruit.

And as I've considered this for my life, right?

The gift of accountability.

I've seen that it's a process to take part in, that it's not something that just happens one time and is done.

There's a time in my life, in my ministry life, where ministry was really hard, where I was apathetic and lazy, right?

Where it was difficult to be motivated.

And Ryan, blonde Brian now, blonde Brian, he saw that, right?

He he knew that there was something that he needed to pastor in me.

Long before Ryan was my boss or whatever you want to call it, he was just a pastor in my life.

And in this moment, he took me aside and you knew that there was like some grief that I had to process.

That there was something that I needed to step away from my work schedule and go with be with Jesus and to process things that are hard for me to process.

And for me in that moment, I saw the gift of accountability in a really sweet way.

Right?

It's really easy to see how that's that was good for my life in that moment.

And I was certain accountability was good for me.

But like I said, accountability, it's a process, it's not a one-time thing, it's something that we have to commit to.

Um, and there's another really difficult season of ministry in my life, and this time for completely different reasons.

And you know, there's something that always needs to be changed or developed in us, that something needs to be pastored in us to be more like Jesus.

And this time it came down to this one instance, right?

For some of us, accountability, some of us need to be told to work less, right?

That we some of us work too hard, we're workaholics, we live in the Silicon Valley.

And some of us, uh, we need to be told to work harder.

Guess which one I fell into as a stereotypical youth director, right, in my earlier days.

Guess which one I fell into.

But I remember sitting in the office, sitting down with Ryan and Chris, two people that I've admired, two people that I've trusted, who share a gospel vision for my life.

And I just remember having to hear the truth that I needed to receive from them.

Hard instruction, stuff that I didn't want to hear, things that cut kind of deep, and a bunch of things that I didn't really want to change in my life.

All of it just not fun for me.

So I just want to do the fun things, and they're giving me the very not fun things.

But as I got over myself a little bit and started to started to trust the God given accountability in my life, I had to choose, right?

I had to choose my way or death to myself.

And I had to choose death to myself in a lot of ways.

And I felt really stretched in that season.

And as hard and as difficult and as as cutting as it was, um I as I look back, I would do it a thousand times over, right?

Let me be clear.

I I don't want you to think that the application of this sermon is that Ryan or Chris have to be the ones to tell to pass to be the ones who have this voice in your life.

It's different for me, right?

I'm on the staff team, my FaceTime with them is a little bit different.

But what the point is here is that that's why we have groups and group leaders.

That's why we have things like protege, it's why we have incredible youth leaders for our students, is to have that kind of influence and voice and accountability for everyone in the church.

That the same accountability that that Ryan and Chris that God gifted.

Uh, me through them is offered to everyone in the church.

And looking at these two moments, right, looking back at these two moments of accountability in my life, one felt life giving immediately, and the other one felt like death.

But what did they both produce was fruit.

I got to see some of the coolest things out of that hard season that I've ever gotten to partner with God in.

And it's because of all that pruning that had to happen.

As we move to a close and I invite the band back up, there's one thing that we need to understand, though, when it comes to the gift of accountability.

You see, if if you read further along, past what we have in our notes right now, uh in this story, is we would see that that Paul, he would get actually be dragged out and beaten for following James' instruction.

That people misunderstood Paul's accountability to church leadership.

That sometimes when it comes to the gift of accountability, right, that the that when we follow God's will for our lives, it's not always gonna produce positive outcomes.

In fact, I'm willing to bet that more often than not, we're gonna be hurt.

Uh, we're gonna we're we're gonna be misunderstood.

But the beauty of all that hurt and pain is that it should not sound unfamiliar to us as followers of Jesus.

In fact, if in the gift of accountability that is our experience, it should remind us and sound like Jesus.

Because Jesus is the ultimate example of this, right?

He knows the pain and the hurt of being perfectly accountable to the Father.

He didn't waver all the way into the cross on the ultimate form of accountability.

When Jesus submits himself to the Father's will on the cross, it comes with much grief, much pain, uh, being misunderstood.

But guess what?

It doesn't end in death.

Jesus' accountability to the Father, it ends with new life and resurrection.

And this is what I've started to learn.

This is what Paul is teaching us in this story.

This is what we know is true because of Jesus, is when I've chosen to die to myself in biblical accountability, what it has always led to is life.

And that the gospel teaches us that our lives they don't have to end with accountability and death, but instead it can lead to accountability and resurrection.

So I'm gonna pray for us as we move into a time of worship.

Uh Father in heaven, God, thank you for the gift of accountability.

God, we we acknowledge that it's hard, we confess that it's difficult, but but when we look to Jesus, we know that um it is not just to limit, uh to limit our lives in some way that cuts it, that shortchanges us.

In fact, you're trying to produce life.

You're trying to give us resurrected life, you're trying to produce fruit.

So as we look to Jesus, uh as we sing this song, God, would we know that the gift of accountability, as strange as it is, it sounds like death, but God, it leads to life.

Thank you for Jesus.

We pray this in his name.

Amen.

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