Are you reacting to life—or owning it?
In this episode, I sat down with author and leadership coach Robert Hunt to talk about the powerful shift from victim to victor.
He shares how selling his house, paying off $90K in debt, and restoring his marriage started with one hard truth:
Nobody cares… until you do.
We unpack what real accountability looks like, why responsibility isn’t enough, and how trusting God means surrendering control—one decision at a time.
Transcript:
Speaker 1:
If you’ve ever struggled with fear, doubt or worry and wondering what your true purpose was all about, then this podcast is for you. In this show, your host, sylvia Worsham, will interview elite experts and ordinary people that have created extraordinary lives. So here’s your host, sylvia Worsham.
Speaker 2:
Hey Lightbringers, it’s Sylvia Worsham. Welcome to Released Out Reveal Purpose In today’s Robert Hunt, and Robert has an amazing story to tell regarding accountability and I honestly cannot wait to dive into it. He and I got to know each other just a little bit prior to this interview and I’m happy to know that. For those who haven’t considered it, I’d say joinpodmatchcom if you have a very strong message to share, because this is the way Robert and I connected. I am grateful today for his presence. Good morning, robert. Where are you joining us from?
Speaker 3:
I’m from the DFW area, North Texas.
Speaker 2:
Wonderful. I actually used to live in Dallas and so I’m very familiar with that area because I went to Austin College in Sherman Texas that’s my alma mater, and so Dallas was an easy place to come into right after graduation. But I’m so happy that you are with us today and that you have what sounds like a very amazing story of transformation. So let’s go ahead and dive in. Robert, tell us a little bit more about how you landed in the space of accountability.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I do it for a living. That’s what I’ve been doing for a living. I create monthly meetings for business owners to come together and talk about their journey and the struggles they face. Whether they’re Christ followers or not, I still want to help people who are willing to be open and vulnerable about the challenges they have as leaders, and so we meet once a month and we talk about stuff and we try to work on issues. But one of the things I found that makes a difference in how powerful these groups are is whether you’re being really vulnerable, because vulnerability allows you the opportunity for true accountability.
Speaker 3:
Most of these leaders are very successful business owners. They’ve grown the company to a significant size, with dozens or hundreds of employees, in some cases, thousands. But what they share in common is that at some point, you become, at the very top, unaccountable because you could change your mind and you say let’s do this, no, let’s do that, and very few people will go hey, you just said we’re doing this, why are we doing that? And so at some point, whether it’s financially or how you make decisions or how you live your life, you become a little bit above accountability and you create this world where you can say whatever you want, do whatever you want, and you get away with it, but you got to live with it still. And that’s the problem is that you might have a very successful company, but how’s your marriage? And you might have a lot of money, but how’s your peace in your life? And we describe success or excellence as doing the best of your ability while you pursue the life you really want. So that includes everything. That includes a successful business and a great marriage, a lot of money and really great health, a lot of fun and power and doing what you’re doing because you’re achieving stuff, but also not forgetting that you love God and that you want to live out your faith. So all those things combined is what makes our lives. So I’ve created this world. That accountability is available to you Now in the book we wrote we talk about, nobody can hold anyone accountable, but you can create a world where you wanna be accountable, and that’s what these groups are for, and that really does come down to you saying I want this, I need this.
Speaker 3:
I’m gonna invite people into my journey and then I’m gonna talk about what I’m working on. I’m gonna declare it to them. Therefore, when I get back together. They can ask me how’s it going? Put a little peer pressure on you. Peer pressure is still working, just like it did in high school when we jumped off the tree that we knew we shouldn’t have jumped out of. But we’re in this place now where people have the opportunity to create accountability if they really want it, and that’s my goal is to help people understand the freedom and power that really comes when you’re truly accountable.
Speaker 2:
And that’s a wonderful introduction to the topic of accountability. And what I really want to know and I’m really curious about is how you landed here. What in your life gave you the idea?
Speaker 3:
I ended up needing to be accountable. I was finding myself making excuses and blaming the world, and even angry at God, until I really realized the problems I was dealing with were mine, and when I took true accountability for them, I gained the power to change them. And so, in 2019, my beautiful wife Kathy and I we owed $90,000 in debt, and that didn’t include the house or cars, and it was choking me out. I was stressed, and in the beginning of that year, we said what do we really want in our lives? And what we wanted more than anything else was to honor the Lord with our lives. But we weren’t doing that. We were causing stress and strain between us. I was living in worry and fear that I would be able to make minimum payments because I’d gotten so far in debt and at one point, the IRS was going to garnish my paycheck and just take half of whatever I make until I get caught up with them. So I’d really worked myself into a bad spot.
