OUR ACCOUNTABILITY WITH GOD

The word accountability can be a very strong word. In the dictionary, the word accountability defines as liable to being called to account, answerable. Every so often, people tell me that he or she wants to become an elder or even a pastor of a church. My answer to them was, if you have a calling from God; by all means go with the blessing of the Lord. First you must have the love of God within your heart and yourself. Second, if your flocks need spiritual help, you must help them during the day or night. In other words 24/7 will be our responsibility. For me, sometimes I received calls between 7:00 PM to midnight and even 3:00 to 7:00 AM. I told them, it is not as easy as they think. Why? First of all, you will encounter many people and demonic spirit or spirits problems and you cannot divulge any of the confidential discussion, you must keep it to yourself. It is between God, the person and you, not one single word will be discussed with anyone. The right word is confidentiality. Does it make sense to you so far?

For example, let’s say you divulge the confidential problems or discuss with someone and the person who is listening to your confidential discussion, in the back of their mind while listening to you, he or she may think what a blabbermouth you are. I am sure he or she will never discuss anything personal with you. I don’t blame them at all. So as you can see, the respect and the trust of the person toward you will be much lower.

I have heard some Pastors gossiping about another person within his or her members in their church and the members who are listening, just laugh about it without realizing that it is one of the sins that the Pastor or Minister has committed in God’ eyes. He or she must be accountable for it. In Hawaii; somehow everyone may be related to each other or could be a good friend of a person that you are talking about. So why gossip? In (NLT) James 3:7-9, People can tame all kinds of animals and birds and reptiles and fish, 8 but no one can tame the tongue. It is an uncontrollable evil, full of deadly poison. 9 Sometimes it praises our Lord and Father, and sometimes it breaks out into curses against those who have been made in the image of God. Now since you have read what is written in James 3:7-9, don’t you think it makes sense not to gossip at all, if you agree with me say Amen! (So be it) Usually, gossiping starts something like this; do you know what I heard? Or do you know what I have seen? For me it doesn’t matter at all, if I were to listen to the gossip, I will be just as guilty as the person telling it to me. I just simply smile and walk away and leave it in the hands of God. Personally I don’t believe in gossip at all. Why? In my Internet Church Topic, I wrote about fishing in Hilo’s bay, when you have a chance try and read about it. I believe the Topic title is called “Confidentiality” and you may be able to understand what I am saying.

Sometime, I have experienced when the person is speaking not too highly of another person without realizing that I know the person very well that he or she is speaking about. As a matter of fact, that person is my good friend and I just listened to what he or she is saying about my friend, in the back of my mind thinking what a big gossip that person is talking about it. I just smile and walk away from that person. I truly don’t believe in gossip, because gossiping is considered one of the sins in God’ eyes. Don’t you agree with me? Then why should I listen to any gossip? Instead of listening to gossip, I would rather open my bible and read the scriptures than listening to gossiping. Remember when a person gossips about another person, one day that person will gossip about you, when things are too well with you and that person. Like the old saying, “What come around goes around!” I am sure many of you had hears this phrase? Am I right?

You cannot judge anyone or judgment may come upon you or your family from God. Remember only God can judge us fairly, no one else, but the Lord Jesus Christ.
When the Minister or Pastor judges someone, the accountability will be much greater than the rest of the members in the church. The higher God elevates us, the higher the accountability we have as men or women of God. For example, in the military, the soldier who holds a rank of a private has certain responsibility; the sergeant has much more responsibility than the private, the lieutenant has much more responsibility than the sergeant, the captain, the major and on and on all the way to the President of United States, as you can see the higher we are promoted, the higher the accountability will be. I truly believe it is the same scenario with God. So we must be very careful what we say to people. How many times, have you experienced in the past saying something that you feel regretful about today? I am the first one to admit that. Today, I am very careful about what I am saying to people. My personal rule is to think before I say anything and still sometimes I feel I shouldn’t have said anything to the person. So as you can see I am still learning like everybody else; however, it is not too much for me today. Thank You Lord Jesus! Amen!

I pray this message is very informative to you and the moral of this message is we all are accountable for what we say. Once we say it, we cannot retract it.

From Pastor Jimmy Nishimoto and Chris Eliason