As you consider the strengths and weaknesses of your accountability style, remember that, in the end, a struggler needs to be willing to do the hard work of fighting sin and pursuing faith. If you are constantly tracking her down or pressuring her to take the next step, you should back off and talk about her lack of motivation. “Are you willing to do what it takes? And if not, why not?” Even the best accountability can’t save an apathetic struggler. Only God can.

The next best thing to being wise oneself is to live in a circle of those who are.
—C. S. Lewis, “Hamlet: The Prince or the Poem?”

Bear one another’s burdens, and so fulfill the law of Christ. —Galatians 6:2

Do you know what wisdom is? It’s not just knowing about God and his Word but faithfully applying God’s Word to everyday life.

Solomon tells us, “Wisdom is the focus of the discerning, but the eyes of a fool wander to the ends of the earth” (Prov. 17:24 BSB). The discerning care so much about wisdom that they make it their focus. Wisdom is better than gold or fine jewels (see Prov. 8:11; 16:16). It’s valuable and worth pursuing. Contrast the discerning with the fool, whose eyes roam to the ends of the earth. The fool has no purpose, no focus, and no goals. He wanders through life without clear direction or wisdom to guide him.

King Solomon also writes, “Whoever walks with the wise becomes wise, but the companion of fools will suffer harm” (Prov. 13:20). He warns us, “Take heed to the company you keep.” If a struggler walks with wise people, she will become wise. If she chooses to spend time with fools, their foolishness will hurt her—or, even worse, she too will become a fool.

Porn strugglers desperately need wisdom, regardless of how aware they are of that need. They are not meant to fight this problem on their own. Accountability is crucial to their fight for survival, because faith is not an isolated pursuit but is relationally driven. What effect are you having on a struggler? You will either help or hurt her sin struggles.

In this chapter, we’ll look at nine characteristics of good accountability. Our goal is to help you to evaluate your efforts and see which areas of your accountability need improvement.

GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS TOUGH

Accountability serves a struggler well if it presses into his life and roots out his sin. These intrusive conversations are tough. The vulnerability that they require is hard because fear, shame, and guilt motivate the struggler to hide his sin and not expose himself. It’s incredibly uncomfortable for a person to let others take a hard look at his sin. Yet vulnerability is necessary for survival. It exposes the ugliness of the sin as well as all the fears, despair, heartache, and messiness that surround it.

Superficial relationships don’t root out sin and build hope. You need to go deep, even when it’s tough. As the accountability partner, are you willing to ask hard, awkward, and direct questions? “Did you masturbate this week?” “Did you lie to anyone this week?” “Is there anything you are hiding from me?” Make sure you are not presuming you know all the right questions. The struggler knows his heart better than anyone else. Ask him, “Am I missing something? What else should I ask?”

You can ask tough questions all day long, but if your friend isn’t honest and vulnerable with you, you are wasting your time. If strugglers are hiding things, not sharing the entire truth, or, even worse, lying to you, they undermine your ability to help. For accountability to work, the struggler has to be willing to respond to your tough questions with brutal honesty.

This means that even as you are tough in your accountability, you should do everything you can to celebrate and encourage honest responses from your friend. I (Deepak) had a friend call me the other day and share with me that he’d fallen back into sexual sin and was viewing porn. My immediate response was, “I really appreciate how honest you are being with me about some very difficult struggles in your life.” I affirmed his honesty because I know that’s what God wants—that my friend would not hide but bring his sin into the light (see Prov. 28:13).

Take a risk—ask your friend about the nitty-gritty, ugly details of his life. Ask about the foulest parts of his heart. His sin will naturally push against this, wanting him to conceal or deny them, but redemption will beckon him to be truthful in all his ways. Solomon states, “An honest answer is like a kiss on the lips” (Prov. 24:26 NIV). Just as a kiss is delightful, so also is honesty.

GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS CONSISTENT

Good, consistent accountability is frequent and reliable.

Frequent help is better than infrequent help. Inconsistent accountability shows up occasionally but not often enough. Sin daily finds ways to muck up a struggler’s life. If he lets it go unchecked for too long, it makes a mess of things. Your friend needs your repeated assistance in order to slow down and prevent the mess.

