St. Augustine Grass & Surface-Level Faith
This blog post is a little bit about church, and a whole lot about faith. Proceed with caution as I dive in & share my experience as a lover of Jesus who is not involved in a church & hasn’t been for 4 years.
Throughout the past 6 months, I’ve had shrubs, big trees, baby trees, Nandina bushes (ew), thorn bushes, and stumps removed at my house.
As you can imagine…after said removals, I now had dirt spots—big ones and small ones—everywhere.
If you’ve been here before, you probably already know I’m OCD. I like for things to be in order & I like for things to be complete & aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
So, you can imagine how hard it is for me to know the dirt spots exist. Don’t even get me started about having to look at them! *throws up everywhere*
At first, I was determined to buy sod to make my yard appear healthier than it actually was. I wanted my neighbors & passersby to think I had it all together—that my grass was the real deal.
Then one day something shifted in me.
The dirt spots began to feel important.
Inconvenient, but important.
Important because God started using those dirt spots to remind me of my faith & how He longs for me to be radically transformed by the Spirit’s work in my life. He wants what I believe to radically impact the way I live…not just on the surface!
Rather than calculating how many pieces of sod I would need to cover the dirt spots I have in the front, back, and side yard, I found myself wanting to let the grass grow & spread naturally & authentically—one blade at a time.
Don’t get me wrong, I can’t wait until my entire yard is overflowing with St. Augustine grass…but every time I walk by & see another blade of grass has made its way to the surface, I get a restful feeling in my soul & find myself thankful for the sincere growth taking place right before my eyes.
Here’s the thing—
Sod seems to easily lay on top of the surface of our yard but it doesn’t always catch. It looks to be better off than it actually is.
Growing up, my parents had a very large oak tree by the driveway that was surrounded by dirt. They tried to lay sod down numerous times, but it never did catch until this past year…and I’m 29!
I don’t know this to be true but, for blogging purposes…I am going to assume the sod didn’t catch because it was not naturally & truly rooted into the dirt below it. At first glance, it APPEARED to be on the surface, but the roots—the foundation—told a different story. We just didn’t know it at the time.
So, again, whether this can be scientifically proven or not, every time I think about laying down sod, I think about the big oak tree by my parents driveway & their numerous failed attempts to bring life back beneath its shade.
Thus brings me to how God used the dirt spots in my own yard to stir in me a longing to have a faith that is deeply rooted in Christ—not just on the surface.
As I mentioned earlier, I am not in church. I haven’t been for 4+ years. I’ve visited here & there as I have felt led, but it’s not something I have felt “convicted” to step back into at this point in time.
Now, before I keep going, I want to be clear that this is not an anti-church post.
It is, however, a post about the difference between appearing to be walking with Jesus & actually walking with Jesus.
I have a LOT of conversations with folks about church, and have unfortunately come to realize that the status of my church attendance is more important to most (although not all) than the status of my heart & my relationship with Jesus.
People see (or come to know) that I’m not going to church (or at least their definition of it), so they quote scripture *at* me & give me books about the importance of church & send me quotes & blurbs & clips from articles about the importance of church. There is undoubtedly an assumption that I am not pursuing the Lord & His will for my life because I am not seen sitting in a pew every Sunday morning.
I am okay with that.
You see, God longs for my heart to be penetrated by the depths of His love for me & for me to desire Him above all else, and for my life to be built on the foundation of Jesus Christ.
The more I come to know Jesus (which is an ongoing journey that will not be complete on this side of Heaven), the more I come to find that how I live & relate to others matters—how I speak to them, how I listen to them, how I sit with them, how I struggle with them.
If my beliefs aren’t changing the way I live life on a daily basis, do I really know Jesus? Have I truly been transformed? Am I continuing to be transformed, or am I merely gaining more knowledge without ever applying it to my walk?
How do I interact with others? How do they experience me? What do they feel happening inside of them when they leave my presence? Do they desire to know God more, or do they find themselves repulsed by the Jesus I claim to know? In what ways are my beliefs being fleshed out? Does my pursuit of Jesus extend beyond what others see?
It seems my faith in Jesus looks & feels a lot like that single blade of St. Augustine grass making its way to the surface in the middle of my (many) dirt spots.
Onlookers may worry about my spiritual health & my stance with Jesus because the surface of my life doesn’t look like theirs, or perhaps it doesn’t look like that of the religious elite.
I’ve come to realize, however, that I can check off every box next to all the things a “good Christian” should be doing & still look very much unlike Jesus.
If I am not seeking to love others like Jesus & to look more like Jesus, if I am not repeatedly denying myself, picking up my cross, and following Him (always imperfectly), then I have sorely & tragically missed the point.
I could start attending church tomorrow & I know the exhausting conversations would go away. They would come to an abrupt stop because the surface of my life now appeared to others to be in tip-top shape…much like tossing a few sods of St. Augustine grass down in my yard.
That’s just not what I’m about, though.
I refuse to throw down sod so others will assume my walk with Christ is healthy or, better yet, so they will feel better about my relationship with Him.
Rather, I want the foundation of my life to be pure…to be something that took a while to develop! I want there to be evidence of a rocky start…evidence of slow, but ongoing, progress, that started from the ground up…proof of a life that was undeniably sold out for Jesus.
I think it would be a really good thing if we stopped asking, “Where do you go to church?” as if that is evidence of a life laid down for Jesus.
What would happen if we instead starting asking each other, “How’s your heart? How has your relationship with Jesus changed the way you perceive the world? How has it drastically altered the way you treat those around you?”
Attending church every Sunday means absolutely nothing if I am not loving folks of all shapes & sizes Monday through Saturday.
Whether you are in church or not in church, I simply encourage you to ask yourself where you’re at with Jesus…and to camp out there until you know the answer.
If the people we interact with on a daily basis do not get a glimpse of who Jesus is & what He came to do (imperfectly, of course), then we are not living out the true Gospel.
The Gospel is more than a list of do’s and don’t’s. It is a lifestyle change that disrupts the social norm.
Are you truly grounded in your relationship with Christ, or have you just been laying down sod hoping nobody would notice the true status of your heart?
I hope what is truest about me & truest about you is that we love Jesus & we love others—hard—and that we walk authentically with His hand in ours.
No matter the status of our church attendance.