Mick Silva Editing

“I’m telling you, once and for all, that unless you return to square one and start over like children, you’re not even going to get a look at the kingdom, let alone get in. Whoever becomes simple and elemental again, like this child, will rank high in God’s kingdom.” – Matthew 18:3-4 MSG

How long it’s taken me to understand this. How I’ve resisted the knowledge that to get what I really want, I’ve got to face my shame of being no one.

And it’s such a common story: I just wanted to be strong, independent, a self-made man. How shameful is that? Somehow despite all I knew about following Jesus, I still resisted this very humility that’d bring what I was really looking for.

Being healed, whole, and fully alive meant trying many things before I could give up trying.

Just how much of the whole struggle does this part of it make up? I don’t know. But based on how hard it is to hear, let alone do something about, I’m betting it’s more than many of us want to admit.

Knowing what you really want tells you how to proceed. If you know what you’re after, you know your deepest passion. Passion is what gets the work done, but few people are deeply aware of what their passion really is.

Because it’s really difficult to know! We want many things, we serve many masters. Our desires are all over the place. But that’s the core why of our passion, and uncovering the source of that drive, the why, is what makes the most compelling stories.

The archetypal hero is always really in search of her why. It’s a story you can never exhaust because we all somehow know the real reason is always deeper, and no amount of struggle will reveal it until we’re ready to give up trying.

And most will never stop trying because they’re too hurt, too bent on justice, too proud to admit their own faults, and too ashamed to admit their impotence. No one wants to see there’s a deep pathos at the core of life.

There was once a man who came to Jesus asking for his help to change his life. He didn’t know what Jesus would do, but he knew he needed help, and he knew Jesus could do something. He didn’t much care how or even what he did exactly. The strength of the desire overwhelmed every other concern.

When he found Jesus and made his request, he got the surprise of his life. Jesus wanted to know what the man was willing to do. Somehow Jesus knew the very thing that ashamed him the most, and it became the test of his worthiness to receive help. Faced with Jesus’ embarrassing request, the man thought and decided if Jesus was willing to help him, it was worth any loss of dignity and the man agreed. He did it. And Jesus healed him.

But as the man was walking home, he began to wonder what had really happened. Somehow he knew despite Jesus’ obvious power and ability to heal, he’d wanted the man to realize something more than that. In turning his request around, Jesus had asked for trust, and when the man agreed, he’d shown him how to be healed. And it wasn’t after he’d done what Jesus asked, but in the process of doing it he received the miracle.

This revelation was the true healing, the man realized, and as he walked, he began laughing. There was a cosmic joke at the core of life. The master had shown him something that could heal everything in his life, if he could only receive it. Maybe it was always a question of whether he could face the shame of what he feared the most–loss of pride. Only then would he be worthy to receive the thing he needed. That was the key, the test, the secret: the doing it anyway.

Facing your shame may not feel like the way to all you dream. It doesn’t excite me to think of where I might be abased or disrespected today. It certainly doesn’t seem like the reason I wrote a book. But in as much as I came looking for hope of something, and realized even faintly the source of that hope was only in one man, I’d be facing a test at some point to accept my deeper reason and his higher purpose.

The vision for any book of passion is in the shame the writer was willing to face for the true Author. And the doing of it, whatever it required, that was the truest test determining the outcome.

“It is essential to practice the walk of the feet in the light of the vision.” – Oswald Chambers

For the higher purpose,

Mick