ctrl + alt + delete

a few days ago i had dinner with two people who are quickly becoming dear to my heart, Justin and Rebekah Rhodes. the more i hang out with and get to know them, the more i fall in love with them and the spirit of God inside of them. side note - these guys have a picture of Hitler and bin laden on their wall, as a reminder to love and pray for their enemies.

over Honduran beans and rice, chips and salsa, and Rebekah's good ol' sweet tea, we all expressed our desire to "start over". to press ctrl + alt + delete on everything we've ever been taught or heard in the church and to just simply fall in love with the raw, authentic person of Jesus. no more watered down, pop christianity. if you read the NT, following Jesus was never "pretty". people got dirty, it hurt, and sometimes they even lost their lives, literally. to know this same Jesus today is so cluttered that it "becomes hard to know who Jesus really is, much less to imagine that Jesus ever laughed, cried, or had poop that smelled." (shane claiborne)

i wish it was as easy as restarting a computer.

justin grew up in the church, getting born again {again} without seeing any real transformation in his life. 5 yrs ago, he went on a search for truth. he blacked out the commentaries (words of man) in his bible and started a book entitled "what i believe." he was on a mission to define his faith and live each word based on the red letters.

today, Justin, Rebekah, and their 18 mth old son, Jonah, are living, breathing examples of Jesus and His heart and love for community.

in the words of shane claiborne:
" but we live in a world that has lost its appreciation for the small things. we live in a world that wants things bigger and bigger. we want to super size our fries, sodas, and church buildings. but amid all the super sizing, many of us feel God doing something new, something small and subtle. this thing Jesus called the kingdom of God is emerging across the globe in the most unexpected places, a gentle whisper amid the chaos. little people with big dreams are reimagining the world. little movements of communities of ordinary radicals (radical itself means 'root') are committed to doing small things with great love."

Justin and Rebekah are two ordinary radicals. loving and giving of themselves and all that God has entrusted to them. housed on 75 acres out in the country they are living out community, growing all their own food, raising chickens and a cow, teaching and learning from the young people that God brings their way, having "church" in a barn, and loving the least of these. from Fletcher, NC to Honduras, Central America.

they are pure, raw, grassroots, living examples of the red letters.

i want to give up christianity in order to follow Jesus. i feel so thirsty for God, so smothered by christianity, and so ready for something more. i want to learn all over again, or maybe for the first time, what it means to really follow Jesus.