Why does life hurt so much? What's the purpose of our pain? In Romans chapter 8, Paul provides a startling answer to these questions. Today, on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindahl, speaking through his own illness and a raspy voice, reveals the profound connection between pain and spiritual maturity. In this passage, we'll discover why suffering isn't God's cruelty.
It's His curriculum. Here's the raw truth. God uses occasional hammer blows to shape us into His image. and by doing so, our groaning has a glorious purpose. Chuck called his message glorying and groaning.
There is groaning in this life, but there is glory to come. The glorying will be so magnificent. It will eclipse the pain of all the groaning. Groaning. The old earth groans, and it groans every time there's a tidal wave.
It groans every time there's a explosion of a volcano. groans every time there's a fire that sweeps across it. groans every time the thistles overtake. The plants. There's growing.
in this earth. See, it hasn't always been groaning. It began to groan when the curse happened. began to grow then. Look at 19.
For the anxious longing of the creation waits eagerly. It's the idea of standing on tiptoe and craning the neck. Waits eagerly for the revealing of the sons of God.
So let me give you the first of four statements here. First, Groaning is temporary. That's verse 19. The old earth will groan only so long. It'll grown only so long.
It's temporary. Second, it's a consequence, verse 20. For the creation was subjected to futility not willingly. Creation didn't say, Lord, bring a curse on us. No, Adam's fall brought the curse.
So unwillingly the natural world was cursed. We'll turn to that in a minute.
So it's a consequence. Third, verses 20b through 21. Groaning is a means to an end. There's an end in view. For that.
Mm. Being set free from its slavery to corruption into the freedom of the glory of the children of God. Fourth, and verse twenty-two, it's universal, the whole. Creation groans. Let me show you how it started.
Go back to Genesis 1. Genesis 1. 29. Yeah. Then God said, Behold, Now this is in a context of innocence.
There is no sin. It's a magnificent landscape. Every tree is full of fruit. Every blade of grass is a jade green. Every stream is clear.
Every sky is beautiful and bright.
So he says in 29, Behold, I have given you every plant. Every plant yielding seed that is on the surface of all the earth, and every tree which has fruit yielding seed. It shall be food for you.
So he says that to Adam and Eve. having just blessed them in 26, 27. 28.
Now look at 30. And to every beast of the earth, and to every bird. of the sky, everything that moves on the earth. which has life. I have given every green plant.
For food, and it was so that interesting. All the animals were vegetarians. They all ate from the plants. There was no viciousness, there was no attacking, there was no hostility in the animal world. It was all in harmony.
It was all in beauty. was all to be enjoyed. Till chapter three. Where Adam and Eve fall into sin. Look at verse 17.
how it impacts the earth. Then to Adam God said, Because you have listened to the voice of your wife. and have eaten from the tree about which I commanded you, saying, You shall not eat from it. Cursed. is the ground.
Because of you. In toil, You will eat of it all the days of your life.
Now, be careful here. I've heard people say work is a curse. No. Yeah. There was work when the world was innocent.
Before there had ever been sin. Adam till the garden? And uh Even and he worked together in it, there was work. But what the curse brought was You'll read it here. The toil.
the thorns and the thistles That grow they didn't have thorns and thistles before the curse You shall eat the plants of the field by the sweat of the field. Of your face you shall eat bread. That's the curse. It's the conflicts at work. It's the difficulties of dealing with people.
It's the personnel problems. It's the bickering, it's the backbiting, it's the sin that accompanies work. It's the exhaustion. that comes at the end of too long a day at work. or too stressed out a day.
Now that's when the groaning started for the earth. Mm-hmm. It will continue to groan. Until Our Lord Himself changes it with His presence on this earth. When the desert will blossom like a rose.
when the lamb and the lion shall lie down together. when there will be peace again on that great time. of the kingdom. Of our Savior Jesus Christ as he reigns. king over all who called themselves king and Lord above all lords.
Now back to Romans 8.
So much for the groaning of creation.
