Are you a blogger?  Do you love to read and review books on your website?  If so, this is an awesome opportunity for you!  I recently found a website online through the Christian publishing company, Thomas Nelson, where bloggers can get free books to read and review online.  The program is called Thomas Nelson: Book Review Bloggers. I have just joined the program and look forward to the free books and opportunity to give input.  

The program gives you an initial free book which you are supposed to read entirely and then post a review on your blog and on a bookseller site like Amazon covering the entire book.  Thankfully, these reviews can be positive or negative.  In exchange for a 200 word review, you get a free book and a link from Thomas Nelson’s website to your blog and review.  

My first book, Kingdom of the Occult by Walter Martin, is on the way.  Stay tuned for this and more book reviews to come.

Accountability is one of the most frequently overlooked areas of the Christian life.  We have been taught since our days as young children in Sunday school about our “personal relationship with Jesus.”  This is very true, but the problem is when we take personal to mean private.  The Christian life was never meant to be lived as a solo journey.  It is in living in community with other believers seeking to follow Jesus that we grow closer to Jesus.  

As we see our own struggles in other believers, we can begin to battle together in prayer and plan together practical ways to overcome the temptation that we face.  Solomon expressed this priority of accountability when he said, “As iron sharpens iron, so one man sharpens another.” (Proverbs 27:17 NIV).  We need each other to sharpen and help encourage others to continue to follow hard after Jesus Christ.  

This week we are going to explore the topic of accountability by first looking at some reasons that accountability is important and then going on to explore some practical ways to pursue accountability in your own life.  So our starting question for the week is: In your life do you have someone to encourage you and hold you accountable in your walk with Jesus?