What Scripture Calls “Processing”
Processing simply refers to the way God uses people, circumstances, challenges, and opportunities to develop our character, wisdom, and leadership capacity over time. In other words:
real life becomes the classroom where God shapes Christlikeness.
What Processing Is
Processing includes the events and relationships God allows to form our values, skills, and understanding—everything from encouragement and opportunities to misunderstandings, obstacles, and difficult people.
What Transformation Means
Transformation is the slow, steady shift of heart, mind, and behavior toward the likeness of Christ. It includes learning to love well, to obey, to forgive, and to trust God in ways that change how we actually live and lead.
What “Process Items” Are
Process items are the specific situations God uses in our formation. Clinton identified more than fifty throughout Scripture. Paul highlights nine core ones that shape the “pure heart, clear conscience, and sincere faith” described in 1 Timothy 1:5.
The Nine Core Process Items
These nine categories represent the kinds of experiences God regularly uses to form leaders. They fall under three “means” that shape a loving heart:
Pure Heart
Word Check – Learning to submit to Scripture as the authority that shapes our decisions and desires.
Authority Check – Learning healthy submission to God and mutual submission to others.
Sovereign Guidance – Learning to recognize and respond to the voice and leading of the Holy Spirit.
Clear Conscience
Integrity Check – Aligning our choices with biblical values.
Relational Insights – Growing in our ability to live at peace with others.
Spiritual Authority Discovery – Understanding that spiritual authority comes from submission, not position.
Sincere Faith
Faith Challenge – Taking steps that stretch our trust in God.
Obedience Check – Saying “yes” to God even when circumstances feel unclear.
Destiny Revelation – Gaining clarity on God’s future direction and choosing to live intentionally toward it.
When God Takes Us Deeper: The Role of Deep Processing
Many leaders eventually encounter seasons that go beyond normal growth experiences. These are the seasons that feel weighty, disorienting, or stretching in a way we can’t easily explain. Clinton calls this
deep processing—and Paul adapts the concept to help leaders understand the purpose behind these harder seasons.
Deep processing is not punishment. It’s preparation. God uses these seasons to deepen maturity, expand capacity, and anchor us in His love in ways that ordinary life cannot.
Life Transitions
Major life shifts—losses, career changes, aging, or family changes—become opportunities to trust God in new ways.
Life or Leadership Crisis
Moments of intense pressure often reveal where we place our security and where God is inviting us to depend more fully on Him.
Conflict
Conflict becomes a teacher. Through it, leaders learn humility, forgiveness, communication, and discernment.
Leadership Backlash
When decisions meet resistance or are misunderstood, leaders often grow in perseverance, resilience, and grace.
Isolation
Seasons of hiddenness or reduced responsibility create space to hear God more clearly and to be restored.
Spiritual Warfare
Leaders face real spiritual resistance. These moments teach us to stand firm, pray deeply, and rely on God’s strength.
Brokenness
God sometimes brings us to the end of ourselves so His Spirit can lead more fully. Brokenness produces humility—and humility produces love.
What Deep Processing Produces
When leaders endure deep processing with a surrendered heart, the fruit can be profound:
- A deeper experience of God’s love
- A richer dependence on the Holy Spirit
- A new paradigm for leadership
- A greater sensitivity to God’s voice
- Freedom from old patterns
- Clarity of calling and purpose
- A more focused life
- A greater capacity to finish well
Paul calls this “severe mercy”—the kind of mercy that wounds in order to heal and strengthens in order to send.
Walking Through Processing With Hope
Whether you’re in a season of transition, conflict, pressure, or waiting, you are not stuck—you are being formed. God uses every circumstance, big or small, to shape a leader who looks more like Christ and can love others more deeply.
When we recognize His hand in our stories, we begin to see our experiences not as random events but as invitations to growth, trust, and transformation.
