Chapter Eleven--Groaning
Chapter Eleven
Groaning
sat·is·fac·tion: the confident acceptance of something as satisfactory, right, dependable, or true
The bottom line: this side of eternity, there should be dissatisfaction in all of us with the way things are.
As she stood on the porch and watched the kids waiting for the bus for the first day of school, it hit her: She had everything she had ever wanted. Three days earlier she and Brent had come home with the children from a wonderful week at the shore. The garden behind their 150-year-old farmhouse was laden with vegetables ready to be harvested. Brent had a great job, was a fairly skilled handyman around the house, and on top of all of that, was Kat’s best friend. The single-block downtown in the small town where they lived was something out of a 1950’s movie, and they lived only thirty miles from the big city where they could get anything they could ever want or need, and all of the art and culture they could ever want to enjoy.
Kat had a close circle of women friends, all of whom were approximately her age and who had young children like her own. She loved the Tuesday play date each week. While the kids romped in someone’s yard, she and her friends would talk, laugh, and share for what seemed like hours. As she stood there and looked at Josh, Evan, and Cassie, they seemed like the perfect family.
The profit they had made from their well-located condo in the city had not only enabled them to buy the farmhouse of their dreams, but to completely restore the interior as well. The wraparound porch with its white wicker furniture had become an evening retreat whenever the weather was right. And she did love the garden. In the city she had barely been able to keep a couple of houseplants alive. Now they were actually eating vegetables that they had grown!
As the bus drove away, Kat, now lost in her thoughts, sat down on one of the wicker chairs. Her mind went to Brent. She remembered the night she met him; that is, if you can call bumping into someone and spilling your soda on them a meeting. She loved his sense of humor that night, so she agreed to see him again. Kat had recently had her heart broken and wasn’t really interested in a relationship, but she agreed to go out with Brent because he made her laugh. Their relationship wasn’t perfect, but Kat knew what some of her friends were going through in their marriages and she knew she had a lot to be thankful for. She smiled as she thought of Brent, standing in front of the mirror in his silly kangaroo boxers, shaving as fast as he could so he could throw on his clothes and head to his office in the city. She laughed as she anticipated that he would hit the porch soon, lukewarm coffee in hand, tie askew, already late as usual. As she quickly kissed Brent goodbye, she was thankful that he had found his niche and was experiencing real success in his job.
The call from the prayer chain made her mind go to the small-town church they had decided to make their own. The building, just off the town square, was something out of a postcard. Although the pastor wasn’t the best communicator, he was very warm, and the church was so conveniently located for them. She had had fun organizing the nursery and painting and decorating the room that had new life each Sunday, as it was filled with the sound of infants and young mothers. Kat and Brent had never attended a church this small, but the family atmosphere had more than compensated for the lack of programs and activities that the big-city church had offered. She could see the steeple from her porch, and when the kids got older, they would probably join the town tradition of walking to church on Sunday.
Suddenly, Kat remembered that she had a lot to do before meeting Brent in the city for supper and a play. She grabbed her teacup and went inside to deal with the gotta-get-to-school-quickly mess that was always left in the children’s wake as they ran out the door each morning. Even with a day of work in front of her, Kat thought about how much she loved her life.
Too Easily Satisfied
It is right for Kat to be thankful for the good things that God has placed in her life, but there is something wrong with the way Kat responds to them that gets right at the heart of what big kingdom living is all about.
It is true that God created all the things that Kat now enjoys. They are direct gifts from his most gracious hands, and each of them is good in itself. To some extent it is even healthy for Kat to have reached a measure of fulfillment. But this is where the problem hides in this otherwise idyllic scene.
From a distance, Kat and Brent’s life looks godly. They aren’t overtly breaking any of God’s commands. They have forged a fairly healthy relationship. They have involved themselves in their church. They seek to teach their children the things of the Lord. They’re not in constant conflict or in deep debt. They have cordial relationships with their neighbors. Yet, there is something very wrong in this scene. Maybe what appears to be godly isn’t so godly after all. Being ungodly is not just about committing a certain lists of sins. It is also about finding fulfillment outside of God, which leads me to commit an endless list of sins of the heart.
The problem with Kat is that she is so fulfilled. There is little evidence of discontent or dissatisfaction. And although she really is a Christian, there is little evidence that her contentment has anything at all to do with the kingdom of God. Kat is thrilled that her little kingdom dreams have almost all come true. The problem is that she seldom groans.
