“From Groaning to Glory”
by Dayle K. Barrett
Sunday, May 17, 2025
Reading: Romans 8:18-39
What are you waiting for?
We're all waiting for something, right? Some of us might be waiting to get past something or to enter something new that we're expecting. Life never feels quite like it's finished, does it? We're always in a period of some sort of anticipation. Sometimes our waiting is joyful for something that we're expecting that we're very excited about. And sometimes our waiting is a kind of groaning, a yearning for something different than the experience that we're currently having.
Waiting happens in different forms, some more consequential than others. I actually did quite a bit of waiting over the last couple of weeks. I just got back from the UK last night, and my flight was delayed. There I was waiting in the airport for this plane to finally arrive so that I could board and get on with my day. And then you get onto the plane, and you shuffle past all the people sitting in the seats you'd much rather be in, and you finally get to yours and you sit down between this stranger on the right and this stranger on the left. And you're lucky enough to have a screaming infant two rows behind you, because you know, life is great. For this eight-hour journey, you're constantly groaning a little bit. Why did I do this again? Why do I keep getting on these big steel tubes that I know I don't like and flying through the sky to destinations? But you do it, you do it over and over again because you know that the place that you're going is worth the trip, right?
As Paul said, “the sufferings of our present time are not to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.” Every so often we go through things that we'd rather not go through in order to reach a destination that we know is better, greater, more consequential than the thing we're actually going through at the time. One of our congregants I met with this morning said that she used to work in physio. She said the motto of the physio team she worked with was “present pain for future gain”. Because sometimes someone would be laying there and the way they had to contort the body, the things they had to do with the limbs and the joints in order to bring about healing were deeply painful. And you'd hear the groan of the patient on the table as they suffered what was necessary to reach a destination of greater mobility, strength and health.
Yet knowing that doesn't take away the groan, it? The painful stuff is still painful even though you know there's something good coming at the end of it. The uncomfortable stuff is still uncomfortable even though you know you're going somewhere that you'd really like to be. Because hope doesn't transcend time and space, friends. We still have to live with life.
So, I get to the UK, visit with my family for a little bit and then towards the end of the trip I take a few days to go to one of my favourite places in the whole world, which is a monastery, St. Augustine's Abbey in Chilworth, Surrey. The brothers there, great group of guys, have eight services a day – very, very prayerful, very, very reflective. My favourite thing about the place is that it's so remote that by the time I get there from the train station, my phone isn't working anymore. So even if I wanted to check emails, I just can't. If World War III started while I was praying, I would have had no idea. It was a really great place to be. But my experience was different this time, because this time I was blessed enough to be there through Thursday, which as Joanne mentioned, was the Feast of the Ascension of our Lord.
And what a feast it was. It was a completely different place on that Thursday than it was every other time I had been there. It's because in these monasteries, the Benedictine order gives them certain rules. There's no talking in the cloisters or over dinner or in the corridors. Everything's very quiet and very solemn and very peaceful in order to direct you towards reflection and contemplation and prayer. But on this day, which happened to be called a solemnity, it wasn't quite as solemn. The services were still very prayerful and contemplative and reflective. But when you went into the corridors and sat with a meal, all those other rules that applied on other days didn't apply in the same way. There was riveting conversation and joy and fellowship. Everyone was having a great time, which caused me to learn something. The first thing I learned was I think the Puritans really screwed us over. I don't know why none of our liturgical feasts involve Sambuca, but theirs do and I think they're Christian-ing better than us, just saying.
The other thing I learned was that ascension was this great opportunity for joy. It was something they were excited about, something that changed the way they lived and interacted with each other. It forced me to wonder why. What's so special about this holy day of obligation that it moves you from a time of just going through that day-to-day rite of your religion to absolute exuberance as a community?
To get there, I think we have to contrast two different types of groaning. See, it wasn't that long ago we were celebrating the time of Holy Week on the run up to Good Friday and then Easter Sunday. And on that week, there's a time where we have to deal with a type of waiting and a type of groaning. On Holy Saturday, we remember a time where God's people were groaning because Jesus had been crucified. But we have to remember that even though we know that the next day is going to be the resurrection, the disciples weren't so sure of that at the time. Their groans were different from our groans. Their groans were groans of despair. Their groans were groans of mourning. Their groans were the groans of having lost something they weren't sure they'd ever get back. Their Lord and Saviour had been crucified, and they weren't quite sure how to live past that moment of grief.
