Are you longing for fulfillment? There’s good news!

What are you waiting for? A job, a spouse, a child to return home (whether spiritually or physically)? Maybe healing in a relationship or healing of a broken body? Discover the good news as you wait: one day, your longing will be fulfilled! Today, I share an excerpt from The Waiting Room devotional. Even though this was written about a health crisis, it applies to any unfulfilled longing.

Unfulfilled

And we believers also groan, even though we have the Holy Spirit within us as a foretaste of future glory, for we long for our bodies to be released from sin and suffering. We, too, wait with eager hope for the day when God will give us our full rights as his adopted children, including the new bodies he has promised us.  Romans 8:23-24, NLT

“I’m sorry. We are unfulfilled. There is no diagnosis.”

Two days after our son’s first brain surgery, his neurosurgeon delivered this unwelcome news. The doctor had stopped the surgery to remove the brain tumor when he discovered what he believed to be a venous malformation. Further tests were done, an angiogram and an MRI, in an attempt to discover exactly what was going on inside our son’s head. The results were back, but they were inconclusive.

I loved the fact that our neurosurgeon shot straight with us: at this point, they still did not know if our son had a tumor. I hated the words, “unfulfilled” and “no diagnosis,” and the anxiety they aroused. In this life, what we most desire, what we most yearn for, is fulfillment, a resolution to the story.

Romans 8:18-25 helps to explain the tension we feel. In the fall, creation suffered extensive damage. Weeds would grow from the once-fertile ground; sin would spread in our once-glorious beings. The whole creation, and we ourselves, now long for release from the “bondage to decay” we now endure. Romans 8:22 compares the longing for that final glorious freedom to the pangs of labor. As theologian John Stott puts it, “The indwelling Spirit gives us joy, and the coming glory gives us hope, but the interim suspense gives us pain.”[i]

When the neurosurgeon first used the word unfulfilled, I thought it was strange, but now it makes sense. Because of his vast knowledge of the brain and extensive experience with diagnoses, he confidently expected that our hopes for a diagnosis and thus, a cure, would one day be fulfilled.

In the same way, we have powerful reasons to hope even as we groan for glory. We know that Christ has been raised from the dead; that knowledge gives us hope that we have been raised to new life with him (1 Corinthians 15:19-21). The Holy Spirit works in us, transforming us into new creation. This is the hope for which we were saved (Romans 8:24).

This saving hope points us toward our future hope, the day of resolution. When Christ comes again, our longings will be fulfilled. Our son’s diagnosis will no longer matter, because he, and we, will be fully released from sin and suffering, in body and soul, in heart and mind. This is the hope that helps us to wait eagerly and patiently (Romans 8:24-25).

Prayer

Oh, Lord, you hear the groanings of our hearts; you know what we long for most is you. We thank you for your Holy Spirit and your Living Word, which sustain us as we wait. Amen.

Further Encouragement

Read Romans 8:18-25.

Listen to “Our Hope Endures” by Natalie Grant at https://youtu.be/n1mu3F0dQz0.

For Reflection:

What hopes do you have that are as yet “unfulfilled”? How does the future hope of Christ’s return help you wait well?

[i] John Stott, The Message of Romans (Downer’s Grove, Il.: InterVarsity Press, 1994), 242.

Photo by Patrick Pierre on Unsplash