Speaker 3:
And it was that year that we just decided look, nobody cares if your business is suffering, if you’ve got problems in there, nobody cares. You’re supposed to own your junk and do something about it. And that’s when we decided we’re going to sell our house and downsize and start over, and so we did, and that’s what happened. We closed it in the end of March of 2020, just when COVID was shutting down the world and we saw the freedom and the peace that we had when we got out of debt and we looked at that problem that was choking us, and we saw the process of accountability, how it freed us up to fix it, and we started looking at the rest of our lives and thinking what else are we not dealing with?
Speaker 3:
We went to counseling to try and repair our marriage. We invited in a financial coach to teach us about good financial stewardship things that you should have already known as an adult, but I didn’t do. Well, looking at our faith, looking at our health, looking at our relationships all those things we started to look at the freedom and power that we found when we actually owned it and we’re going to control the effort towards living what we really wanted it to look like. Since I saw that in my own life, that’s what I was doing for a living with CEOs in these meetings. It really led me to the reality that people don’t understand accountability and I need to tell the story better, and that’s why we wrote the book. Nobody Cares Until you Do.
Speaker 2:
So give me one story from the book that you have found has really resonated with those who have read it.
Speaker 3:
I think probably the one of us selling our house is the one that resonates the most. Your house is your kingdom. It’s just your safety, it’s your family world. And to just up and sell the house to start over is unheard of and most people would not have a spouse that would join them in the journey. When you say I’m going to sell the house to start over is unheard of and most people would not have a spouse that would join them in the journey when you say I’m going to sell the house and start over.
Speaker 3:
But my beautiful wife, Kathy, she’s that way. She believed that together we’d have a better life if we just didn’t have all the stress and worry about the home. So we outlined that journey of getting ready to sell the house and what did it take mentally to get there? There’s other great stories in there talking about Salem, who’s my co-author. He tried to kill himself at one point because he just had no hope and he just felt like nobody cared about his life. And these kind of vulnerable stories that we tell are just to give people a little bit of an insight of what it looks like when you aren’t accountable and yet the freedom and power that comes when you are accountable, and we don’t mind being vulnerable enough to tell these stories because we hope it’ll change people’s lives.
Speaker 2:
And I do. I hear your story and there’s one word that keeps popping up in me, and so I’m going to allow that word, because it may be the Holy Spirit kind of coming through the interview. What was that turning point for you? What was that moment that you knew this is what I needed to do?
Speaker 3:
I think it’s that phrase nobody cares. That’s what we got to this place, where we knew we weren’t living the life we want. We knew we were the cause of the problems and we weren’t pleasing the Lord with our lives, but we liked the way we were living. We knew we were the cause of the problems and we weren’t pleasing the Lord with our lives, but we liked the way we were living. We liked our house it was a very nice home and we liked the lifestyle that we were living. But it was irresponsible. And so it really was that place where you get to not rock bottom.
Speaker 3:
But it was a reality that, look, I can make excuses, I can blame, I can say there’s nothing I can do about it or I can just wait and hope, but all that does is keep me as a victim. And so when we told ourselves, look, nobody cares if we’re miserable in our marriage and stressed out about money and worried about the future, nobody cares. They got their own junk. But if we care enough to do something about it, then we have the power to change it. And that really was the turning point of just stop blaming, stop making excuses, nobody cares, own it and go do what you’re supposed to do.
Speaker 2:
And so tell us a little bit more about what were the next steps for you, because awareness is key. It’s great to be aware of what the problem is and what you need to do, but I think where most people get stuck is in the action items that follow that awareness. Yeah, so if you could walk us through the action steps, maybe there’s someone out there in this podcast that needs to hear what you did, step by step.
Speaker 3:
Sure.
Speaker 2:
To get from nobody cares to where you’re at today.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, we outline these in the book. I’ll give you one from the before and one from the after. So there’s that turning point where you say nobody cares and you decide to own it and you start the after effort. But up until that moment when you’re still making excuses or blaming or saying I can’t do anything about it, you stay stuck as a victim. One of the ways that you can move, or at least be aware that you’re making an excuse and holding yourself stuck in that mode, is that when you say an excuse and you have a but, change it to an and. So you’d like to say I’d like to get out of debt, but I owe so much money. Instead, change it to an and I’d like to get out of debt and I owe so much money. So the and tells you what you need to do. You need to get rid of that debt. You need to work on that. I’d like to have a better marriage, but I could never have a conversation with my wife about this. I’d like to have a better marriage and I could never have a conversation with my wife about this. So the and tells you what you need to go do, the but says you’re done.
