Several Sundays ago Scott retrieved our boys from Bible class. Racing out onto the church lawn, six- year-old Joey headed straight for our Suburban in the parking lot at the edge of the grass and leaped onto the back bumper. He jumped up and down for a moment, shaking the car, then ran to the front of the vehicle and climbed onto the hood. Joey was in the process of scaling the front windshield when Scott yelled, “Joey you’re freaking out. Get off the car!”

“I gotta get my crazy out!” Joey hollered back.

“Get off the car, Joey. Now.”

“Dad, I’ve been in church for over an hour. I gotta get my crazy out!”

Fortunately, I was not there to witness this wildness. Scott just told me about it later that evening while I was bemoaning the fact that nice Christian people often act up at sporting events.

“It’s like Joey,” My husband explained during our conversation. “Christians hold it together most of the time, but then something triggers them, and their crazy comes out.”

This got me thinking… what makes me crazy? Recently, while studying the book of James in the Bible, I realized my crazy happens when my buttons are pushed.

You know those buttons: someone who knows you far too well says or does something that immediately gets a rise out of you. My mom can do this to me quite well. Scott can too. So can my kids.

Lately, I’ve been praying that God would break those buttons inside me. That my hot spots just wouldn’t respond anymore to people or events that upset me. In mulling this whole thing over, I realized the buttons are not the real problem. The true issue is “the crazy” inside me. Somehow I must allow God to get in there and cut that crazy out.

Seeking answers on how to do this, I picked up my Bible. I believe every truth I will ever need lies in the Bible. Asking the Holy Spirit to guide me, I popped opened my Bible and let the pages fall where they may. When I first became a Christian, this is how I read my Bible. “Lord speak to me,” I would say, then I would just open the Bible and begin reading wherever I landed.

Now that I’ve walked with the Lord a number of years, I’m more intent about how I study the word, making sure I stick to a daily reading plan and also follow devotionals. But still when I really, really want to hear God, I say a desperate prayer, and then more desperately open my Bible.

Today, in addressing “the crazy” question, I landed on the book of Job. Here is what 31:7 of Job said, “if my heart has been led by my eyes.” The Lord has brought this scripture to my attention before. Years ago I was struggling with a shopping problem, and Jesus said to me the problem is because “your heart is led by your eyes.”

And that was true back then. I’d walk through a store, see something pretty, and then want it. Had I been blind going through that store, I’d only get the things on my list because my eyes wouldn’t be in charge. The list would be in charge.

So now there is a “crazy” inside of me because my heart is led by my eyes. This brings me to another prayer I’ve been repeating lately in my life. “Lord, please let me be compelled by nothing but the love of Christ.” Recently, I realized I’m compelled by a lot of things that are not born out of the love of Christ. Fear sometimes compels me. Pride compels me too. So does approval. And comfort. And security. And then there are those earthly desires…

All these are buttons that push me in ways I don’t want to go. And the buttons are wired to a “crazy” because my heart is often led by my eyes not by the Holy Spirit.

Example: I see my surroundings, the people there, the situations in play, and I respond by sight and not by the faith that pleases God. If I was operating in faith, I would hold my peace because “the peace of God which transcends all understanding would guard my heart and mind through my Lord Jesus Christ” Philippians 4:7.

So this puts me at a place I’ve been many times before… helpless to change myself. There is something broken in me that I can’t fix. Like numerous other Christians, I hold it together most of the time, but then because of some person or circumstance that tweaks me, my crazy comes out. I don’t run across the church lawn and jump on a car like Joey, since I’ve learned enough self-control not to act like a wild boy, but still I hate how I feel when a situation gets the better of me.

As I write this, my eight-month-old son is sitting in his basket at my feet chewing on the baby Jesus. It’s a little Fisher Price toy from a kid’s Nativity scene. Right now I wish I could just swallow a Jesus pill and be done with this crazy inside me. Like taking antibiotics to cure an infection. Yet, according to the Bible, there is a way to heal my heart. It’s found in Psalm 51:10. “Create in me a pure heart, O God and renew a steadfast spirit within me.”

I pray Psalm 51 today for myself, and also for you as you read this blog and long for God to cut your crazy out, too. May the Lord forgive our sins and set us free to walk by faith and not by sight.

“So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen. For what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal” 2 Corinthians 4:18.