And when an accountability person does show up, he needs to follow through with what he has promised. For example, if you get filter reports, do you contact the struggler when something unhelpful shows up? If you don’t, you’re being unreliable. Because porn struggles are wreaking havoc in his life, a struggler needs help that is regular and reliable.

GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS LOCAL

Local accountability is much more useful than distant accountability. Often we’ll ask a struggler, “Who is your accountability partner?” and she’ll respond, “So-and-so, who is a good friend from a few years ago, when I lived in a different part of the country, still checks on me.” Having someone who can check on the porn struggler only via technology (email, text, video call, and so on) is not ideal. At best, this kind of accountability offers only a slice of the struggler’s life rather than a look at his entire life. Relationships that are sustained through technology are limited in their scope.

In the year 2020, we endured a worldwide pandemic, during which many people isolated themselves and relied on technology to communicate with their friends and family and even to participate in church services. As people began to share life together again, we saw the joy with which the members of our congregations returned to church, hugged one another, and spent time in one another’s presence.

God could have left Adam alone with the animals in the garden of Eden, but he didn’t (see Gen. 2:19–25). He gave Adam a partner (Eve) who was personally present with him throughout his life. Jesus didn’t stay in heaven but came to earth to dwell among us and be personally present with us (see John 1:14; Phil. 2:7–8). And we see that the apostle Paul often yearned to be with his fellow believers, especially when he was locked up in prison (see Rom. 1:11; Phil. 1:8, 4:1; 1 Thess. 3:6; 2 Tim. 1:4).

These things show us that God has designed us, as image bearers, to give the most effective help when we are personally present in other people’s lives. The most powerful way for you to give and receive accountability is for you to be regularly involved in someone’s life. This way, rather than share a few words with an image on a screen, you get to enjoy life with the person you are discipling. You can sit across the table from your friend. Sit next to her in church. Go out to lunch with her. Go for a run with her. Give her a hug. Laugh together. Search the Scriptures and pray together. All this is possible when two people live geographically close to each other.

If you aren’t able to provide local accountability for your friend, can you help your friend to find someone who is?

GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS COMMUNAL

Pursuing local accountability is not just about finding folks in close proximity to the struggler but about teaching the struggler to turn to an entire gospel community for help. John Freeman says, “We need a community to help us process our soul’s discouraging elements and learn how to live a life of faith and repentance.”1 Thus the struggler needs godly friends who go to her church.

But why a church? Why can’t the struggler just figure this out with one friend and leave it at that? Consider three reasons.

• The Lord tells us that his manifold wisdom is displayed through local churches (see Eph. 3:10). If that is God’s plan, we want to be a part of it! We want to root our accountability in a gospel community.
• Scripture tells us there is more success with many counselors (see Prov. 11:14; 24:6) than with one.
• It’s not good for the pressure and burdens of accountability to fall on one person’s shoulders. Especially when things get difficult for the struggler, the situation may be

a lot for the discipler or close friend to bear alone. Ideally, several people together will carry the weight of the struggler’s problems, working as a team to care for their friend. This is something churches are designed to do (see Gal. 6:2; Heb. 10:24–25).

So if someone says, “I’m not sure who I should tell,” we respond, “How about someone at church? A small-group leader? A godly discipler? A few of your closest friends at church? And, most importantly, your pastor?”

We all have concentric circles of relationships. Those in the inner circle are our most intimate friends. The further out we go into the concentric circles, the more superficial the relationships get. A struggler tells a few folks from his or her inner circle—a pastor, a small- group leader, a few close friends, and a discipler. It’s normal for the struggler and the discipler to meet up. But what if the small-group leader or pastor occasionally shows up too? They talk, pray, and press in at the same time, working together for the spiritual well-being of the struggler. That way, they all get on the same page about what’s wisest and best in the struggler’s fight against sin and striving for faith.

GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS MATURE

Immature accountability is marked by a lack of wisdom. The apostle Paul describes the spiritually immature, who are worldly in their thinking, as infants who drink milk instead of eating solid food (see 1 Cor. 3:1–3; 14:20). All too often, a single person finds another single person who is fighting against sexual sin or a married person finds another married person who also struggles. That makes sense—a friend will understand what the struggler is going through (after all, he or she struggles with the same problem!). However, that friend likely won’t have the aggressive disposition needed to help the struggler to fend off his or her sin (see Matt. 5:27–30).

Instead, accountability must be mature—a godly person who is loving, wise, and faithful, who is a season or two ahead of the struggler, and who doesn’t wrestle with sexual sin. If you are a discipler, does that describe you? If not, where do you fall short? Listed below are criteria to help you to see if you are growing in spiritual maturity:2

• Do you hunger for God?
• Do you study God’s Word such that you are growing in confidence in God and his promises? Is your life increasingly governed by Scripture?
• Do you pray and depend on the Lord for help?
• Are you committed to a local gospel-preaching church and modeling for younger believers what commitment looks like? Have you grown more concerned about the needs of others?
• Have you become more loving?
• Do you grieve over your sin? Are you quick to forgive? Have you learned to apply the gospel to your sin and suffering?

After reading these questions, you might think, “I fall far short. I’m not ready.” If that’s you, it’s good to humbly admit such a thing and then help your friend to find a godly person who is ready to take on this responsibility. (If you are not sure what to think, then consult with your pastor or a wise Christian in your church.) Don’t be surprised if a godly person’s study of the Word and life experience make her well of wisdom much deeper.

GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS BROAD

Accountability must be placed in a larger framework of Christian friendship rather than restricted to the topic of fighting the sin of pornography. A relationship quickly becomes static if it is built solely on checking on sexual struggles. Your friend wants help with fighting his lust, but he needs much more: hope for daily struggles, more honest relationships with godly believers, and instruction on applying the gospel to the different aspects of his life. Accountability for sexual sin is just one component of his growth in Christ, and good accountability acknowledges that.

GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS GRACIOUS

A gracious attitude is essential for good accountability. You need to encourage the hopeless believer, show kindness to the fool, and love the struggler who has failed for the third time in a week. Remember, it’s God’s kindness that leads a sinner to repentance. If God is kind, shouldn’t you be too? Don’t be harsh and demanding, evoking the law often and displaying little of God’s grace.3 God is the final judge, and he has already forgiven the struggler in Christ. If you act like you, rather than God, are the ultimate judge, repent of that attitude.4

GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS FAITH-FOCUSED

Anyone can spend a lot of time focused on the horizontal dimensions of life—building friendships, paying bills, exercising, eating well, working hard, helping a neighbor—and lose sight of the vertical. Don’t lose sight of faith. Faith in Christ is the chief goal.

When I (Jonathan) was meeting with Mateo, I knew he was discouraged because of his repeated falls over the last few weeks. We talked about the tactics of shutting down access to the Internet, not staying up late but getting to bed early, and rebuilding friendships in his church community. But I knew I shouldn’t let him go without talking about Christ. So I asked him, “How does your faith make a difference in the fight against sexual sin?” Over the next few minutes, we had a fruitful conversation about how Mateo wanted to grow in greater trust in Christ. He desired greater faith.

GOOD ACCOUNTABILITY IS WORD-BASED

It is the Word that revives a dead heart and brings life. If you find you are not bringing the Word into enough of your conversations, change course right now. Rather than talking about anything and everything but God’s Word, commit to making your conversations Word-driven.

As you consider the strengths and weaknesses of your accountability style, remember that, in the end, a struggler needs to be willing to do the hard work of fighting sin and pursuing faith. If you are constantly tracking her down or pressuring her to take the next step, you should back off and talk about her lack of motivation. “Are you willing to do what it takes? And if not, why not?” Even the best accountability can’t save an apathetic struggler. Only God can.

Wisdom will grow through tough, consistent, local, communal, mature, broad, gracious, faith-focused, and Word-based accountability. If this is not what you are offering to a struggler, you can change. Ask the Lord for help, and adjust your approach in your next few meetings.

Chapter 7 of the recently released book, Rescue Skills, by Jonathan D. Holmes and Deepak Reju. Used with permission.