Speaker 3:
And too often we hold ourselves back by saying there’s nothing you could do about it. But that’s not true. We know the Bible says that we can do all things through Christ, who gives us strength. And you hold yourself back, therefore holding God back from what he’d like to do in your life. When you say I can’t, you’re saying God can’t. Really, what you mean is I won’t and in I won’t. The question would be like why I can’t? You’re saying God can’t. Really. What you mean is I won’t and in I won’t. The question would be like why I don’t want to sell my house? I won’t sell my house. Why Is your house more important than your relationship with God or your marriage or your mental health, really? And so I think those times of awareness where we can see the traps are healthy.
Speaker 3:
When you get to that point where you say nobody cares until I do and you decide you’re going to do something about it. The steps are laid out in the book. The first thing is to acknowledge the reality. We owe $90,000. We have equity in our house. We could sell the house.
Speaker 3:
The second one is to embrace the suck. It’s going to suck. The things you’re going to go through are going to be hard, but it’s also hard to stay a victim. And at some point you don’t like being a victim and you’re willing to go through the hard things to get to where you want to be. And then, when you embrace the suck, you find a solution. When you’re not willing to see that anything can change, there are no solutions. But when you finally get to a place where you say, okay, I’m willing to do this, the solutions are everywhere. You just weren’t willing to see them before, and so the solution was find a real estate agent, get the house cleaned up the way it should be, do all the updates and changes we need to do, get it on the market, get it sold.
Speaker 3:
And that process took time, and in the meantime, we kept saying maybe we shouldn’t be selling the house, maybe it’s not so bad, and we kept trying to talk ourselves out of this effort.
Speaker 3:
But in order to stay accountable, we invited people into our journey and said this is where we’re going, this is what we’re doing, because, as I said earlier, nobody can hold anyone else accountable, but you can hold yourself accountable by inviting someone in and saying this is what I’m going to do. And so we told people we’re going to sell our house and here’s where we’re going to go. And then, halfway through, we said maybe we could give it a couple more months of trying and we would talk with other people about where we were going through, how we were feeling. Then they would remind us of the commitments we made and the plan that we made. It was still our decision to make, but they walked through the journey with us. So acknowledge reality, embrace the suck, find a solution and then make it happen. And going through those stages. There were challenges all along the way, but inviting people into our journey is what helped keep us truly accountable.
Speaker 2:
That’s a great way to do it. When you make it public and I remember reading that I came from from corporate America, I worked for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and when I joined the hospital division, everything hit. You know how it always happens you get something that you’ve been wanting or desiring and God gives it to you, and then, lo and behold, life happens right.
Speaker 1:
Yeah.
Speaker 2:
And I had stepped into this territory that just was not great at all. It was like second to last in the region, and the vice president of the company of the division was even you, like my territory and my name and all that came. And I had inherited this thing right from another gentleman who had done really very little with it in the two years since the division had launched. And so I’m sitting there facing what looks like insurmountable, which I’m sure you probably felt as well when you looked at $9,000 of debt and that’s what most people look at.
Speaker 2:
They look at the contrast reality of it and they see this huge mountain that, in their mind, is unscalable. But what I love about your story is the same thing I did in that circumstance, which was to focus on what we could do. Yeah, because there’s so much out in our lives, there’s so much negativity, it’s hard to see the what can we do and to get through those layers. That’s really where Christ can come in and start to move us in the direction of where that mountain turns into something you can move on your own, based on how he’s going to guide you.
Speaker 3:
Or God can move it for you.
Speaker 2:
Or God can move it for you. Because for us it’s impossible, but for him it’s very possible to move these things out of the way. All it requires is your trust, and that’s where I think most people get stuck. Also is they don’t know how to go from belief to trust in the Lord, because trust means that you have to release control, and it was a conversation you and I had at the beginning, but prior to this interview of what does it look like to release control.
Speaker 2:
Can you speak a little bit more about how you were able to release that control or that need to control?