Now here's our groaning. Not only this, not only creation. We ourselves having the first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within ourselves. When? When we go through a period that looks bleak, When the doctor comes with an x-ray and he's frowning, saying, Uh I think you should sit down.
This is some tough news I need to share with you. We groan when our bodies suffer a stroke and we can no longer move about. We groan as we are confined to a wheelchair. and we can't move around on our own. We groan.
We long to be able to get up and about.
So what do we do? We hope for the day that the groaning will become glory. 24. In hope we have been saved. But hope that is seen is not hope for who hopes for what he already sees.
Hope is always about something not yet happened, but you anticipate it's happening. Twenty-five. If we hope for what we do not see, With perseverance we wait eagerly for it. There are those words again. Not good.
It's exactly where many, many people today who have been ill for a long time are. They're living for the day they'll be freed. of this bag of bones. the heartbreaking condition of this disease. We have friends who have multiple sclerosis.
We have those who are living with Lou Gehrig's disease. We have those whose bodies are filled with cancer. And they groan. Every hospital room in the world. There's a sound of groaning.
If not from the patient, from those administered to them. We groan. We long for the change. And you know what's interesting? In the depth of our groaning, we can't even put our words into a prayer.
That's why I love 26. In the same way, the Spirit also helps our weakness. For we do not know how to pray as we should. You ever been there? Absolutely.
How often I have begun a prayer with Lord. I honestly don't know what to ask you right now. I don't know what is best. My desire is that my loved one find relief. My hope is that there would be healing.
That may not be your plan. Stay away from people who tell you that God doesn't want you to suffer. Stop listening to those televangelists that are feeding you that information. It's curious. Our God is in the heavens.
He does whatever he pleases. It is his sovereign right.
Sometimes using a nail. With a hammer.
Sometime using the file. Occasionally the crushing blast of the furnace. to melt us down. Our God knows what he's doing. How would we ever reach maturity without knowing pain personally?
So we don't know how to pray as we should. And look at this: the Spirit Himself intercedes for us with groanings too deep for words. Isn't that great? That wonderful. He can interpret my groanings.
Eugene Peterson renders that. If we don't know how or what to pray, It doesn't matter. He does our praying in and for us, making prayer out of our wordless sighs, our aching groans.
So it's okay to keep groaning. When you come to a place and you don't know the answer, Just groan. And the Spirit of God gets busy. carrying the right message. to the Godhead.
Verse 27, he said. He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He intercedes for the saints. That's you and me. We who know Christ. He intercedes according to the will of God.
The blind songwriter Fanny Crosby had this in mind. When she wrote, Blessed Assurance, Jesus is mine. Oh, but a foretaste, there's the word, a foretaste of glory divine, heir of salvation, purchase of God, born of His Spirit, washed in His blood. This blessed assurance. Is a foretaste of glory divine.
What did she want? She wanted to be able to see. How wonderful it would be for her to have sight. For those without hearing to be able to hear, and the story in Revelation 21 and Revelation 22 is filled with all the things that earth is not now. No more pain, no more sorrow, no more tears, no more death.
The former things are passed away. And now all things are new. But in the meantime, This is what we can count on. He searches the hearts. He knows the mind and the spirit.
because He intercedes for us. And it's always according to the will of God. Count on the Spirit to know what to pray for.
Now, let me give you a couple of principles to stick with you. From now on. Number one, the greater the groan. The greater the groan, the greater the glory. You know there's a crown.
Set aside for those who suffer on this earth. One of the five crowns mentioned in the New Testament includes a crown. That is specifically, exclusively reserved for those who suffer. and glorify Christ in the suffering. The greater the groan, the greater the glory.
Here's the second. The weaker our spirit. the stronger his support. Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 12, 9. Of his own weakness.
He says, I realize when I am weak. I am really strong. I can't tell you the times in my life when I have not felt like I could really deliver the message. I'm thinking of one in particular when I was in another church. And our daughter had broken her back.
My heart was aching for her. Thankfully, she came through it. without paralysis. But I didn't know at the time. We'd been to hospital Saturday.
