Heath Lambert, who serves as the Executive Director at the Association of Certified Biblical Counselors recently wrote a book called Finally Free: Fighting For Purity With The Power Of Grace that our pastoral interns recently read and discussed. His book was particularly helpful, insightful and full of practical wisdom. One such chapter was on how to use accountability to fight pornography. Here’s several principles he passes on:

1. Effective accountability doesn’t rely exclusively on accountability.
2. E.A. is involved early rather than late.
3. E.A. involves someone with maturity.
4. E.A. involves someone with authority.
5. E.A. should avoid explicit details.
6. E.A. places the responsibility for confession on the person with the problem.
7. E.A. must actually hold people accountable.

The right kind of accountability–characterized by initiative, openness, clean conversation, maturity, and serious answerability for sin–is hard. It takes more than guts to pursue it; it takes grace.

Are you accountable to anyone? If the answer is no, what’s preventing you from taking the necessary steps to be accountable? If the answer is yes, does your accountability reflect the above principles?