Speaker 3:
I think it was more of acknowledgement that I don’t have any control. I think you think you have to release it, but you never held onto it In your mind. It was just fear. There was no, you don’t actually control anything. If I hire a real estate agent, it was just fear. There was no, you don’t actually control anything. If I hire a real estate agent, it doesn’t mean they’re going to do a good job. It doesn’t mean it’s going to get sold. It doesn’t mean that the deal will go through. It doesn’t mean that I’ll find a place to move into.
Speaker 3:
So many variables had to happen between the day we said let’s sell the house and the day we paid off all the debt. A ton of variables, none of which I could really control. I can work towards them, but if I work with somebody and they don’t do their job, I can’t control that. If I work with something and COVID hits, I can’t control that. There were so many things that were out of my control and it really is more about acknowledging the fact you don’t have control, and so am I okay to do the best I can with whatever’s in front of me and trust that it’s going to work out.
Speaker 3:
I’m on a river, going down a river on a raft and you can paddle all you want, but that river’s going and you might think you’re in control, but there’s a rock under there and then you turn here and there’s a tree that gets you there’s so much that goes on. So I think for me it was more about getting used to the idea that you don’t have it all under control. You can contribute towards the effort, but God’s going to decide if it goes. And that was really for me, was very freeing, because the burden of having to think you have it all under control in order to get something done, that’s a heavy weight to be able to carry. But if I realize God’s put me here for this moment, for this opportunity, I’m going to do the best I can, I’m going to leave the results up to God, that’s very freeing.
Speaker 2:
It is. It’s very freeing, and you’re touching on a subject that’s interesting to dive a little bit deeper into those I wouldn’t say goals, because that’s not really the word but the habits that you perfected throughout this process. What were the habits that? Did you reflect every day on these lessons, Were you? What do you do daily that can start moving people that right now are they, just they’re too overwhelmed to even see what they can do, to move the needle forward what they can do to move the needle forward.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, since you’re really not in control of anything, that doesn’t mean I don’t try Don’t mistake my statement of the lack of control to giving up or go whatever. We’ll just goof off. It doesn’t. It’s not the point.
Speaker 3:
My clients are driven people. I never challenged them to lay back and enjoy life. I’m a driven person, but I have to have the reality of the acknowledgement of I never challenged them to lay back and enjoy life. I’m a driven person, but I have to have the reality of the acknowledgement of I can only do so much, and I equate it always to the idea of planting corn. When you plant corn, you don’t stand over it and watch it, and by yelling at it it’s not going to grow any quicker. You can water it, pull the weeds out, keep the birds away, but at the end of the day it’s going to grow at the pace it’s going to grow and you’re going to get as many ears of corn out of it as you’re going to get. That’s all out of your hands. You did what you can do and then you should do the best you can to support it, but God will decide the results you’re going to get.
Speaker 3:
So, for me, the thing that I do daily to time with the Lord in quietness in the morning.
Speaker 3:
One of my goals is to get God in my head before I get in my head, and there’s an awful lot of things that want to derail me every day Fear, worry, schedules, unknown problems. Every day I get a phone call with some issue that my clients are going through, and I get to be there to serve them and support them, and I like that. But it could be overwhelming, because I care about them, I love them, and so there’s an emotion attached to their problems, their challenges. But I believe that God has created in me the ability to listen and encourage and support people, and so I just have to get him in my head in the morning before I let anything else consume my brain, and that’s been the discipline that’s helped. I started journaling a few years ago, spending time with the Lord, listening, asking God for what’s going on that day, and then inviting him into the day and say I’m going to do my best and I’m going to leave the results to you, and that, to me, has helped a lot.
Speaker 2:
I’m glad you touched on that, because most people have asked me the same thing. It’s like how do you invite him in? I don’t even know how to start a relationship with him, because it’s a relationship and so if you break it down, it’s what starts a relationship with anybody you just start talking to them and you start listening for the message that he has for you in his word. And I grew up Catholic and I didn’t really know how to read the Bible and I know that in itself is intimidating for people. But I know there’s a lot of apps out there that can really help people start learning about the word and start connecting with him. And, like you, I wake up and I have a coffee chat with God every morning. It’s my first appointment of the day is with Christ, and so I wonder why you people would say.
Speaker 3:
Why would people say reading the Bible is intimidating? People have read Harry Potter and there’s no intimidation and that’s really complicated stories of wizards and things like this that you’re hard to get your brain about. How is that? How is it? I don’t know what it means to be intimidated by the Bible If you’re embarrassed of it, the language of it.
