“Rich-ieee!” the gleaming Caribbean, 30 year-old, ex-addict sings my name as the worship music soars and pounds to start the service. We embrace and I can feel the crazy coming off of him. We stand back and I look wildly into his wild-eyed grin, yelping, “Yeah! God likes the crazy people!” And he yelps
back, “Rich-ieee! Because we’ll get crazy for him!”And I let out a cackling howl as the music blares.
This man knows something about “crazy.” He decided to get clean only after a drug deal got him thrown into the trunk of a car; driven into a field in Middle-of-Nowhere, New York; beaten, broken, bloodied, and left for dead until a woman – who just happened to be a Christian – came to the rescue. He is now
every bit as rabid and raving for Christ as he ever was for crack-cocaine.
My Caribbean brother and I rejoice that God has so equipped us to get crazy for Him.
What am I getting at here? Well, my God has a long history of doing things that cause the world to shake its head and cry out, “Madness!” And sometimes He uses a willing wing-nut to carry out His mind-blowing plans.
Now, let me be clear. When I talk about “getting crazy for God,” I am not talking about doing something stupid like taking a leap off of a third-story ledge to prove that God will send His angels to bear you up lest you dash your foot against a stone. Satan failed miserably when he tried to tempt Jesus with that
perversion of scripture. God is not going to ask you to do something stupid, suicidal, or needlessly harmful. He does not need you to handle snakes or drink poison to prove that he is God.
However, God does sometimes call us to do things that seem to set the world ill-at-ease; praying in public, telling a stranger in a bar that Jesus rose from the dead and lives today, speaking out against gay marriage, lifting your hands in worship when the rest of the church is sitting on theirs, firmly but gently
confronting a brother’s false doctrine.
We crazy people are already familiar with the world’s response to that which it deems not quite normal. Therefore, we might have a small advantage when called to some oddball mission. I’m not bragging. It’s just the natural, logical consequences of our rollicking cyclothymia.
Consider God’s mad history. Think of the many biblical characters who did great things at the Lord’s command. How “normal” did they look in the eyes of the world?
Noah built an ark before the world had ever seen rain.
Abraham believed that his wife would conceive a child at the age of 90 and reasoned that God could – and would – raise the dead. And that was a couple of thousand years before Jesus proved it.
Moses went to Pharaoh and demanded, “Let my people go” – because a burning bush told him to do it. I have bipolar disorder, so, I don’t always seem “normal,” but I have never followed the orders of a shrub.
David, a little boy, took on Goliath. Think of a 14 year-old kid taking the football field, lining up against Baltimore Raven linebacker Ray Lewis or Steeler James Harrison, and telling him that he is going to hand him his head. That’s nuts! But on the scale of craziness it measures a little shy of what David
believed he could do when he teamed up with God. Ray Lewis is a hall-of-fame-type linebacker, but he is not 9 feet tall.
John the Baptist lived in the desert, eating locusts, wearing camel’s hair, and telling Scribes and Pharisees to repent. Sounds a little crazy, doesn’t it? Of course, that did get The Baptizer his head handed to him – literally. There was, however, none born of women who was greater than John. (Matthew 11:
11) Why? Because he was anointed by God and followed God’s command to do what looked crazy to the world.
Paul went out and told the world that he had been taken up into the third heaven where God revealed to him unspeakable mysteries. He ended up writing much of the New Testament. (Yes, from prison. He suffered much for looking and sounding crazy.) And he is still reaching the world for Christ. Being
willing to look crazy was a good deal for him – even though it landed him shipwrecked, whipped and beaten, and sent to prison.
And get a load of this rarely quoted gem about Jesus:
“When Jesus family heard what He was doing, they thought that He was crazy and went to get Him under control.” (Mark 3:21, CEV)
We who have bipolar disorder are being prepared to do great things for God. We can praise wildly, witness boldly, pray publicly out loud, touch ‘lepers’ in their pain, and carry Christ where the faint of heart dare not go – without concern for what others might think. Because, for better and worse, we have previously been more than willing to be thought crazy for far less rational purposes.
We have screamed at the top of our lungs, broken down doors, run into traffic, fought with police, risked our lives giddily in the most deadly of neighborhoods, challenged giants, built arks of grand delusions, and eaten worse than locusts – all for foolish and even criminal purposes. How much more can we do for God – no matter how crazy in the eyes of the world?
Drug addicts become ministers. Former drunks witness on city streets and serve the homeless. Convicted felons fight to win souls. And a seven-time psych-warder writes a book blessing bipolar disorder.
“God likes the crazy people, Rich-ieee! Because we’ll get crazy for Him!”
The Lord has used your disorder, your madness, to prepare you. Now, go in peace and get crazy for God. You were made for it!
(WARNING: This does not give anybody who has bipolar disorder free reign to run wild without regard to the law, one’s own safety, or the well-being of others. Getting crazy for God does have its limits.)
This chapter is taken from BLESSED WITH BIPOLAR - by Richard Jarzynka
Richard Jarzynka is the author of "Blessed with Bipolar" He has used the "symptoms" of the disorder to help him counsel clients; run a marathon; grow in his christian faith; and earn a masters degree in psychology, a scholarship to law school, and a football scholarship. He blogs at Bipolar Richard's Almanac.
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