Looking for a Better Connection 9: Accountability

1 Thessalonians 5:1-11 

The witness of Jesus, and the rest of the New Testament, is that Christ will return, but he will do so at an unexpected time.  The phrase Jesus used, which Paul picks up here, is that his return will be like a “thief in the night.”   

So when you hear people say things like, “It’s a solar eclipse!  It’s the end of the world!” maybe don’t put much stock in it.  At least wait until they start saying things like, “All is well.  Everything is peaceful and secure.”  It’s hard to imagine anyone saying that about the world, but hey, you never know.   

In all seriousness, don’t pay any attention to people who claim to know the mind of God in regard to this.  We are supposed to learn the mind of God in general, but Jesus told us that not even he knows the day or hour of his return.  Everyone who has claimed to have figured out when Christ will return has been wrong so far, so they don’t have a good track record.   

Our job is not to know the day or hour.  Our job is “wakefulness.”  Wakefulness is spiritual readiness to stand before God.  To be wakeful means that we have put our faith in Jesus Christ.  We are actively turning away from sin.  And we are actively seeking to do God’s will.   

We belong to the day that is dawning.  We belong to the New Creation.  That is our true home.  We do not belong to the night that is passing.  Night here refers to this present world, the one that is fallen away from goodness.  We should live in the light of the day.   

“Night is the time for sleeping and drunkenness.”  If wakefulness means spiritual readiness, then sleep refers to unreadiness.  Being asleep means living as if there is no God, or that he is irrelevant.  Sleep means living life by our own rules and not in obedience to God.  Sleep means drunkenness.  In another place, Paul uses the word “dissipation” to describe this condition.  Dissipation means “living only by the urges of the body.”  It’s the polite way of talking about some of the things that went on in the feasts of idolatry that were a common part of life in the first century world and the lifestyles of the wealthy in Roman society:  Eating too much, drinking too much, and sexual indulgence of every kind.   

Instead, we are to “put on the armor of faith and love.”  This image comes from Isaiah chapter 59, and about ten years later, when Paul had developed it further, he wrote about it to the Ephesian church, a passage I think many of us know well.    

And we should “encourage each other, and build each other up.”   

Why is accountability so important?  I think there are three things to say: 

First, it is far easier to be a godly person in the presence of godly people.  Peer pressure is real.  It doesn’t matter if you’re a teenager or an adult, we all feel peer pressure.  We all feel the urge to conform to those around us and be like them.  And if we surround ourselves with people who are “spiritually asleep” or “living in a flood of dissipation,” then we are going to feel the pressure to act likewise.  On the other hand, if we surround ourselves with godly people, we are going to feel compelled to act like them, to be spiritually awake.   

The classic image of accountability comes from D. L. Moody.  He visited a member of his church who had quit attending, thinking that he didn’t really need to be a part of the church to be a Christian.  As they sat in front of the fireplace, talking about this, Moody got up, took the tongs, and pulled a log from the fire.  He placed it on the hearth.  After a few seconds, the flames extinguished.  After a few minutes, the embers had cooled, and the log was just smoking.  Watching this, the man turned to Moody and said, “I see.  I’ll be back in church next Sunday.”  If we want our fire for Christ to burn brightly, we’d better be “in the fire,” where we will be encouraged by others. 

Second, we are more vulnerable on our own.  We all have blind spots and weaknesses.  We all have areas in life where we struggle.  If we try to go it on our own, we are far more likely to fall to these blind spots.  It helps to have someone watching our backs, praying for us, calling us out when they can see that we are headed in the wrong direction.   

Paul used the image of the armor of God.  The Romans conquered an enormous area and about a quarter of the world’s population.  It wasn’t because their soldiers individually were better than the soldiers of their enemies individually.  It was because the Roman legions perfected the art of fighting as a unit.  Each soldier’s shield was large enough that it not only protected him, but when they were joined together, it protected those on either side of him.  I don’t think Paul picked that image by accident. 

And third, it’s hard to finish the course in faith.  It’s hard to stay faithful throughout our lives, and it’s harder yet if we don’t have people to encourage us.  A while back I was listening to one of my favorite Christian radio shows, and they were talking about the idea of “finishing well.”  The one host said that he thought one of the most unintentionally prophetic lines he’d heard in a movie was from the Batman movie, the Dark Knight:  “You either die the hero or you live long enough to become the villain.”  And he related that to the life of King David, the man who was described as being “after God’s own heart.”  But at the end of his life, he calls his son Solomon in and gives him a list of all of his political enemies he’s supposed to kill after David dies. It’s hard to finish well, hard to finish the course in faith. 

I thought about the stories that came out about Ravi Zacharias after he died.  Zacharias was a well known evangelist.  But after he died, then stories came out about his inappropriate relationships with and behavior toward women.  Clearly, there was a lack of accountability there.  Maybe he was “too important” for people to pull him aside and say, “What the heck are you doing here?  This is wrong.”   

One of things that I have said many times before and I will say it many times again is you need to have relationships of accountability in your life.  You need people who will challenge you to be faithful to Christ, and you need to be that person in the lives of others, as well.  I know I need that in my life.  And I have those folks in my life, and I am always grateful for them.  And I hope they’re grateful for me.  I’m going to be spending the next ten days on the canoe trip with two of those people in my life, and I am grateful for that opportunity.   

If you don’t have those people in your life, find them.  And take responsibility for being that person for someone else, too.