And all Friday evening and all Saturday and all Saturday night, and I preached on Sunday, and I just preached through tears. And I thought when I had finished, this is the biggest flop I have ever been engaged in, and I just left without talking to anybody. And it became the most requested recording of any message I ever preached at that church. Why? Because I preach in weakness.
And God used it in a strong way. God uses people who are weak. and set aside to minister to us deeply. I thought of that this week as I pulled a book off my shelf. dated nineteen eighty six.
written by one of my favorite people on the planet. Johnny Erickson Tata. Johnny, by then, in the writing of the book, Choices, changes. By then, it was obvious that she was not. going to be healed of her paralysis.
But her ministry would be to those who were disabled. Yeah. And my goodness, it certainly has been. She also ministers to a lot of us who aren't disabled.
Well, I mean physically. We're all disabled in one way or another. But she writes this as her last piece. in this wonderful book. Choices.
changes. You sit and listen. Everywhere we go in Poland, people give us flowers. Fresh, thick bouquets. Of sweet pea, tulips, and gladiola.
In full bloom, in our otherwise drab hotel room. But how odd it is to see those same flowers swishing in the wind. Here. Here in Auschwitz. Even though the grounds of this death camp are so very tight.
tidy today. delicate wisps of wildflowers cropping up here and there, around the bases of brick buildings and trunks of trees. We wonder if the government, which operates a museum here, has sown wildflower seeds. to brighten this horrible, depressing place. Bare bricks.
Barbed wire. Storehouses of eyeglasses. Human hair. And gold teeth. Canes and crutches.
shoes and hearing aids. stacks of yellowed and dusty record books, neatly tabulated, numberless names, gallows. and guard towers. Even the ominous chimneys. and the ovens.
All these things I've always associated. with Nazi death camps are here. And I shiver. Not so much from the cold as from the thought that. people handicapped like me were the first to be exterminated.
Labeled as useless bread gobblers. We journey a short distance from Auschwitz to Birkenau. Here train loads of Jews. and dissidents were emptied out into the freezing night. To face the machine guns of powerful.
Insane men. Children were gum-butted one way. And their mothers hurted another. Men were separated into groups. of the young and the old.
The strong and the weak. But virtually all of them, millions of them, ended up in one place. The incinerator What are you thinking? My husband Ken asks, Stooping to pluck a wildflower. I was thinking of Tantikori.
Corey Tenboom. I finally answer. She was in a place not unlike this. I nod toward the field of ghosts. By all accounts, she should have died.
Forty years ago in that concentration camp, I sigh. I recall Tanti Corey's recent funeral. At a small suburban cemetery. few miles south of Los Angeles. It was the flowers that impressed me that day, too.
No hothouse blooms stuck in styrofoam cut out shapes of hearts or crosses or doves. No white satin banners with gold-sprinkled messages of sympathy instead. There were vases. Tens of vases. of freshly cut tulips of yellow and red.
Bouquets of dewy white carnations and bunches of Heavy red roses someone had clipped from Corey's backyard. The casket was closed. The music was Bach. The eulogies. were glowing, glowing but understated.
The only extravagance was the profusion of flowers. and the little stone chapel. was filled with sweet fragrance. I glance at Ken, who sits beside me in the grass. God has placed us together.
to have and to hold. to build up. to encourage to love. Our marriage tirelessly exposes my need. Our need to give and share.
to cast aside blame. I recall another memory of Corrie and flowers. The evening at the book convention when amid the applause of thousands She lifted her bouquet of roses toward heaven. She would be the first to say that books on a bestseller list. Mean nothing.
except that lives are changed through them. She would be the one to say that a first-run major motion picture of her life was not worth the accolades. Except the people who are helped through it. Even a ministry that took her all over the world with opportunities to speak, And meet headlining names in evangelical circles, even that, she would say. only counts in the kingdom.
as far as it serves Christ. I would say the same. in both my public ministry and my private life with Can. God constantly asks me. to uncover my face.
That is my joyous choice. To ask him to chasten and purify. and melt any resistance to change. I might secretly hold on to. A smile.