I wonder if it's helpful to us to think that Ascension Day brought about a similar thing, but something that was not the same. For after Jesus rose from the dead, he spent 40 days with his disciples, teaching them from Moses and the prophets who he really was. And then, on the day of ascension, which we celebrated on Thursday, he was caught up in glory into the clouds, having promised them that they would receive the gift of the Holy Spirit.
Now, the first time Jesus left, they groaned with despair because they didn't know he was coming back. But this time, they'd already seen him risen from the dead. Perhaps this time when Jesus was caught into the clouds, they were no longer groaning out of mourning and despair, but anticipation, knowing that the things that came out of Jesus' mouth would come to pass, that the Spirit would come, that Jesus would return.
This is the season that we're in right now, friends, this season of Ascensiontide. It's a season where we groan with anticipation for Christ, who has been caught up into the cloud, who promised to send us his Spirit, and also promised that he would come again. And if we hold onto that promise, we can move from groaning to glory. We have a reason, as Paul says, to hope.
As I look at this passage, I find that there is actually more than one groaner. That it's not just the people who are waiting for Christ coming that are groaning. But in this passage, Paul points out three different sources of groaning that I want us to look at today. The first is the groaning of Creation. The second is the groaning of the Church. The last is the groaning of the Holy Spirit.
The first one might seem very obvious to us. That all of creation is in this discomfort right now and has been as long as we've been recording about it. In verse 22, Paul writes, “for we know that the whole creation groans and labours with birth pangs together until now.” That's something we experience in our own lives, isn't it? You turn on the news, and it looks like the whole world is about to come crashing down. That's why it's really good to get away from the news once in a while. Just a little tip. It looks like everything could fall apart at any moment. Tensions in the Middle East and in Eastern Europe. Who knows what happened at that meeting between the President of the United States and that of China. Who knows what's going on in the tensions that exist in our own countries. Political and social upheaval. When I was leaving the UK, while I was on a plane, there was a huge rally called Unite the Kingdom going on, and a counter rally. Some people concerned about the state of the country, protesting immigration, and saying that they want their country back. Others protesting in favour of Palestine and against that kind of right-wing messaging - concerned perhaps about the threat of racism, xenophobia, or other types of intolerance. So, there seems to be social tensions all over the world. Even here in Canada people are trying to figure out what it means to be a society together. It's all tense.
There's lots of groaning, not just in the political world, but we also see it in nature, don't we? Younger people, lot of people in Gen Z and Gen Alpha are struggling with climate anxiety. They're concerned about what's going to happen to our planet because of models that they've read about, things they've been told. It seems like the extremes of hot and cold and storms are causing people to wonder if this planet is even going to last.
The groaning. All of the world is in birth pangs, and while I'm not qualified to speak on the veracity of any of those claims or what's really going on with the planet, I can tell you what the scripture tells us, which is that this world that we live in, it was created good and we need to take care of it. But also, that the same God who created it will maintain it. The birth pains we see, the pain that exists all over the world, is not the pain that leads to death, but if we believe what God says is the pain that leads to new life.
You see, I speak to people all the time and I talk about all these things that are going on in the world. And the question I get over and over again is, “Dayle, are things going to be okay? Like, what do you hold onto? Is there any hope? Do I have any hope for my children, for my grandchildren? Will things be all right?”
My answer often is something like this, “I'm not optimistic about the state of the world today, but I am hopeful.”
Paul says here that hope that is seen is not hope. I'm not hopeful because I see something in distance that I can put my trust in. I'm not hopeful because I think one politician or another is going to figure it out. I'm not hopeful because I think that sometime in the near future, human beings are suddenly going to become virtuous, and we'll become a better planet. I'm hopeful because the scriptures teach us that our hope is not in this world, that God raised Jesus from the dead and because of that, death has been defeated. And that the same Christ that rose into the heavens will come again in glory to redeem everything, including creation, including these broken worlds that we live in. Creation is good, but creation is broken. And our hope is that we know the Creator.
