The Accountable Man

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am going through Steve Farrar's Point Man with my Wednesday morning men's group (I think this is my 5th time through the book with a men's group). Today we were talking about "Aerobic Kneeling," which is Farrar's description of having regular times of prayer. Steve' recommendation just as 30 minutes 3x a week of aerobics is a good goal for physical health, so prayer 3x per week for 30 minutes each is a good goal for your spiritual health.

One of the other major points he makes about this is that success in doing this consistently requires accountability. That's precisely true. Without some form of accountability, most of us (and especially me) fail over time to be spiritually disciplined. In fact, I would go further and say that there is no long-term spiritual success without accountability to other believers. Our fallenness runs too deep, our capacity for self-justification and rationalization is too wide to achieve lasting spiritual change by ourselves.

Therefore confess your sins to each other and pray for each other so that you may be healed. The prayer of a righteous man is powerful and effective. --James 5:16