Martin Wickens

²⁶ And in every several city of Judah he made high places to burn incense unto other gods, and provoked to anger the Lord God of his fathers. ²⁶ Now the rest of his acts and of all his ways, first and last, behold, they are written in the book of the kings of Judah and Israel. ²⁷ And Ahaz slept with his fathers, and they buried him in the city, even in Jerusalem: but they brought him not into the sepulchres of the kings of Israel: and  Hezekiah his son reigned in his stead.

2 Chronicles28:26-27

¹ Hezekiah began to reign when he was five and twenty years old, and he reigned nine and twenty years in Jerusalem. And his mother’s name was Abijah, the daughter of Zechariah. ² And he did that which was right in the sight of the Lord, according to all that David his father had done. ³ He in the first year of his reign, in the first month, opened the doors of the house of the Lord, and repaired them.

2 Chronicles 29:1-2

During management training, I first heard of the difference between accountability and responsibility. A manager could delegate tasks and make an assistant responsible to complete them. However, the company held the manager accountable to make sure the task was completed.

Hezekiah’s father, Ahaz, is synonymous with evil. The summary of his life at the end of 2 Chronicles 28 records his idolatry, God’s anger towards him, and his exclusion from the royal cemetery.

Despite the example set by Ahaz, Hezekiah launches into his reign with righteous choices. The initial description of his rule declares that he obeyed the LORD. Following not in the footsteps of his father, Ahaz, but rather in the path of a more distant ancestor, King David.

Ahaz, the father, was responsible to train up his son in the ways of God, but God held Hezekiah accountable for his actions. Hezekiah could very easily have made the excuse of having a bad example put before him, but instead, he assesses the truth and plots a course himself. He does not let his upbringing determine his character nor his past to determine his future. He holds himself accountable for his actions, just as he knew God would one day.

The successes or failures of parents, pastors, teachers, or family cannot be held accountable for the person you are today.

You are your own person. You can choose to take the hurt and turn it to strength. You can choose to learn from failures, your own and those of others, and learn from them. You can break the chains of sin from those who have come before you and chart a new course, and set a better example, for those who follow you.

We must all hold ourselves accountable, even if others around us have failed in their responsibilities before God and toward us.