A Time to Groan
It has been suggested by some that between coming to Christ and entering the final kingdom the default language of every Christian should be groaning. Paul says it this way in Romans 8:22—25:
We know that the whole creation has been groaning as in the pains of childbirth right up to the present time. Not only so, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for our adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. For in this hope we were saved. But hope that is seen is no hope at all. Who hopes for what he already has? But if we hope for what we do not yet have, we wait for it patiently.
Notice the logic of this passage. We are supposed to groan because there are things that we have been promised but do not yet have. We are supposed to groan because the full expression of God’s kingdom has not yet come. We are supposed to groan because we are not yet all that God shed the blood of his Son for us to become. We are supposed to groan because the temporary pleasures of this physical world do not satisfy us; they always leave a void in our hearts. We are supposed to groan because in every situation and circumstance we see the damage that sin has done and is doing. We are supposed to groan because we recognize how we each give in to the temptation to seek in the physical world what we can only find in the Lord and what will only be fulfilled in eternity. This side of eternity, groaning is meant to be the default language of the big kingdom. When we groan for these reasons, we get it right. This kind of groaning is only present in people who are submitting little kingdom desires to big kingdom interests.
Shrinkage and Satisfaction
The problem with Kat is not that she is thankful. The problem is that she is too easily satisfied and in so doing, she has unwittingly shrunk the size of her life to the size of her life. Yes, she is committed to live as the Bible says to live, but inside the borders of this overtly committed Christian lifestyle, something significant is amiss. Redemptive groaning—the kind of painful cry of the children of God that is pictured in Romans 8—is completely absent in Kat’s life. And the shocking thing is that when you scratch below the surface, Kat’s satisfaction has nothing to do with the Lord. It simply isn’t godly.
Let’s examine Kat’s satisfaction.
The temporary fulfillments of the physical, here-and-now world. What is the source of Kat’s fulfillment? It is that she has been able to acquire and experience all the things she dreamed of in this physical world. She has the country cottage in the picturesque small town. She has a good-looking, nice, hardworking husband. She has three healthy children and a garden out back. She has all the art and culture she could ever want in the big city, only a half hour away. She has a fun circle of friends who are fairly easy to be around. Their bills are paid, and there is plenty of food in the pantry.
But these things were never meant to be the source of her personal fulfillment. Underneath the veneer of faith, Kat’s satisfaction has little to do with God and what God wants for his world. It is all about what Kat wants and the fact that she has been able to get it. Right in the middle of the big kingdom that God has welcomed her into by his grace is little kingdom living. And if something would happen to Brent, if he lost his job and they had to sell the house, or if one of her children became sick, Kat’s inner sense of joy and well-being would immediately disappear. Her satisfaction in these things is not godly because it is not God-ward. If you were to watch the video of Kat’s life, you would see no sense that she is living for something bigger than herself. She is not looking expectantly for something she does not have. There is no sense of sadness that what God has begun still stands tragically incomplete. She doesn’t act like someone in the pains of childbirth, in painful anticipation of what is to come. No, Kat is satisfied with the physical things that she has been able to collect in the here and now, and that is her problem.
The halfway-done work of redemption. On one hand, Kat is thankful that she is a Christian and is married to a Christian man. She is thankful for the things that she has come to believe and the principles that guide her life. But, here again, she is all too satisfied. Kat’s video would not reveal a woman who is examining, striving, working, and praying to grow. Instead, she is completely satisfied with the work that God has begun in her, even though it is quite incomplete. Personal spiritual growth simply isn’t high on Kat’s agenda. Sure, she attends church and the women’s Bible study. And yes, she is glad for her Christian husband, but there is little personal zeal to grow closer to the Lord in character and faith. Kat is content with the halfway-done work of redemption in her own life.
The same is true of Kat as she looks at the world around her. Sure, like others, she will complain about how rude people can be, about the corruption in politics, and about the problems of the inner city. She will occasionally shed a tear when she sees a report on starving children in Africa or the ravages of a recent storm. But she simply doesn’t look at her world with big kingdom eyes. Kat doesn’t groan for her world because she is pretty content with it. She doesn’t fight much traffic, she has found a good grocery store, the mayor of her small town is her neighbor and a nice guy, and her property is big enough that she doesn’t have to work very hard to get along with anybody. Kat doesn’t weep inside for her world, because she looks at it with little kingdom eyes. Although her world is far from what the big kingdom says it could be, it serves Kat’s little kingdom interests and so it is all basically okay with her. She knows almost nothing of the big kingdom groaning that is the default language of Romans 8.