Speaker 2:
Sometimes it gets missed, and so what I found was I didn’t even know where to start, when, you look at the Bible, you’re like which story do I start at the beginning, or do I start with the Gospels and the New Testament? Where do I go? And I remember just asking people that were very close to Christ at the time and saying I’m new to this, what would you guide me to do? And they said I would start with the Gospels and Proverbs. That’s where I would focus my attention and it starts easing you into a relationship with him. But the way I found it to be easiest is just to have a chat with him every single day, invite him into my world and say okay, you’ve given me these gifts.
Speaker 2:
I’m a writer, I’ve written books, I’m a speaker, I’m on podcasts and reviews. What message do you need me to focus on? Because I’m your messenger and I know that my divine purpose and the purpose you created me for is something that you must reveal to me so I can start stepping in there more confidently and with a lot more faith and trust. But it’s it’s inviting him every single day, and I know that some men struggle with this aspect. My own husband struggled with this because he said I don’t want to bother God, I don’t want to bother God with like minor things. And then somebody in one of the groups we were participating in it was a marriage class at the church and one of the guys answered and he said he’s your dad and he just wants to know what your day was like and how he can best help you because he has resources at his fingertips to help you and all he needs is for you to invite him in.
Speaker 3:
And since God already knows what you’re going to say before you say it, what’s the purpose of prayer?
Speaker 3:
It’s for me, it’s for me to get my own heart and mind around what I’m doing.
Speaker 3:
If, before I even say it, he knows what I’m going to say, then it’s for me to hear hey God, I turn to you, I trust you. Hey God, I have this on my heart and I’m visualizing putting it at his feet and going you got this one. It’s really for me and my head trash and for my fears and my worry, and I think we need that practice of that process of constantly giving it to God, give it to God, give it to God. It doesn’t mean you don’t try and you don’t work on it, but it means that you’re acknowledging that without his help it’s not going to work, and then you’re also inviting him into that. The God of the universe and the most powerful thing in all of creation is on your side and intimately understands your schedule for the day. That’s bizarre and he cares about that. So I think that you’re practicing the discipline of inviting God into your journey is very good for your own brain and the lies that you like to tell yourself.
Speaker 2:
Because we’re on the topic of divinity and we’re on the topic of purpose. What is your divine purpose and how did you get there? Is this a seasonal thing for you or do you find this to be for the rest of your life?
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I learned my purpose a few years back by reading a book by Cheryl Batchelder called Dare to Serve Leadership.
Speaker 3:
She was the CEO of Popeye’s Chicken and she turned that organization around. She’s a great, bold, godly woman and she would teach all of her leaders how to define your personal purpose in life when they came on board. So her goal was for you to know your purpose and live it out at work every day. Too many times we would think our purpose is somewhere outside of work, so work is a distraction, it gets in the way of our purpose, or work is an annoying thing. I got to do so I can live my purpose. But she wanted people to bring your purpose to work, that you live out your purpose at work and that way, five days a week, all day long, you’re living your purpose, you have zeal and excitement and you see the value in that. So that’s what her book’s about, and so I went through her book and practiced what she had outlined in the back of the book and came up with my own personal purpose in my life about 10 years ago, maybe longer and that is to help people remove the obstacles that keep them from being their best. So when I defined that, I thought that’s what I’m doing for a living. I actually run monthly group meetings where people come in and work on the things to help them be their best. So it gave me such joy and confidence where God had placed me to be in the business I’m at, and it also gave me a boldness to know look, I’m created to be this way.
Speaker 3:
I need to step up and say those difficult things to clients when I hear them making a decision is self-destructive. Hey, I just got to call you out. This is exactly opposite of what you told me you wanted. Again, I’m an executive coach. I don’t tell people what to do. I’m not a consultant. They don’t work for me. But when they say, hey, I’m gonna spend more time with the family or hey, I’m going to go ahead and deal with this problem, and they don’t, then I call them out because you’ve invited me into your journey and I speak truth and love.
Speaker 3:
But I say it. You said you weren’t going to do this. Why are you doing it now? They don’t have to deal with me. They could lie. That’s back to that whole statement earlier about nobody can hold anyone accountable. They could lie to me and say, oh, I’m not doing that. I’m going home every day on time and, I won’t know, I don’t babysit them. But if you’re really, truly wanting to change, you have to invite somebody into that journey. So that’s me living out my purpose every day. It gives me a lot of joy and I still think this I’ll do this the rest of my life, because this is what I love doing.
