HONESTY AND ACCOUNTABILITY
Honesty and accountability are the last conditions to be met for God’s 501P. Are you honest? To be honest means to be free from fraud or deception. Can you truly be honest with yourself?
Honesty
To be honest with yourself, you must dig deep and discover who you are, what you are, and why you are. Do you have the ability to cut through the layers of lies, deception, hurt and pain? Can you break through the stony coat of protection, deep within your heart, that you allowed to harden, to keep you from revealing the truth? If you cannot be honest with yourself, you cannot be honest with others.
Performing this task, alone, may be difficult and you may only scratch the surface. How do you achieve this mission? The answer is God. God will help you into getting into the deep crevices of your soul and heart. Assisting you in remembering and coming to terms with your deep-rooted feelings. Identifying areas to address and improve. Being honest may be the hardest thing to do but it’s the most helpful. If you lie and put up a façade for yourself, you will lie and put up a façade to others.
Be careful on trying to be honest with yourself by going to friends and family, for their opinions. This may do more harm, than good. Some people may be cruel, brutally honest, or attempt to unleash some unresolved issues in their life, on you. Get honest with God.
Accountability
Do you take responsibility for your actions? Are you accountable for your part, in troubled situations? Generally, there are at least two sides to every story. You may want to shift all the blame on the other person, someone else, or the circumstance. It may make you feel better to lighten the load off you, but nothing is accomplished. Don’t be that person where you are never to blame. It is always your family, your job, your neighbor, society, the government, or the world. Whatever, the situation, you played a role, either you allowed it, did not stop it or should have done something differently. It is rarely, just one person’s fault. Take account, at least, for your role.
On the other end of the spectrum, don’t be the one who always blame yourself for all situations and for all people. Thinking if I would have done this or I should have done that, this would not have happened. This method is unproductive because it breeds guilt and condemnation.
You may have played the blame game all of your life and you truly may not know how to be responsible for your actions. While you are asking God to help you to be honest with yourself, He will assist you with your accountability task, as well.
Once all the conditions of God’s 501P have been met, you can begin to invest your negative contributions and receive positive returns.
17 Therefore to him that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin. James 4:17 King James Version