Chase Your Crazy
Author’s Note: Be sure to read to the end to see one of the craziest, goofiest ways a person was called to a particular ministry!
One of the things I love about scripture is how illogical it can be at times.
Some examples:
When God chose Gideon to lead the Israelites against the powerful army of Midian, God had him reduce his forces from 32,000 men to all the way down to 300 men before going to battle. And when it came time to do battle, God caused a confusion among the Midianites, who wound up attacking and killing each other in the chaos of the night.
God allowed Rahab, a harlot, to be in the lineage of Jesus because she assisted the Israelites who were spying out Jericho. She is listed as the mother of Boaz, who is the father of Jesse, who is the father of King David, who is in the direct line of Jesus.
Then when it came time to storm Jericho, God instructed the Israelites to march around the city for 6 days and then, on the seventh day, march around 7 times and blow their trumpets. That’s how this incredibly fortified and intimidating city fell.
When it came time for Jesus, the Savior of the world, to come into the world as fully God and fully man, God sent an angel to a humble peasant girl named Mary to notify her that she would give birth to the Messiah.
And when it came time for the Messiah to be born, it wasn’t in a palace or a mansion but in a cow stall.
Those are just a few examples of the completely illogical nature of how God uses His people for His purposes.
And it’s not just a collection of interesting stories from people thousands of years ago. In fact, God wishes to do the illogical with you and I every single day.
You know why? Because God wants people to look at what happened and say, “There’s no way they did that in their own strength.” He wants to receive the glory, not because He’s a glory hound, but so that people will take one look at what happened and believe that there is a God and that He cares about the details of my life.
As I look back on my life, in every great move that God did in and through me, there was a time that I told someone - either my wife or a close friend - “this may sound crazy, but I think God wants me to do…”
I’ve had that conversation literally a dozen or more times. And, to be honest, it did sound crazy at first, but the further that I pursued it, the more God began to confirm - to me and to others close to me - that He was at work.
I have so many stories to tell and I trust that we’ll get to them, but let me start with one of the goofiest, craziest ways He ever called me somewhere.
I was a Youth Pastor in North Carolina at the time and our youth group was doing a Mission Boot Camp at Fort Caswell on the NC coast. Most of our group was doing construction or painting and I remember it being about 98 degrees every day. So after a day of working in the scorching heat in the community and then doing worship and group Bible study in the evening, you were ready to go to sleep.
My group was in the barracks with several other groups. Each barracks was divided into four quadrants, with each quadrant holding about 50 people all sleeping in bunk beds in an open area. To say the least, there wasn’t very much privacy.
One other thing: there was a boys’ barracks and a girls’ barracks side by side. They looked exactly the same. That will be relevant in a few moments!
Near where I bunked, there was a very large man (a chaperone from another group) who snored louder than perhaps any person I had ever heard. I couldn’t block him out and therefore I couldn’t get much sleep. This went on for a couple of nights.
By the third day in the heat and no sleep at night, I was exhausted. I tried to nudge the sleeping bear to get him to roll over, but he was so startled that he immediately went into Kung Fu mode. I was like, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, you were snoring.” Within a couple minutes - after going into fight or flight mode - he was back to snoring the night away. It was like one of those cartoon scenes.
I decided enough was enough and that I had to get some sleep. I went out to the church bus and slept straddled across two seats, setting my alarm so I could go back into the barracks before everyone woke up.
The alarm rang and I stumbled out of the bus. I was a little disoriented but was glad to have finally gotten some rest. I walked into the barracks and was about to climb up to my top bunk when a shadowy figure sat up and said, “Excuse me, may I help you.” But it wasn’t a man’s voice or even a boy’s.
In my disorientation, I had stumbled into the girls’ barracks by mistake! I was mortified! I froze for a second and said the only thing that came to mind, “Oops!” And I turned tail and quickly retreated to the right barracks.
A couple of things happened over the next few days. I told my group the idiotic thing that had happened to me and everyone had a good laugh.
But the lady who spotted me in the barracks was telling everyone she knew to be extra careful because a “heavy-set man with a beard” had tried to sneak into the barracks. Two things: I didn’t have a beard (just hadn’t shaved for 3 days) and I did weigh about 50 pounds more back then, but I’m not sure I qualified as heavy set!
Anyway, as news circulated throughout the camp about this potential intruder and some of my youth were telling of my misadventures, some of the youth from our respective groups who had become friends during the course of the week began to put two and two together.
I was the mysterious intruder. Our youth introduced me to “the shadowy figure” and her to the “mystery intruder.” Case closed. Mystery solved. Again, everyone had a big laugh and we wound up becoming friends as the week went on.
Near the end of the week, she mentioned that her group was currently without a Youth Pastor and handed me a piece of paper with contact info on it if I was interested. I was happy where I was and I didn’t think a lot about it at the time. But I would be lying if I denied at least a little intrigue.
Soon after returning home, something strange happened. Suddenly, a church I had never heard of before that was over an hour away began popping up on my radar in unexpected ways. Multiple times in the next week, God divinely orchestrated it where this church would come front and center in my world. It was definitely more than coincidence. I knew that God was trying to get my attention, so I got out the contact info my new friend from that church had given me and I made the call and God began opening doors.
There were so many reasons not to go. We were in a healthy, growing church. We had good friends there. We were close to family. My wife was running a thriving preschool ministry at another church and they were on the verge of starting a Christian school there, so she absolutely did not want to move at first.
But the more we dug and the more we prayed, we realized that God was calling us to leave our comfort zone and step out into the unknown.
There were more twists and turns to the story, but the moral of the story is that when you see God doing unusual things in your circumstances, pay attention. Chase your crazy! God works in the illogical. Don’t ignore it. Don’t run from it. Move toward the crazy.
Who knew that stumbling into the wrong barracks that fateful week at Caswell would change my family’s life?
We would spend the next 24 years of our lives in that community and would go on to build some of our closest relationships and do our most significant ministry in that community. And we would have missed it all if we hadn’t chased our crazy.