Speaker 2:
And this is something both you and your wife do, or you both wrote the book.
Speaker 3:
My friend Salem and I wrote the book together. My beautiful wife Kathy lived the life with me. She is my business partner but she doesn’t go to the meetings with me. She’s runs the organizational side of the thing. But yeah, she is my best friend and my business partner.
Speaker 2:
And was she always your best friend before she became your business partner?
Speaker 3:
No, no, no, I was married once before, as so was she, and then I got divorced. And then four years later I married Kathy and I loved her. I really did. I knew her since high school and I would have never got married again if I didn’t know Kathy, because I was never going to trust a woman again. I was just never going to go there. I’ll just live, be a single dad, take care, raise my daughter. That’s that.
Speaker 3:
But after a few years of just existing I just felt that that’s not what God’s created me for. And so I took a chance on marrying Kathy because I knew she loved Lauren and I that much that if Kathy was putting us first, I could put her first. It would still work out good for my daughter Lauren. And. But I still had a little bit of doubt in my mind to be able to trust completely.
Speaker 3:
So I remember, maybe five years ago, telling Kathy I think now I’m ready to let you be my best friend. And that really was a weird moment for her because I think she thought she was. But I still held back a portion of my heart and the only reason I could tell her she was my best friend is because during that walk we were going through, and it was just about the time we sold the house God opened up part of my heart that had been blocked off. I think I gave Kathy almost a hundred percent of my heart when I married her, but there was a part that wasn’t open yet. So when it became bigger and he freed it up, then I could give her the whole part of my heart and I think that’s what allowed me to feel that she’s my best friend and she really is.
Speaker 2:
The wholeness piece, I think, is where most people are a little afraid to open, especially men. I think they have these roles that they play.
Speaker 2:
And the vulnerability piece is very scary for them, Because if they’ve been hurt before and that’s all playing a role in the background, it’s tough. It’s tough for them to open up. So I’m grateful that God opened your heart. I’m grateful that God opened your heart, and that reminds me of Ezekiel I think it’s 3626, of replacing your heart with a heart of flesh instead of the heart of stone, and it’s something that as wives I know.
Speaker 2:
I’ve prayed over my husband and I’ve prayed over myself, because as time goes on and there’s some bitterness, it can come into play in marriages. You get to do this, but I don’t get to do this, and all these different small elements that can play a big role. I’m just, I’m grateful and I’m hopeful that in my own marriage this will pan out over time. You know that when I start holding myself accountable and start giving myself those excuses and start moving in that direction instead of blaming and criticizing, which is very easy to do, it is, it’s extremely easy to do, but I actually have the four horsemen in front of me and it’s something that I look at every single day, and it’s gentle startup, build a culture of appreciation.
Speaker 2:
Take responsibility is number three, so in this conversation with you, it’s like taking accountability.
Speaker 2:
That’s why I was very curious about it, because it’s something that I’ve closed my heart to do and it’s because of things that happened in my past and so I’m asking god to please open and sift me, to bring it to the surface so that I can get rid of it and remove it to be able to move forward in peace. One of the books that was very instrumental for me was the Bait of Satan. I’m still reading it. It was a recommendation by a good buddy of mine, our financial guy Jason Black, and he’s a man of God and he said Sylvia, you and I both have problems with control. He goes and I would highly recommend you read the Bait of Satan by John Bevere.
Speaker 2:
I had never heard of John and he and his wife Lisa have a ministry together and the Bait of Satan starts talking a lot about people get themselves out of God’s will because they take offense, and it goes in line with this topic of victim. As victims, we take offense, we get defensive and we shut down a lot and that’s Satan basically coming in to kill, separate and destroy your joy and your relationships, and so it’s to get back into the will of God. You cannot take offense. Let’s talk about responsibility.
Speaker 3:
You mentioned responsibility and sometimes people use the word responsible interchangeably for accountable but, there is a big distinction.
Speaker 3:
Responsible is responding. It’s a reaction to what goes on. You’re doing your part to the thing that’s coming at you. You have a job, you get they give you a paycheck. You go to work. You’re responsible. But accountable is doing what is right. It is proactive in nature. It is you not waiting for something to happen and responding to it. It’s you saying this is where I want to go, I’m going to make the effort, so you’re responsible.
