I was a college senior, attended church all my life, read the Bible consistently, and even served in church. But I had moments of intense doubt. Who is God? Is He real? Why doesn’t He feel real? Normally, these questions would bug me for a day or two, then go away when life got busy. I needed a compelling vision of the Kingdom of Heaven.
However, the questions and doubts resurfaced while I was at a Christian retreat in the remote mountains of New Hampshire.
With a heavy heart, I wandered off down to the lake – just a few minutes’ walk from the conference building. I wanted to be alone with God. And so it was a large lake, and like many places in New Hampshire, mountains full of trees surrounded the lake. It was a clear day, so I sat down near the water, to look out at the beauty of creation, to think and pray. Who is God? Is He real? Why doesn’t He feel real?
Seeing the Forest for the Trees
As I sat there, I closed my eyes, and immediately a thought sprang up in my mind. So I said, “God, if you are really there, you can make all these trees disappear.” Why did I say that? “What a silly thought,” I said to myself. I held my eyes shut for a few seconds longer and opened my eyes again. What I saw startled me. I could not see a single tree.
A thick fog had descended on that lake in the brief seconds I had closed my eyes. The fog was so thick I could not see more than a few feet in front of me. The entire mountain range around the lake had completely disappeared. God, in His love, answered my “silly” prayer, giving me a vision of the Kingdom.
We fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
2 Corinthians 4:18
As I reflect back on that experience, Paul’s words come to mind. By sending the fog, God took me from the world of the seen to the unseen. When I opened my eyes, my eyes were literally opened to a new reality – the reality of His presence and glory. In the same way, Paul’s call to the Corinthians was to see something beyond what is visible to the physical eye. It was to look beyond them, for the eternal and glorious things of God to captivate them.
The Journey of Leadership
In my journey of faith and journey as a leader, God has led me to a place where this is what I want more than anything else – to be captivated by the eternal and glorious things of God. And so I want my eyes to see deeper and deeper into who God is, into His heart for us, a vision of the Kingdom, and to the eternal glory that awaits us. I want to live on this earth with that vision, and like Paul did, lift up the gaze of others to that vision. It’s time to link arms with others, to cry out to God together, “Open our eyes, we want to see!”
I wonder what God will show us. Perhaps it will be a vision of being wrapped up in the eternal embrace of our Father, hearing Him say to us, “I see you. I love you. You are mine.” – both the beginning of our journey and the final summit, and every point in between. Perhaps it will be a vision of being seated in glory with Christ as co-heirs of the King of kings, discovering who we truly are – royalty of an eternal kingdom. Perhaps it will be a vision of the shalom of God coming on earth, the leaves of the tree of life reaching deep into the collective pain of our human experience, mending and healing the nations.
But whatever God shows us, He will lift up His Church to live with greater child-like wonder and faith. Because every other vision rooted in the treasures and glories of this world will dim. We must fix our eyes on eternal glory – a vision of the Kingdom.
Do You Desire a Vision of the Kingdom?
When the blind man came to Jesus in Luke 18, Jesus asked him, “What do you want me to do for you?” The blind man answered, “Lord, I want to see!” Just a simple, yet desperate cry. Jesus opened his eyes. And so I believe this simple, yet desperate cry, is one of the greatest things we can bring to our leadership – linking arms together and crying out to God, “We want to see!” When we cry out to Him, He will reveal to us “great and unsearchable things.” (Jeremiah 33:3)
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