Who Are You Becoming in the Process?

The process is producing something in you.

You don’t know some things about yourself until trouble shows up.

Trouble disrupts your life. Trouble brings uncertainty. Trouble puts pressure on what you believe. And being saved doesn’t exempt us from trouble. Life is going to life.

James doesn’t say if you fall into various trials. He says when.

“My brethren, count it all joy when you fall into various trials, knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.” James 1:2–3 NKJV

That word when lets us know trouble is coming. It can be unexpected, unplanned, and unscheduled. But while we may not get to choose when trouble comes, we do have a choice about how we respond to it.

And somewhere in the middle of the process, we need to ask ourselves a different question.

Who am I becoming in this?

FAITH TURNING POINT

For a long time, my first question in trouble was why.

Why did this happen?

Why am I going through this?

Why did God allow this?

Why me?

But I’ve learned that sometimes why will keep you looking backward when God is trying to do something in you right where you are.

I went into some situations asking why, but somewhere in the process I started asking, What?

God, what is this here for?

What are You showing me?

What are You developing in me?

What needs to change in me?

What am I supposed to learn here?

Stop asking God why and ask Him what.

That shift matters because James tells us that trouble has a job.

It produces.

WHAT I HAD TO UNLEARN

I had to unlearn the idea that getting out of the trial was always the goal.

Sometimes we are so focused on when something is going to end that we miss what God is doing while we are in it.

I may not know when this is going to end.

I may not know how it is going to turn out.

I may not understand why it happened.

But I KNOW something.

IT PRODUCES.

James says, “knowing that the testing of your faith produces patience.”

That means something is happening in me while something is happening to me.

God tests us to grow. The devil tempts us to fold.

There is a difference.

Testing reveals. Testing develops. Testing exposes what is really there.

A faith that can’t be tested can’t be trusted.

We can say what we believe when everything is going well. But pressure has a way of revealing whether what we say we believe has actually taken root in us.

WHAT RESTORATION TAUGHT ME

Restoration taught me that I have to cooperate with the process.

James continues:

“But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.” James 1:4 NKJV

LET.

That one word puts some responsibility on me.

God can use the trial, but I have to let the process do its work.

I can fight it.

I can resist it.

I can become bitter in it.

I can keep trying to escape it.

Or I can let God use it.

Don’t abort the process.

Because the goal isn’t simply to say, “I made it through.”

The goal is to come through changed.

More mature.

More rooted.

More discerning.

More patient.

More dependent on God.

More aware of what is in me that still needs His attention.

The destination James gives us is “perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

That doesn’t mean flawless. It means mature. Developed. Becoming what God intended the process to produce.

There have been things I’ve gone through that I would have never chosen for myself. But when I look at who I was when I entered them and who I became while walking through them with God, I can see something clearly.

The trouble didn’t change who God was.

It changed something in me.

RESTORATION REMINDERS

Trouble has a job.

The testing of your faith produces something.

Pressure will expose what you really believe.

God is not only concerned about getting you out. He is working on who you are becoming while you are in it.

Don’t abort the process just because the process is uncomfortable.

We LET because it PRODUCES.

MIRROR MOMENTS

Think about the season you are in right now.

Not just what is happening around you.

Look at what is happening in you.

Are you responding differently than you would have a year ago?

Are you praying before reacting?

Are you learning to trust God when you don’t have answers?

Are you becoming more patient?

Has your discernment grown?

Are you recognizing things in yourself that God has been trying to address?

Or are you so focused on getting out that you haven’t stopped long enough to see what God is producing?

HEART CHECK

What if the evidence that God is working is not that the situation has changed yet?

What if the evidence is that you have?

That thing that used to make you lose your peace doesn’t have the same power anymore.

You don’t respond the way you used to respond.

You don’t need the answers you once thought you had to have.

You’re learning how to stay.

How to trust.

How to wait.

How to believe God in uncertainty.

That is growth.

That is the process working.

LET THAT GO

Let go of the belief that every uncomfortable season needs to end immediately.

Let go of the pressure to understand everything while you are going through it.

Let go of the idea that God is absent because the process is hard.

And let go of the version of you that keeps resisting what God is trying to develop.

Don’t just ask, “When will this be over?”

Ask, “Who am I becoming while I’m here?”

JOURNAL PROMPT

What is this season producing in me?

Where can I see evidence that my faith, patience, response, or relationship with God has changed?

What is God asking me to LET have its perfect work instead of resisting, rushing, or trying to escape it?

SCRIPTURE TO MEDITATE ON

“But let patience have its perfect work, that you may be perfect and complete, lacking nothing.”

James 1:4 NKJV

The process is not just about where God is taking you.

Pay attention to who He is developing along the way.

Because if you stay with God in the process, you will not come out the same.

So maybe the question for this season isn’t only, “God, when are You going to change this?”

Maybe the question is:

“God, who are You teaching me to become through this?”