Speaker 3:
You got kids. You got to feed them. That’s responsible, right. But you feeding them healthy food. You not letting them have snacks? You teaching them how to cook the food. You teaching them how to clean the dishes. You teaching them to be grateful for whatever we have.
Speaker 3:
That is being accountable to what you hope you will get later down the line, which is children who look at food in a positive way, people who are owning their own journeys and ready for life. Responsible is putting food in their belly. Accountable is doing the kinds of things that you hope will generate the results. Again, knowing you don’t control it all, but you can serve up what you can towards where you want to go. I think we, as Christ followers, we are accountable to God. Someday we will stand before him and he will say this is all the stuff I gave you to do things with. Let’s take a look at how you did, and in that one case, you will actually be accountable, whereas we’re never accountable to anybody else.
Speaker 3:
Unless we choose to do that, you will be accountable to God, and what I want to do is to be able to be proactively doing the kinds of things that I know God will be pleased with, because he’s created me to serve him and to do things on this planet, and if I’m not showing up and doing it, then I’m wasting the opportunities put in front of me, and so I just want to make sure that we don’t miss the thing of I’m responsible. I went to church. Going to church doesn’t pull it out, it’s. What is your heart like when you’re there? Why are you there? Are you caring for the person in the pew next to you? Are you serving? Are you getting engaged? What are you accountable for in a proactive nature in that environment and that goes with our marriage, our health, our finances, every bit of our life? What am I proactively doing in hopes that I’m going to get this kind of an output?
Speaker 2:
And you work towards it until the day you’re dead or until the day you’re in heaven with jesus I’m glad you came in and gave that distinction, because you’re right, I for one kept interchangeably using the same word, but now that I see accountability, it’s like the action, like the pro action versus the responding to some situation, some circumstance, and you, and that’s more of the reaction, part of things, right, so which is?
Speaker 3:
what keeps us as a victim? Just to close that out it keeps you as a victim when all you do is respond to things. So when you don’t get the raise at work, you respond to it. But were you being accountable to be the hardworking person you said you’re going to be when you interviewed for the job? No, this, my boss is a jerk and these coworkers are lazy and my clients are horrible. Who cares? You interviewed for that job, they gave you that job and they said we’re going to pay you this and this is what you’re going to do. Okay, I’ll take it.
Speaker 3:
But then things get in the way, so you justify pulling back and doing okay at your job, and then you don’t get a raise that you just think you deserve. I’ve been here two years no raise, but all you’re doing is showing up at work. You’re just being responsible. You’re not doing the things you promised to do when you took the job. Therefore, you respond to it and you’re unhappy. And now you’re the victim, where you should have been proactively creating the results that you want, so that you would hopefully get the raise, because you still can’t control it. If COVID hit, there was no money for any raises, but you still could do all you could do to do your job so well that they would, if they had the money, give you the raise. I think that’s where we stay as a victim more often, when we just respond to things.
Speaker 2:
You know what? Thank you for that. I really want to thank you for that because it’s opening up my mind to a different way of looking at some of these circumstances that I’ve been facing. God put it in my heart to submit to my marriage and to my husband the way I’ve submitted to him, and at first I was like what does that look like? Because it looks it’s very general. What does that look like? Because it looks it’s very general.
Speaker 2:
And the way I’ve submitted to the Lord is I’ve been accountable to the Lord, like where I proactively am doing things to increase my faith with him and to invite him into my world, and it hasn’t been the responsible part of it.
Speaker 2:
And in fact, when I’ve made mistakes I’ve owned up to it immediately with him because I know I have offended him. But I haven’t been doing the same in my marriage and that’s why I was curious about your marriage of how you, as a man, having the traditional roles of provider and protector and those roles that are really pronounced in the Bible, I kept going back to I’m Eve, I’m the helper. What does that look like in my marriage? How do I help my husband be a man of God? How do I help him without nagging him, without pushing on him, without criticizing him, without disrespecting or dishonoring him. What does that look like? And so I’m really grateful to you to have made that distinction for me, because now I’m starting to hear God’s words of saying this is what you need to be doing the same way that you’ve treated me.
Speaker 2:
I need you to treat him.
Speaker 3:
If you were to look at it and say I’m being accountable to God proactively on how I treat my husband, what would God expect you to do on how I treat my husband? What would God expect you to do? And I’m proactively doing that because I’m accountable to God. So God would say first thing is pray. Are you praying over him? Do you pray for him With tears coming out of your eyes? You’re praying so hard for him.