Mutually satisfying, casual community. If you were to watch the video of Kat’s life, you would see her involved in a variety of relationships. None of them would appear to be unhealthy or conflictual. She would seem to give relationships the kind of significance that the Bible does. But for Kat, relationships are an end, not a means to an end. For her, the people in her life are more a source of personal happiness than a tool God uses to continue the good work that he has begun in her and in them. Because of this, Kat lives in a web of relationships that seldom get below the casual. They are about weather, recipes, activities, politics, and what’s happening with the children. She finds deeper relationships too intense and too much work, and she is thankful that the people in her life respect these boundaries.
Once again, the problem is not that Kat is dissatisfied with her relationships. In fact, she is way too easily satisfied. Kat has woven a fabric of little kingdom relationships around her. These relationships have little or nothing to do with God, his will for Kat, and his plan on earth. They are part of a quest for an unencumbered, low-demand, entertaining, happy life. Kat seems utterly blind to the transcendent glories that could be hers as she experiences the travails of pursuing relationships that are driven more by the purposes of God’s kingdom than by little kingdom desires. Kat’s short-sighted satisfaction is exposed by the fact that when she looks at her relationships, she does not groan. If you pursue God’s plan for your relationships, you will groan, because you will be confronted with how far you and others are from what God says is good and best. Pursuit of big kingdom relationships will bring you to the end of yourself and make you cry out for the help that only God can provide. Like Kat, you are too easily satisfied by fun and casual relationships.
Ultimate Fulfillment
Where does one find ultimate fulfillment, satisfaction, and contentment? In God and God alone. Living for God is indeed fulfilling, but we don’t find him fulfilling because we are too busy being satisfied with the temporary pleasures of the physical world. Before we ever come to God we have already decided the things that we want in order to be fulfilled. We tend to seek God so that he will deliver some kind of physical, relational, or circumstantial fulfillment. Rather than working to satisfy us with these, God wants us to experience hunger so deep that it drives us to forsake these things and finally find our satisfaction in him.
You see, God did create all these things. They are not evil in and of themselves. They exist primarily for God’s glory and secondarily for our enjoyment, but they must never become the satisfaction of our hearts. Kat didn’t groan. For the moment, she had found her satisfaction in the physical, relational, and circumstantial things around her, and so had shrunk the size of her life to the size of her life.
Little kingdom living is all about the satisfactions and dissatisfactions of the created world. It is about constantly pursuing what I think I need or what I think will fulfill me. These pleasures, unlike the pleasure of knowing and serving God and his purposes, tend to result in a harvest of bad fruit. Because the things of the physical earth will never truly satisfy me, they tend to leave me fat, unhealthy, and addicted; bitter, hurt, and disappointed; and angry, demanding, and controlling. Being ruled by the desire for little kingdom pleasures harms both body and soul.
So we need to redefine what it means to be ungodly. Ungodliness runs much, much deeper than a failure to keep a list of rules. Ungodliness is about my life being so dominated by desire for present pleasures that my heart will never stay inside of God’s boundaries. Searching for satisfaction in what I can see, touch, taste, hear, or hold in my hands will always lead me to commit an endless list of sins of heart and behavior.
Big kingdom living is lived in the tension between deep gratitude and daily groaning. I am thankful because I have been rescued and am being progressively freed from my bondage to the unfilled promises of physical earth. I am thankful because I am learning to keep creation in its proper place. Yes, I am thankful for gorgeous flowers, sweet aromas, and the delicate taste of well-prepared food. I am thankful for the many people in my life, for sunsets and rivers, for mountains and animals. And I am thankful for how each of these things in some way reflects the glory of God. But most of all I am thankful that God has broken the power of these things over me and is teaching me not to look to them for the satisfaction of my soul.
At the same time I groan. I groan because this world is a broken place. There is nowhere I look where this brokenness cannot be seen. I groan because I am not yet all that God’s grace can enable me to be. I groan because I long for God’s kingdom to come. I groan because I have tasted the pleasures of this earth and they do not satisfy. Because of these things there is never a day when it is not right for me to groan.
Paul was right; groaning is the default language of the children of God. And it is this groaning that expands everything your life touches to the size of the kingdom of God.
The final question: be honest. What are the things that make you groan?