“5 Now this is the message we have heard from Him and declare to you: God is light, and there is absolutely no darkness in Him. 6 If we say, ‘We have fellowship with Him,’ yet we walk in darkness, we are lying and are not practicing the truth. 7 But if we walk in the light as He Himself is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus His Son cleanses us from all sin. 8 If we say, ‘We have no sin,’ we are deceiving ourselves, and the truth is not in us. 9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness. 10 If we say, ‘We dont have any sin,’ we make Him a liar, and His word is not in us.”
1 John 1:5-10
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And this is where personal honesty and introspection comes into the picture. Most of us who follow Christ would never say or intentionally try to give the impression that we believe that we are perfect. Part of coming to Christ in the first place is that admission that we are not, that we are indeed flawed and in need of a Savior. We will acknowledge that in front of others. But when it comes to the daily, practical living out of our faith, then we must also be willing to look at our pet sins, our attitudes and beliefs.

If we say that we sin in certain areas, but we never acknowledge it in others, what good does that do for us? If we confess sins that people see, but refuse to acknowledge the deeper sins lodged in our hearts, then we are only deceiving ourselves. To look at our lives, seeing that there are no -glaring- sins and assume that we must be okay is to deny the work of Christ that said we claimed at the beginning.

If we want to say that Christ is Lord of our lives, He must be Lord of every aspect of who we are. He cannot be simply our Savior, and not our Lord, because then pride is in the way. He cannot be Lord of only our hearts, and we still speak like we did before we met Him. We must be fully His, wholly given over to His reign and influence. To say we are in Him, but we still look and act like the world is to say that He permits sin, rather than the truth, which is that He was crucified, died and was buried to cover our those sins in our hearts and lives. He was raised again to give us new life, not just in the future at the Day of the Lord, but now, today, in this moment.

If we are going to GoLove people and give that to God as worship, then we must do it in spirit and in truth, and that means that our whole self is His and reflects Him. Disband your worldly habits, disconnect those leads that draw you from Him, and be honest with yourself and honest with God. Let His light probe to the deepest parts of your heart and excise anything that does not honor Him. He is faithful and just and will cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

That is love.