On Being Process Oriented

John 3:16 For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.

I tend to be more focused on the goal than the process. This is usually OK. My profession involves pushing people and materials toward goals that they don't necessarily share with myself. I have to be careful that I don't become focused on the goal to the exclusion of considering the means, but being goal oriented is not normally a bad thing for me.
God is so much more process oriented than goal oriented. At this time of year, Christmas and the birth of Jesus are at the forefront of our conversations. If God was goal oriented He would have installed a fully adult Jesus as an earthly King of the World. He could sit on His throne and solve the problems of anyone He deems worthy. It really would have cut out a lot of the messy parts of the story! Instead God comes to earth as man, born of a virgin. He spends years growing to adulthood. Then He starts working with a whole group of unreliable people. (Your going to build your church on PETER???) A few years later Jesus allows Himself to be hung on a cross and crucified. What kind of process requires the protagonist to die? Any man looks at this process and sees madness. What goal could God possibly be headed towards?
God doesn't want us to be quite so goal oriented. That's His job. Our job is to wait patiently for His will to be revealed to us. Our job is to be certain that we remain in His will. My biggest problem is that I'm a very inconsistent Christian at this point in my life. I know that I want to be in God's will. Every once in a while I get goal oriented again and I want to start driving the process towards my goal. Notice I said MY goal. Whenever I take the wheel it's to be MY goal. It's not God's. God's process sometimes seems messy. It very often seems headed towards goals that are, shall we say, sub-optimum. But only the driver really knows where we are going and how we are to get there. Even though it sometimes seems like we are careening out of control down a one-way street I need to just sit back and enjoy the ride.
We have been very goal oriented lately as we fill out our medical forms and schedule interviews, etc. If I had my way, we would spend 48 hours immersed in the application process and the IMB would render a decision and we would go on with our lives as missionaries or not. Thank God for Christian brothers. Tim Judy reminded me today to enjoy the process and stop focusing quite so much on the goal. God doesn't want us to just float with the wind as even He has a plan in which we are invited to participate. But He does want us to let go of the planning.
I suspect that God has a very full slate of concepts that I need to learn in the next year. I am so thankful that teaching me is not my responsibility! I am impatient for the process to move along. I've made the decision to give up anything and everything if that is what I'm called to do. Now I am learning that control of the destination is part of what I'm giving up.
Scott