Speaker 3:
That’s that prayer warrior role that my wife does for me. She covers me in prayer and I feel that Is she challenging me, Is she asking questions, Is she looking at the thing that I said I was going to do and helping me create accountability in our world by saying let’s review it together. What are we doing this month? And she’s actively taking a stance in our raising our children and how we spend our money and how we live our lives. She’s engaged in that so that she can then support my decisions because she’s been contributing to the effort to get there.
Speaker 3:
If I’m just off on my own doing things without checking with her, how would she feel in trying to follow my decisions? So she has to proactively give me input, not after I made the decision. But as we go along with life and go, here’s what we agreed we’re going to do this year with our finances. So the decisions I make should mirror that decision we made together. But then I make the decisions here and there, but it’s already in line with what we already agreed upon.
Speaker 3:
So your proactive nature of serving your husband is so much things that go on so that he can do his job to lead, but only in the confidence of the idea that he knows he’s doing what’s right for our family, that he’s serving you and loving you. Because my job is to serve you. Like Christ served and loved and gave himself up for the church, I’m supposed to give myself up for my wife. How do I do that if I’m still trying to figure out what I’m supposed to do? So us coming together and you talking, and there’s so much proactive work that goes in to making that, to where the activities can actually get done.
Speaker 2:
Once again, thank you. I think the timing of it is it’s perfect timing, as God always has his timing, and when your interview came up on my pod match and I looked at what you were wanting to discuss, I was really curious to have this conversation with you. I was really curious to have this conversation with you and it was pertaining more towards this conversation so that I could gain a different view of it. Right, instead of the responsible view, which I had never considered it being a victim stance, versus the accountable role, which is the proactive, more submission piece of it that he’s wanting me to start acting on. Cool, and thank you so much, robert, for that. Any last minute tips?
Speaker 2:
How can people contact you in if they want to first buy your book or just book you to do some trainings for them.
Speaker 3:
Yeah, I’m sure you’ll list out my websites and the show notes and all that stuff, so I won’t take time to talk about the specifics. But what I would like to say is that I think part of the reason why this world has such a bad attitude towards Christians is because we’re doing such a poor job of it, and I think that if we showed up at work and actually acted like we follow Jesus, it would be a whole different story about how the world looks at Christians. And so I want to encourage people today to look at your life and the place that God’s placed you and to proactively do what you know you should do to represent Christ. Not responding oh, I’ll just be patient with that person who’s a jerk, but proactively go deal with that person that is causing problems.
Speaker 3:
If you’re the owner of a business, you have to proactively create the business that will maintain the healthiness of everybody’s environment, where they feel safe and respected and they can be bold and take risks. That’s your job. You created this business. You own that. Go do it, because at some point you’re going to be accountable before God for the life you live and the business that you’ve run.
Speaker 3:
So stop making excuses for why you’re not doing this or that. Take the time to proactively look at your life and say am I living the life I want? Am I living the business I want, the marriage I want, the finances I want? If the answer is no, why? And then if you find yourself blaming, making excuses, saying you can’t, or just waiting and hoping it gets better, those are traps that victims live in. We’re not victims, we’re victorious in Christ. So be aware that you’re playing that victim role and decide that you’re going to claim nobody cares and I’m going to walk with Christ and I’m going to do what God’s called me to do. That I think if we could have the church show up at work every day.
Speaker 2:
I think it would be a very different world, and that’s my desire. Hopefully, people will see that I’m with you too. It’s the way we’re showing up, it’s the way we’re inviting more people into our sphere of influence and actually helping them be the best version of themselves and not competing with them and not criticizing them. And not competing with them and not criticizing them and not blaming them for their idea of what serving God looks like. And so I really appreciate your comments today, and I do have that hope, and we know that love does hope, because God taught us that and Christ taught us that through his sacrifice. And so I just wanted to thank you, robert, for being on Released Out Revealed Purpose and, to those listening, remember Matthew 514. Be the light, have a wonderful week, stay safe, love y’all. Bye now.
Speaker 1:
So that’s it for today’s episode of Released Out Reveal Purpose. Head on over to iTunes or wherever you listen and subscribe to the show. One lucky listener every single week who posts a review on iTunes will win a chance in the grand prize drawing to win a $25,000 private VIP day with Sylvia Worsham herself. Be sure to head on over to sylviaworsham.com and pick up a free copy of Sylvia’s gift and join us on the next episode.