She becomes nostalgic. I tell Ken of the time I first met that remarkable woman. years ago when we were both attending a convention where our new books were being presented. Corey approached from down the long red carpeted hallway in the hotel. People were all about.
Many sought her attention, but she strode directly. directly toward me. hiked her cane on her elbow. Reach from my hand with those strong hands that all survivors have. And announced in her thick Dutch accent.
One day, my friend. One day we will be dancing together. in heaven because of the Lord Jesus. And today Today I can laugh. And rejoice because Corey is dancing now.
Over the devil. over this damnable place. And what's changed? We shall join her. That's the glory.
I can't imagine. Any person hearing my words right now. Not knowing. that you can handle death and get into heaven without a relationship to Christ. It's beyond me.
I plead with you. I plead with you. Turn your life over to Christ now. Don't wait. You can't make it to heaven on your own.
Not even if you're disabled. Not even if you've known pain all your life. The pain has been Designed by a God to break you down so that you will trust His Son and not yourself. to get into heaven. It's just that simple.
Maybe bow our heads together. We worship the greatness of our God today. We have sung of it, we have prayed about it. We have heard His wonderful word.
Now we set our hopes on it. in the future. You and I never see one another again through some horrible terrorist act that separates us from each other. We who know Christ will be joined together. in the presence of Jesus.
You do not. will not. And that's why he brought you to this place at this time. Right now. Come.
Come to him. Father, thank you for those. Watercolored memories. The way we were. The simple days when Philippians 3:10.
became Ireland. Reason for survival. The days when we sang around the piano. The days when we fell into our mother's arms. and were taught the things of God.
Lord, thank you. Such a rich heritage has been ours. I pray that you will deal gently and yet forcefully. with those who try to resist your work. May they be unable to sleep?
Rest. or find peace. until they come to Christ. Thank you that Corey rests in your arms today. as a testimony of grace.
May we stand taller because of her life. And bless, Father, the ministry of Johnny. And she touches the lives of the broken. and the brokenhearted. all over the world.
And now to him who is able to guard us from stumbling and present us faultless before the presence of his glory with exceeding great joy. To the only wise God, our Saviour, be glory and majesty. dominion and power.
Now. And forever. ever. and ever. Ever And everybody's safe.
Amen. Suffering is not an accident in the Christian life. It's an essential part of our journey towards spiritual maturity. While both creation and believers groan under the weight of this fallen world, We can find hope knowing that our present sufferings cannot compare to the glory that awaits us in heaven. If you're ready to learn more, Chuck Swindahl and his creative team have assembled a collection of helpful study tools for this teaching series on Romans.
First, Insight for Living would like to send you the Searching the Scriptures Bible Study Workbook. This spiral bound resource for Romans comes in two volumes, and Volume one is available now. The bundle also includes Chuck's commentary on Romans from the Living Insights Commentary Collection. And finally, the bundle includes audio messages from Volume 1 of Chuck's teaching series on Romans.
So check out this special bundle of resources by going to insight.org/slash offer. Insight for Living is made possible on your station because of grateful listeners who give voluntary donations. and today our team would like to say thanks to our monthly companions. A monthly companion is a loyal monthly supporter who provides strength and stability to Insight for Living. and you can become part of this growing family of friends right now by going online and following the simple instructions.
By doing so, you'll ensure that Chuck's teaching continues on your station. But here's the best part. You'll play a significant role in extending God's love to those who have never experienced His grace before. Plus, when you become a monthly companion right now, we're pleased to extend a special gift offer. It's a free downloadable PDF of chapter 5 of Chuck's book, Abraham, One Nomad's Amazing Journey of Faith.
The passage is about Abraham's friendship with God. And in this message, Chuck describes five benefits that God grants to his friends. To learn more and donate, visit insight.org slash monthly companion. What does the word providence mean? I'm Bill Meyer, inviting you to join us when Chuck Swindahl provides a practical answer.
Tuesday on Insight for Living. The preceding message, Glorying and Groaning, Was copyrighted in 2007, 2010, and 2025, and the sound recording was copyrighted in 2025 by Charles R. Swindahl, Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.
