katie stromwall's blog

[caption id="attachment_366" align="aligncenter" width="500" caption="The view from Spirit Mountain... beautiful minus the big pole."][/caption]

Friday Night: Meeting with students all morning. Substitute teaching in the afternoon. Hanging out in the Somali mall in the evening with a good friend. Saturday: Lunch with Grandparents. Babysitting at night. Sunday: Taken over by the fear of what people think Monday: Deeply processing life. Tuesday: Gas leak in our apartment. Later Tuesday Night: Date I planned to surprise Nick- Jazz Concert.

Honestly and truly, my life/circumstances are not hard. Not hard at all. But there is something that is extremely hard for me: the thought of someone not liking me. Alas, this life-long fear has been met by the grace of God as of last night when Nick and I went to see a jazz concert by the Jason Harms Band. They played at Bethel College and radically gave me a refreshing perspective.

They just released their new album titled, “The Land of the Fear of Men.” Each song is artistically written about this theme. What does it mean? I wish I could describe to you the haunting and amazing sounds that made up their song, “The Land of the Fear of Men.” They intended for the song to give off a scary and riveting vibe because if we were honest with ourselves, we could see just how debilitating it is when most of our motives behind our words and actions are because of the fear of other people. How we’ll do anything to gain approval. How we are chained to wanting the approval of others… we go so far as to fear each other more than God… so far as to think people are the ultimate judges of our lives rather than God Himself. I’ll be the first to admit this, and am probably the foremost of people-fearers.

Jason Harms expressed this land that we live in very poetically and startlingly in this song. Here are the lyrics to capture its essence:

The Land of the fear of men,
She lies near the Devil’s den
In hollows foul
With praises’ howl.

We’ll travel her now and then
In hopes to secure a friend.
But all are slaves
Or sunk in graves-
The land of the fear of men.

When fears and anxieties
Form Clouds that canopy,
Forfeiting light’s true guide,
We follow our compass, pride.

The Land of the fear of men
Is haunting at every bend.
In oaks of grey
The nooses sway.

Her hills form a prowler’s pen
Ensnaring the singing wren,
Where praises made
Disguise the blade-
The Land of the fear of men

Arguments with Nick often rise out of my tendency to over-evaluate a social situation we were in… did I say the right thing? Do the right thing? Did I cause this person to like me or not? Do they think I’m always… Do they understand where I’m coming from… Did they get the wrong idea when I said… I don’t want people to think that…. And on and on and on! This anxiety and fear of what others think will often result in one of us impatiently telling the other, “You are way too concerned with what people think of you!”

Call me the world’s largest people-pleaser, but Jason Harms helped me see this in a much more horrific and honest way than it actually sounds. People pleasing sounds so frilly. So common. It sounds like I’m just dancing around in a tu-tu handing out May-Day baskets, right? Wrong.

People pleasing is majorly a result of unbelief and fear. Instead of the tu-tu guise, its more like I’m obnoxiously wearing a sign that says, “Please like me! Please! Approve of me!” It is what happens when I do not believe or trust in God’s total love and acceptance of me. The gospel has been said to me in many different ways, but I like this short phrase best that measures our status as believers in front of God: You are more sinful than you could ever imagine, but more loved and accepted by God than you could ever think or dream. Really?! I don’t so much like to hear that “sin” part, but I like the sound of me being loved and accepted. If I’m honest, that’s what I want most. If I don’t understand the depths of God’s love for me, I’ll never understand the security I can have in Him.

It takes BELIEF to feel secure in God’s presence. So why is it so hard to believe in the freedom and forgiveness offered to me in Christ? I think it is pride. What is pride? www.dictionary.com says…

pride
   /praɪd/ Show Spelled Pronunciation [prahyd] Show IPA Pronunciation
noun, verb, prid⋅ed, prid⋅ing.
–noun
1. a high or inordinate opinion of one’s own dignity, importance, merit, or superiority, whether as cherished in the mind or as displayed in bearing, conduct, etc.
2. the state or feeling of being proud.
3. a becoming or dignified sense of what is due to oneself or one’s position or character; self-respect; self-esteem.

The third definition says, “a dignified sense of what is due to oneself…” The gospel doesn’t make sense at ALL because it trumps our dignified sense of what is due to ourselves. Our pride makes us live in this sense of what is due, what we deserve, what we owe, etc. When we can clearly see the depths of our sin and depravity without God, we run to our pride. We think of every possible way to make up for our imperfection. This attempt is the #1 reason that makes the gospel so hard to believe for me. The gospel is a free gift. Its exactly like someone reaching over to slide their VISA card for my grocery bill at the grocery store. My pride and sense of what I owe screams, “Oh, no no! REALLY, PLEASE, you don’t have to do that! Let ME pay, really, they’re my groceries, I should pay for them… I can understand that I owe money to pay for what I picked out, but I cannot understand how someone could just pay for something that I deserve to pay for. And that is the gospel. That is why its so hard to trust in it.

