People Will Think You're Crazy

I wrote this blog awhile back and the response was such across several Nings that I thought I would open it up for discussion. Here it is below. What are you thoughts or experiences? What do you think God is doing?
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If you follow God, people will think you’re crazy. I don’t know how many of you out there are listening, but God is talking. All the time. Not only through flowers, trees, a child’s smile, the soft wind, but He is talking to you into your spirit, or with an audible voice you can hear. If you get still enough, you will hear Him talking. He has something to say about everything in your life. From what shoes you have on, to what you’re about to say now, to who you marry.

I heard God tell me to quit my job in March 2008, when jobs were hard to find. People thought I was crazy. That is humans’ greatest fear, I now believe – that people will think they are crazy. God told me not to job hunt but to write children’s stories. I did. People thought I was crazy. No money fell from heaven, God led me to no great money making venture and so I gave up my apartment, as the money dwindled. Then I gave up my car to the bank. I moved in with my younger sister and lived off of her. People thought I was crazy.

Now I am writing. I’m in my fourth friends’ home living off her. People are sure I’m crazy. God has spoken to me and I am obeying. Sometimes I try to run back to my comfort zone of a job and a pay check, longing for my own place and the ability to take care of myself. Even freelance jobs haven’t worked, or I do them and there’s no money to pay me.

Anyone else having this experience? Are you job-hunting frantically when all God has asked you to do is write and trust Him? People will think you’re crazy. Maybe you’re determined that people won’t think you’re stupid or a member of a cult.
I’m researching this phenomenon:) – listening to God, following His instructions and people thinking you’re crazy.

My mother married a Nigerian she had only met three times. People thought she was crazy but she was convinced this was God’s will for her. I’ve watched her over the 53 years of their marriage, never waver from that, even through separations & rifts and joys & sickness. Whatever befell her in the marriage she stayed with, “God told me to marry this man”. People probably still think she’s crazy.

Then I looked in the Word. Jesus’ family openly called him crazy, so much so that it was recorded in the gospels. God asked Him to leave His glory in Heaven and come to Earth (imagine one day we’ll understand this). He could have been called crazy by some, especially Lucifer who had lost his glory and knew how horrible it was to be without it.
I haven’t read about Jesus having any job or income generating work, once his ministry started. People must have called him crazy. We are told about his disciples’ jobs, (and even Paul being a tent maker) so I’m sure if Jesus had a job he was actively doing during his ministry, we would have been told. His ministry was his job, as is my writing. He had income or provision. We know that because he had a treasurer, Judas Iscariot. So how did He have an income or provision? His Father was providing for Him and for His disciples. It was really when Mary, his mother, heard he wasn’t eating (or that he and his disciples were too busy with the ministry to eat) that she gathered the family to go get Jesus and bring him home.

He was called crazy and even demon-possessed or under the Devil’s instruction. But He went on. The end result didn’t look good, as mine doesn’t. He kept going on to Jerusalem and there he knew he would die. Jesus wasn’t respected, as we can see the response to Him being the Messiah and God was, “Isn’t this the carpenter’s son?” not “Oh, that makes sense, isn’t this the wonderful boy from Nazereth?”

Interesting that one of the Gospels records that it was when Jesus had resolutely set his face to go all the way to the end – to Jerusalem, did his family rise up with “enough-is-enough” indignation and set out to bring him home. You’ve felt it before. You saw what God could do & you resolutely set your face like flint to do what He said and now here comes your best friend with doubts and your family with indignation.

Another Bible "crazy" was young David? What did he do to deserve being called “crazy”? He was sent to give his brother’s lunch and thought he could beat up the great warrior giant, Goliath. He was called nosey by his brother.

Here’s the thing about being called by God to do something and family call you crazy - they also accuse you. If I am listening to the devil or am crazy, shouldn’t you be praying for me about that rather than being angry with me? David’s brother should have been worried about him but they were angry with him.

If they are calling you crazy, but you know God has appointed you to do a job for Him, keep going. You're in good company. Probably when you completely die to self and the flesh and no longer care what they think, they, like Mary, Jesus' mother, will come to your cross and watch.