“The whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now,” Paul writes. And we who have received the first fruits of the Spirit groan too, “while we wait for our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies.”  Romans 8:22-23 CEB

Paul doesn't pretend that redemption means everything is already fixed. Creation still groans. We still groan. There are moments when our prayers become groans because we don’t even know what to ask God to do. Yet Paul calls this a life of hope.

“The whole creation is groaning together and suffering labor pains up until now,” Paul writes. And we who have received the first fruits of the Spirit groan too, “while we wait for our adoption as children, the redemption of our bodies” (Romans 8:22–23).

Paul pictures the suffering of creation as labor pains. Something is wrong with the world as it presently exists, but suffering does not get the final word. God is bringing new creation to birth.

Earlier in the chapter, Paul describes the Holy Spirit leading God’s children out of slavery and toward their promised inheritance. Now, he reminds us that we have not yet arrived at the fullness of that inheritance. The Spirit is already at work. Our redemption has already begun. But we’re still waiting for God to finish what God has started.

That tension between the “already” and the “not yet” helps explain a lot about Christian life. Following Jesus doesn't insulate us from grief, disappointment, sickness, uncertainty, or loss. Sometimes our experience seems painfully far from the restoration Scripture promises.

Christian hope doesn't require us to pretend otherwise. Paul says we groan. The world groans because it's not yet what God intends it to be. We groan because we know that we are not yet what God intends us to become.

And then Paul adds: the Holy Spirit meets us right there. “When we don’t know what we should pray,” he says, “the Spirit pleads our case with unexpressed groans” (8:26). There are times when prayer comes easily. We know what we want to say, what Scripture to pray, and what request to bring before God. And there are other times when words fail. This passage reminds us that wordless prayer is not prayerlessness.

When all we have is grief, longing, confusion, or an ache we cannot put into sentences, the Spirit is still at work within us. God does not stand at a distance waiting for us to compose a better prayer. The Spirit meets us in our weakness and carries what we cannot express into the heart of God.

Then comes another familiar promise: “We know that God works all things together for good for the ones who love God” (8:28). That doesn't mean everything that happens is good.

Paul has spent this entire section talking about suffering, decay, weakness, persecution, and death. The promise is that none of those things are powerful enough to defeat God’s purpose. And what is that purpose? Paul tells us in the very next verse: that we would be “conformed to the image of his Son” (8:29).

God’s work in us is Christlikeness. Even while creation groans, even while we wait, even while we struggle to pray, God’s sanctifying grace continues to shape us into the likeness of Jesus. That is where Paul’s argument finally erupts into confidence. “If God is for us, who is against us?... Who will separate us from Christ’s love?”

Trouble? Distress? Harassment? Famine? Danger? Violence? Paul is not naming hypothetical possibilities. He knew these realities personally. And still he says that none of them can separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord.

Christian assurance is not confidence that nothing painful will happen. It's confidence that nothing painful gets to have the final word. The world still groans. Sometimes we still groan with it. But the Spirit is present in the groaning. God is still working. Christ is still interceding. Grace is still forming us.

New creation is still coming. And the love that began this work will not let us go.

Set aside ten quiet minutes today and bring one unfinished or painful situation before God. You do not need to solve it or even find the right words. Sit honestly in God’s presence and trust the Holy Spirit to carry the prayer you cannot fully express.