What happens if Jesus actually meant what He said?

This blog post is coming from a place of messiness, like a garden that had the soil all turned up and there is dirt everywhere and its overflowing the boundaries. I'm writing, not from a place of experience at all, but a place of longing, of desire for something more.

I've read the stories of Jesus and His disciples my whole life.
But in these past few weeks I'm reading the gospels like its all new and its messing me up.
I read about Jesus healing people and loving them and restoring them and bringing hope and life and transformation and about how He said to do the same things and even greater than Him. I read His teachings on humility and gentleness and about loving the poor and giving what you own to those who have nothing. About loving your enemies and about caring for your neighbour the same as yourself. About sharing and selling and eating together and poverty and hospitality and generosity... and for maybe the first time in my life, I'm realising that Jesus meant what he said.
It wasn't symbolic or meant for the disciples only or for an elite group of believers.
This is meant for everybody.
And when I believe this I can no longer be okay with my life.

I tried to go to sleep last night but I ended up on my knees long past midnight crying to Jesus because there is this tension beating in my heart, a holy dissatisfaction with my individualistic, sheltered life of consumption. It's time to be teachable, willing and interruptible. 
Things are going to change.

For the past couple of years there has been two themes that God keeps resurfacing in my life. Authentic community and radical simplicity.
And now I'm going to take those two themes and marry them with the beautiful mess that comes with believing the gospel might actually be for real and jump head first and eyes closed into a life experiment in both of them.

I don't know what this will look like and I'll probably make some choices that my family and most of my friends will disapprove of, label as extreme or will pass off as being "just a phase she's going through".
That's okay.
I get it. I probably would have said those same things to myself a little while ago...

Why do I want to throw myself into this messy embrace of community and simplicity?

1. Jesus did it.
2. This is my attempt at rebellion against an individualistic consumer culture that is destroying our nation and stealing what is precious.
3. Because I believe in the value of knowing people on a deep level and doing life with them rather than alongside them.
4. Because I can no longer look at the immense inequality in this world and be okay with having more than I need.
5. Because the church was born with community and vulnerability and simplicity and togetherness. Over the years she's been deceived about what's important, just like the rest of the world, but now it's time to gently begin leading her back to her roots.

So I've chosen 7 different areas to target and I will focus on each of them for 4 weeks at a time, making this a 7 month long experiment.

Month 1= Minimising my possessions
Month 2 = Eating like the rest of the world
Month 3 = Talking to Strangers
Month 4 = Quitting cyber communication and practicing it in real time
Month 5 = Serving the Dunedin community
Month 6 = Knowing my neighbours
Month 7 = Intentionally creating quality time

I don't know what it will look like... I have no expectations really. I know it will be hard sometimes and beautiful other times and sometimes both at once. I am hopeful and willing to re learn everything I thought I knew about these subjects, I want to approach all of this with a teachable, humble heart and I know that God will be gentle with me, because He always is.

All I know is that there's been underground work going on in me for sometime, and now it has all come together in a holy mess and I am unwilling to continue to live in agreement to this culture of consumption. We consume resources, food, time, space and each other with a violence that cannot continue... I have no idea what this will be like, but it starts today.
At the end of this month I will write a post about what I learned and felt and achieved through this experiment of giving away my possessions. If anybody reads this and is also feeling the same tension in their own life and wants to embark on this journey with me... I would love more than anything to not be doing this by myself. Because if I'm honest with you, I'm scared.

Lord, let it begin.