“I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine.” Accountability, in the Christian life is a key ingredient. As humans we aren't perfect, and even though one may have the Holy Spirit we still are humans and need someone to keep us in check. Being a person who is in love with Jesus, my life goal is to grow as close to Jesus as possible. Saying one thing and doing another is very easy. It's easy to say you are going to work out come New Year's, but when March roles around your sitting on your couch watching preseason baseball asking yourself why you don't look like them. Same thing with me but it's with the matters of reading my Bible or staying joyful through the hard times. Having guys that keep me accountable really help me obtain my goal and without them reaching my goal would be a lot harder.

Ecclesiastes 4:12 reads, “ And if one can overpower him who is alone, two can resist him. A cord of three strands is not quickly torn apart.” Coming to a realization that Jesus loved me later on in life, reading my Bible wasn't installed in me ever since I was a little kid. I attended a Bible study at the time and was told there that I should be reading my Bible outside of Bible study. That sounded so foreign to me, I didn't even know people did that. Therefore, having people there making sure I would read my Bible helped me obtain my goal. They did things such as, give me a Bible to read, ask me what I was learning and applying to my life while reading it, and giving me passages to read. Receiving accountability like that is a really awesome thing and I would encourage everybody to seek accountability no matter what they are trying to accomplish.

As good as receiving accountability was and is, I still need to be there for others when they need help with things. I'm still attending that same Bible study that I talked about before and I have seen some pretty cool things happen through accountability. Just simply asking each other how things have been going has led to people thinking about Jesus more and people reading their Bible more. There are these two guys that have been with me since the start. We pretty much started going to church together. Our accountability started off at punching each other in the arm for swearing and now its progressed to text messaging each other to see how things have been going. Even though one of my friends are at college accountability still exists between the three of us and is so very helpful in obtaining all of our goals.

Unfortunately, there were times when I didn't have accountability and places where I don't have accountability to this day. There have been stretches where I haven't been asked about what I have been reading and how I was doing and some of those times have been rough for me. In addition to that, at my house I am the only Christian and so I don't have anybody checking up on me asking me if I have read my Bible today or how my day was at school. I come home from church and don't get asked what I learned or how it went so I tend to go all day Sunday without thinking about what I learned earlier in the day. Not having accountability is hard and can result in lack of achieving a goal.

All people need accountability no matter what. It is essential for one to obtain their goal. They say that whatever you put your mind to you can do it but what I say is that there is too much proof out there to contradict that. You see people fail to reach new goals all the time. There is the high school freshman who says he is going to carry over his outstanding grades from middle school to high school. Then the freshman meets a girl or gets in with a group of friends, and without accountability and no one to keep him in line what was once an outstanding student turns into somebody just getting by. Other than that there is an example that I have seen in my own life. My dad has never been in my life since I was born but I have always heard of how much he wanted to be but he just never was. He never had anyone there telling him to keep trying and to not give up. There was nobody there to keep him accountable for drinking alcohol so that held him back from being in my life also. Those are some examples of why accountable is such an asset for people in obtaining a goal.

In conclusion, everybody needs accountability if they plan on getting stuff done. Without accountability they are destined for a shortcoming. I need it, you need it, we all need it. So the next time you plan on going for a goal be sure to ask yourself if you have accountability because if you don't, you know what the outcome will be.