WEEK 40 | GRACEFULLY ACCOUNTABLE

Have you ever had a teammate who always messed up and made the same mistakes over and over again? That can be frustrating, especially when you are in an environment where you have high expectations.

When I was a young athlete, I would hate it when we would have to run for our teammate's mistakes. We always had one teammate who never touched the line, who always messed up the drill, and who could never remember the directions or plays.

While leadership requires holding the people around you accountable to the standards that are communicated, how we hold them accountable tells a lot about who we are as people.

Actress Viola Davis once said, "I don't know what the definition of grace is; only that it meets you where you are and it doesn't leave you how it found you. You want some grace in your life because you are never going to arrive perfectly at any place."

In Matthew 18, Jesus gives us an example of how we should hold the people around us accountable, even if they mess up over and over again, with grace.

In verse 21, Peter came to Jesus and asked, "Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?"

Jesus answered, "I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times." He then said:

 "The kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 bags of gold was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had sold to repay the debt.

The servant then fell on his knees before him and begged, "Be patient with me and I will pay back everything." The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go.

But when the servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him and said, "Pay back what you owe me!"

The servant fell to his knees and begged, saying, "Be patient with me, and I will pay it back," but he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt.

When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that happened. Then the master called the servant in and said, "You wicked servant, I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had on you?" In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he was able to pay back all of his debt. This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart."

Debt could be your teammates making routine mistakes, causing you to run or even lose games, or debt could be somebody truly hurting you. But Jesus says we have to find forgiveness in our hearts because none of us are perfect and we all make mistakes.

THIS WEEK

1 - When people around you make mistakes, how do you react? Do you hold them accountable with or without grace? Do you hold them accountable at all?

For a Google doc version of this devo, click here: Gracefully Accountable