When we see everything that's going on and we think about the way it should be, the groans of creation cause us also to groan within ourselves. We look at the way things are going, and we know that it doesn't match the kingdom of God. We look at it in contrast to what the Bible says about righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Spirit. And everything we see out there looks like it doesn't quite match up.
So, we yearn within ourselves. We groan within ourselves. We feel discomfort for the state of our world. But this is a different kind of groaning than the one you might expect. Because while some groan out of despair, out of mourning, fearing that our world will never get better, our groaning comes from a very different place.
Some people have a favourite holiday, Halloween, towards the end of October. Interesting holiday, some love it, some hate it. I think it's interesting the size of the treats that people get. If you know a family that has young children and you're ever around on Halloween, you might get the lucky opportunity to dip into that pillowcase and grab a little bite to eat while they're asleep. It's not stealing, it's borrowing.
What makes me laugh every single year is the tiny little bags of potato chips, because when I open them, I always find that there are just enough potato chips in the bag to make you want a real bag of potato chips. I think that's the business model, right? It's like you get a taste of something good and you want more of it. And I think sometimes that's how we experience God, isn't it? That if you've tasted and seen of the goodness of God. If you've been in God's presence, the world doesn't look the same after that because you know there's something better so it's hard for you to watch the state of the world. It causes you to groan and yearn inside for the kingdom that you know is coming. You groan within yourself and are dissatisfied not because everything is falling apart, but because you know there's something much better and you can't wait for it to be here. We are the children of God in the backseat of the car on the way to Disneyland going, are we there yet? Are we there yet? Groaning in anticipation for the good that is about to come.
The good news is, friends, that unlike our parents, God doesn't get tired of hearing us groan. He's not going to turn the car around if we groan one more time. But he asks us to petition him over and over again: “Come, Jesus, Come! Come, Holy Spirit, Come! Let Your kingdom come on earth as it is in heaven”. That's the prayer Jesus taught us to pray. It's a prayer of groaning, a prayer of yearning. A prayer of anticipation for the new creation that God has promised.
In verse 23 it says, “Not only that, but we also who have the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for the adoption, the redemption of our body.” We groan because not only do we know that the world could be much better than it is, but we know that we could be much better than we are.
Sometimes our groaning comes from a place of dissatisfaction with our own lives. And many of us live in that space, don't we? Paul wrote about it in chapter seven as Jason preached last week, “the things I want to do, those things I do not do, and the things I do not want to do, those things I do.” Paul is groaning, wrestling with himself, waiting for God to come and finish the work of redemption that began when he was saved.
Some of us live in that space and find it very difficult to know where our relationship with God is. Because you may have done the things, you said the prayer, you got baptized, you professed your faith, but still, you look at who you are and where you think you should be and the chasm between those things seems way too vast.
A question I often get from believers is, “Dayle, how do I know I'm really saved when I keep messing up in this way? How do I know that I'm really a child of God when I keep doing that thing that I know I'm not supposed to do? When I keep going to that place, when I keep taking that substance, when I keep watching that video? How do I know that the Spirit is really working within me if I can't get out of this cycle that I've been trapped in?”
My answer is often, “because you don't like the cycle.”
You see, when I had truly turned from the faith, (I’ve talked about this a few times), and was not living in accordance with God's word, when I had decided I want to do things my own way, I was never convicted about it. The things that I did that were wrong, I was perfectly satisfied doing. I lived the way I wanted to live, according to my own desires and passions. And even though the things I was doing, the way I was living my life was dreadful and sinful, I didn't feel a shred of guilt. Because when there's no God above you, the only thing you have to answer to is your own feelings. What you want is what you do, as you feel no way about it. But when you belong to Christ, when the Spirit of God lives within you, you start to feel a yearning for something greater than you are. A yearning to be better than you're managing to be day after day. It's not like when I got up off my knees, I became a perfect human being. But it is the case that when I stumble, I groan about it. I feel it in my spirit. I know that I should not have said the thing I said, or thought the thing I thought, or did the thing I'd done. And it causes me to groan within myself as I come back to God in repentance.
