The Process is the Purpose

We have all heard it said: "There's a purpose in the process." It is meant as a statement of comfort. We can know that, no matter how challenging some situations are, we will be able to look back and know that we 'learned something'. "Hindsight is 20/20," is commonly used in conjunction with this idea. All of this feels good to us. We know that, in the end, 'it'll all work out'. Are you tired of the cliche phrases yet?

Christen flipped this whole notion on its head one day as we were talking. I don't know if this idea originated with her, but she's who I heard it from first. She said, "The process is the purpose." That's a much more truthful and much less comfortable way of looking at life. And yet, it is also the most biblical.

You see, when you spend your time thinking about what 'purpose' there is in your current 'process', you miss what's happening at the moment for the sake of contemplating what the results of the process will be. You become destination-minded. You're always wondering about 'arriving' and 'getting there', not realizing that there is no 'there' at which to 'arrive'.

The danger in this type of thinking is that you miss all that God has for you now. The focus is past and future, not present. You focus on the past because you're realizing all the things God did in and for you in a previous season, and you focus on the future because you can't wait to look back on the season you're in now to see what you can learn. In the meantime, you completely skip everything that's actually happening in real time.

OR

You can change your focus to precisely where God has you now, and you can begin to enjoy the situations in which you find yourself because you trust in the One working out the process. It is at this moment that your eyes are finally and truly open to what God is doing in you. This is sanctification.

I am in a process right now, a process that is at once excruciating, beautiful, trying, encouraging, intimate, lonely, powerful, and humbling. In a word, it's hard. By recognizing that God has so much for me now, at this moment and not just the moments 'down the road', I have been able to sense a nearness to God that I would have missed had I been only past and future focused. God wants me to know the immensity of His plan, and so He sends me stories from strangers every day - people I have never met telling me how Christen's blog or my blog or the funeral message of my Facebook posts have encouraged them, built them up, brought them to salvation, and transformed their lives. Every day. I rejoice in that.

At the same time, He has given me the grace to weep bitterly over my feelings of loss and loneliness, and in those moments He has drawn close like the loving Father He is. When I pray, He answers immediately and undoubtedly. I ask for grace to get through a day, and it is provided. I ask Him to help me understand, and He brings understanding through a story or His Word or through the comfort of His voice. He reassures me that He is in control, that He has not been caught off guard, that He weeps with me while simultaneously rejoicing with Christen. He is sweet and uncompromising. I have had the privilege of experiencing this because I learned from Christen that, for me, the process is the purpose. I'll know I've 'arrived', that I'm 'there', when I like Christen hear, "Well done."