He Sees You

I visited Yale University, perhaps the most beautiful college campus in America. Most of the architecture is a reproduced Oxford University, and I went back in time to when I did a summer program at Oxford, and one of my short-lived dreams was to get a masters and doctorate at Cambridge, then teach at a prestigious university like this one.

It was short-lived because I had an even-more presumptuous dream of becoming a writer whom these professors taught about. Yeah, right, Lundell.

God got me and spared me from my ding-a-ling ego. Eventually, I felt God’s calling to fully commit myself in service to the Kingdom of God. And God led me to one of the top seminaries in America. So I got the prestige after all, but in the Christian sphere. Whoopee! How impressive.

Then I got into God’s upside-down kingdom of serving in small churches and a small Bible college. My churches have had no earthly prestige, and my training of pastors has no earthly prestige.

I passed by Yale professors’ offices, thinking what it might have been like. But if that were my holy grail, an empty one it would have been because it wasn’t God’s design for me. As I looked onto one of the beautiful yards surrounded by the Elizabethan English architectural style I love, I felt God open a new perspective to me.

It was as if God said something like, “They’ve built a beautiful kingdom, haven’t they?”
To which I thought, They sure have.
And then came this impression: “As impressive as it is, it’s still an earthly kingdom. It’s not mine.”
That gripped my soul.
“I see you. What you’re doing has no worldly prestige. But it has value in my kingdom.”

I applied these thoughts to what we call the whole counsel of Scripture, and it rang true. So I’m happy in this obscure life because I only care about an audience of one, my heavenly Father.

If you serve God in a kingdom-oriented ministry, be encouraged. If you volunteer your free time to a kingdom-oriented ministry, be encouraged. You may not have worldly prestige—and I’m not knocking prestige. You may not be what the world admires—and there is much to admire. But be encouraged. And patient. And confident. Your kingdom service has eternal value. And you have a Father in Heaven who sees you.