You see friends, the groaning that you feel inside of you is evidence of the Spirit of God working in you. And, the more that you yield to God's Spirit, the more that you yield yourself to God's word, the more that you gather in the community of faith and cry out to God with the groaning that's inside you, the more God renews and restores and recreates you every single day till one day you stand in glory as the human being that God had designed you to be.
Creation groans, the Church groans, and the Spirit groans. The Spirit groans because sometimes we don't know how to communicate with God, do we? Sometimes the things we're dealing with in our lives are too much for words. Some of us are dissatisfied with our prayer lives, not because we can't find ourselves the discipline with which to pray, but we have no idea what to say to God. What do I say when I get on my knees? What words should I bring to him when I'm not a perfect person? I'm not as educated. I don't have all the spiritual language to deliver to God what I need to say.
But Paul writes this in verse 26. He says:
Likewise, the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses, for we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now he who searches the heart knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because he makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.
Friends, if you're struggling to pray because you don't know what to say when you get on your knees, just open your mouth and say stuff. Honestly, and if you don't have any words and all you have is tears, just cry before God. And if you don't have any tears and all you have is groans, just groan before God. Because as long as you're coming before God, the promise of God's word is that the Holy Spirit is right there with you, translating all of your nonsense into something God wants to hear. When you don't know how to bring to God the pain that you feel in your life. He's hearing your tears. He's hearing your cries. He's feeling your shudders. He's intimately connected with and participating in your suffering.
Paul says that that suffering produces perseverance, perseverance character, and character hope.
What I often get asked by people is: “Where was God when…?”
Where was God when your parents or another person in authority victimized you? Where was God when a loved one or somebody you should have been able to trust abandoned you? Where was God when that person died or fell sick? Where was God when that atrocity happened in that part of the world? Where was God when all the things we don't have words for occurred in our lives?
Maybe you don't have words, but God's Spirit always does. And this word teaches us that when we didn't have the words to say, when we didn't know what to do, when we were at our wits end, God was right there in our pain, groaning with us. The Holy Spirit of God was right there in the midst of it all, making intercession for us to our Father who is in heaven.
When we didn't know and when we don't know how to get past what we're in, we can be sure that in our groaning, in our waiting, in our yearning, this present pain is for a future gain. That the sufferings of this time are not to be compared with the glory that will be revealed in us.
So, what are you waiting for? Are you waiting for things to get better? Are you waiting to get out of a situation that's just too much for you? Are you waiting to get past something that happened in your past that you thought you'd never get over?
Are you waiting to become the person you believe God has called you to be?
You see these three groans, the groans of Creation, the groan of the Church and the groan of the Spirit are not dismal noises of pain and agony, even though they sound like that when they're all by themselves. But together they're like three notes of a chord, a chorus rising up to heaven, beckoning the new creation that God has promised to us.
And as we sing, as we groan with Creation and with the Spirit, our groanings of pain and of yearning become a song of the saints, a chorus of assurance. This is what our song is, that we know that all things work together for the good of them that love God, to those who are the called according to his purpose, that nothing will separate us from the love of God. Neither height nor depth, nor any other created thing. Neither death nor life, nor angels or principalities or powers, nor things present nor things to come. Our song is that we need not put trust in the world or in ourselves because the Spirit is with us every single moment of every day.
I commend you friends, that when you have conversations with people who think life is hopeless, that you remember these words from Peter. He says, “Sanctify the Lord God in your hearts and always be ready to give a defense to everyone who asks you a reason for the hope that is in you with meekness and fear.”
Why do you still hope when the world looks like it's crumbling? Why do we still hope as the church when numbers look like they're dwindling? Why do we still hope in God when everything looks like it's impossible? Because hope that is seen is not hope. But we've heard and we've known and we've tasted of the kingdom of God. So today, friends, I haven't come to ask you to stop groaning. In fact, I've asked you to groan even louder. This isn't the death rattle of a dying Church, but it is the labour groans of something about to give birth to new life. Here's the song we sing from Psalm 96:
Let the heavens rejoice and let the earth be glad
Let the sea roar, and all its fullness;
Let the field be joyful, and all that is in it
Then all the trees of the woods will rejoice
before the Lord.
For he is coming. He is coming to judge the earth
He shall judge the world with righteousness,
And the peoples with His truth.
What are you waiting for, friends?