Before trusting in Christ, my sin separated me from God. Paul writes to the Ephesians (new followers of Christ) in verse 2:12 “Remember that you were at that time separated from Christ, alienated from the commonwealth of Israel and strangers to the covenants of promise, having no hope and without God in the world.” Paul is reminding them of who they were without knowing of God’s love. The Ephesians, before they knew about Christ, probably felt how we feel when we don’t hope in God: Like we are on trial every day. And the judges are not God- they are people. Thankfully, the apostle Paul came to their city to tell them about Jesus Christ and how the trial is OVER! The verdict is in- they are sinful, yet loved and approved by God!

Eph 2:13 “But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ.”

The Ephesians must have read Paul’s words with utter surprise when he writes in Eph 2:4-7 “But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ–by grace you have been saved– and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

They must have thought, “WHAT?! God saw us in our sin and LOVED us? And now he wants to be kind to us? IMMEASURABLE grace? What does that even mean?

I find myself feeling like a lost Ephesian hearing the gospel for the first time. My only hope use to be that people would approve of me somehow. I only lived in the Land of the Fear of Men. But now, as a Christian, the Land of the Fear of Men has not gone away. I still travel there probably daily. Because a lot of the time I just don’t believe its true- that God’s love for me is so steadfast and secure- that I am actually completely detached from the viewpoint, ridicule, judgment, false accusation, or praise from people.

I am so accustomed to living like I am on trial in the world’s eyes and it is so hard to believe that the trial is over because some man came and died on a cross for my sin some 2,000 years ago… its so easy to let doubt take over the truth… but God is faithful, and if I begin to completely doubt his love and reality, He’ll find a way to show me all over again. And my doubt cannot stop God.

What is GLORIOUS is that, if we are trusting in Christ, even if we don’t “feel” secure in His presence, we ARE and we cannot be separated from it. Paul writes in Romans 8:35- 39

“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ? Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword? Just as it is written, “For Thy sake we are being put to death all day long; we were considered as sheep to be slaughtered.” But in all these things we overwhelmingly conquer through Him who loved us. For I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.”

This security in a relationship with God begins when a sinner’s eyes are opened and suddenly all of the ways that they’ve been living and thinking begin to feel heavy and they begin to wonder and question everything. They feel like an overinflated balloon of secrecy that needs to be popped, exposed, confessed, and repented of. At least, this is exactly how I felt my junior year of college. I was so inflated with sin, that I popped. I began to expose myself to Christian women in my life and repented of the sin I had been hiding to God- and nothing has ever felt so good, so refreshing, so FREEING in all my life. I have never felt newer than I did once I let go of my old life and began all over again.

So… if its true that God’s love for me is ALWAYS there, always singing over me, I can truly feel secure at all times. Caring what people think of me more than what God thinks of me is because I don’t understand what God thinks of me. Its like walking on thin ice thinking that A) Wow. God must be smiling on me today because of all of the rules I followed and all of the good things I did. Or B) God must hate me because of the words I just spoke or because of the lies I just told, etc. If “what God thinks of me” is based on my successes or failures, then I don’t have a chance at feeling secure in his presence! Not feeling secure in His presence leads me to search for security, love, and approval from everyone but Him.

Because Christ lived and died in my place, I can feel so secure in God’s love for me, that I can live detached from what people think of me. How do I attain this status with God? The status where he pardons my sin and sees me as clean, made new, perfect and beautiful? I repent of the things that aren’t glorifying to God in my life and trust in Christ. I surrender my burdens, anxieties, and fears in to His hands. I melt at His compassion and mercy over my life. I relish in this new identity. In this new era of freedom of which I never knew before I trusted Christ. To “trust Christ” isn’t just some Christian jargon. It means to believe that when He died on the cross, it was enough to cover all of our sin. It was the payment we deserve, but now we are promised eternal life through Christ.

So, last Tuesday night, when I was angered by the gas leak in our apartment, I was able to slip away into the beat and song of the Jason Harms Band. I was awakened to my unbelief in God’s love and acceptance of me and reminded that His love is always there, and nothing can separate me from it. Nothing can free me more from what others think of me than knowing what God thinks of me.

He doesn’t accept me because of myself, but because of Christ.

Amen to what God can do through jazz music!