A seasoned and deep thinking mentor (she’s 75 plus a few years young) and I had a phone conversation a few weeks ago about what actual accountability and really being authentic looks like.

So many individuals want to “lead” and “be in charge”, but few have little space or time for feedback or equality of input from peers.

I’ve found out that most “Self Help” is “No Help” at all. We can twist our own self treatments and assessments of things, and never really fully grow.

Our souls like to have their own way and they fiercely resist honest confrontation and further personal work!

We can become prickly and feel that we are not needing perhaps an additional life course correction or two!

And quite possibly, we can pull ourselves inward and shut out the things that we just don’t want to “unpack” and talk about.

We actively avoid any word of warning or concern, even when delivered in gentleness and love.

When this type “leave me alone” of behavior occurs, you can count on either being “dismissed” as an inconvenient annoyance to people not wanting you or others to mess up their patterns, or in an even more passive but still aggressive move, you will be avoided, ignored or simply have the standard “nothing is wrong, I’m just fine” behaviors take place, in order to not stir up people’s familiar, comfortable, but sadly dysfunctional patterns of operating and denying the need for healthy input.

Ultimately, we really can’t “fix” anyone. But we can have the insights and counsel from those whom we know and challenge us to not be emotionally entangled by the sadness that can swirl around your heart when cruelties and denial shut the door on honest and humble dialog.

These dear mentors and teachers of truth, like the dear woman I glean from (whom I trust explicitly to be gracious yet firm with me) are not not competitive or overbearing.

They just know the reality of what takes place when you choose not to continue to grow upwards and show it outwards in how we treat others.

What is REAL accountability? It’s the willingness to let go of our “cloaking devices” and then intentionally allow godly individuals, applying wise, poised counsel, the open access to our tightly confined ways of functioning and learning how to be set free from destructive thinking and dysfunctional behaviors.

Introverts and Extroverts both have ways that they can actively ignore or avoid this work of maturing.

When the deeper work in our soul is avoided after there have been some seasons of good personal work and change take place, it’s what Jesus talked about when he was teaching and mentoring his disciples, and telling them about how the “word seeds/ truth seeds” that he teaches about and plants into us will only produce adult maturity/ fruit, IF it’s allowed to be sown into the deeper places of our souls.

Some individuals choose to grow when things “feel better” but they are still in control of how far they choose to surrender to optimum growth.

That’s how the cares of our lives and our love for justifying our accumulated ways of thinking, living, avoiding and fretting, strangle or choke out our “putting down deeper roots” of maturing into adulthood (yes! Adulting!) and we therefore, live in selective truth about ourselves.

This causes stalled and dwarfed growth where weeds rapidly entangle the healthy growth we were experiencing, and if not tended to, these weeds and “life controls and cares” choke out fully mature fruit, (Matthew 13:20-23)

“Then Jesus spoke his disciples. “Anyone who intends to come with me has to let me lead. You’re not in the driver’s seat; I am. Don’t run from suffering; embrace it. Follow me and I’ll show you how. Self-help is no help at all. Self-sacrifice is the way, my way, to finding yourself, your true self. What kind of deal is it to get everything you want but lose yourself? What could you ever trade your soul for?” Matthew 16:26 MSG.

“But he who received the seed on stony places, this is he who hears the word and immediately receives it with joy; yet he has no root in himself, but endures only for a while. For when tribulation or persecution arises because of the word, immediately he stumbles. Now he who received seed among the thorns is he who hears the word, and the cares of this world and the deceitfulness of riches choke the word, and he becomes unfruitful. But he who received seed on the good ground is he who hears the word and understands it,who indeed bears fruit and produces: some a hundredfold, some sixty, some thirty.” Matthew 13:20-23.

 

In His Shadow,
~ Mary Lindow ^©

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” THE MESSENGER ” ~ Mary Lindow
www.marylindow.com
Global Prayer Rooms

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Mary Lindow has a passion for encouraging others – all generations, careers or vocations to live expressing excellence through personal integrity, healthy accountability, and wise management of talents and skills. She’s a sought after keynote, inspirational, humorous speaker and teacher across the USA and internationally in Ministers & Spiritual leaders Conferences, and training seminars for various organizations.

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