Editor’s Note: Our sermon at church this morning was from Romans 8. I began thinking about all the waiting we do in life and the need for patience.
Paul wrote Romans 8 to early Christians in Rome who were facing persecution and uncertainty, offering them profound reassurance about their secure relationship with God through Christ. In this chapter, Paul addresses their struggles with suffering and waiting by emphasizing the Holy Spirit’s active role in their lives and God’s unbreakable love that sustains them through every trial.
Romans 8 presents the Holy Spirit not as a distant theological concept but as our personal advocate who intercedes when we don’t know how to pray, confirms our identity as God’s children, and empowers us to navigate life’s struggles—including those frustrating seasons of waiting for healing, answers, or change—with unshakeable confidence in God’s love.
A few months ago, I drove 65 miles round trip to Wilson County to renew my driver’s license—only to be told I had a four-hour wait. Four hours? For a simple license renewal that should take fifteen minutes. The wait time ended up being much less and I give the staff an “A” for their dedication and professionalism. As I sat outside in the car and looking at the crowded government office, surrounded by equally frustrated citizens holding their paperwork, I couldn’t help but laugh at the absurdity of it all.
My mind started brainstorming. Why does government seem so broken? Could this be privatized? Outsourced? Is it a labor problem, a process problem**,** or a myriad of problems?
Government doesn’t work well because it doesn’t have to. When a restaurant gives bad service, you don’t go back and they go out of business.
But when the DMV gives bad service, you still have to go back—they’re the only game in town. I happened to pull up the Tennessee Department of Safety looking for a number last week and noticed something peculiar—their customer service rating is at a 1.6. I can’t say I was shocked—sadly, I wasn’t surprised at all. I then decided to look up Comcast ratings and it was 1.8, which is higher than the DMV. I’ve heard more complaints **about** Comcast than any company I can think of.
Think About It
When Comcast has better customer service than the DMV—something is wrong! If your cable company treated you like the DMV**,** you’d switch providers tomorrow. But government agencies know you can’t switch, so they don’t worry about making you happy.
Plus, government has too many layers. To get anything done, your request goes through five different departments, each with their own rules and paperwork. Everyone’s so worried about following procedures that nobody cares if the procedures actually help people.
Here’s the kicker: when things go wrong in government, nobody gets fired. In regular business, if you make customers wait four hours for something that should take fifteen minutes, you’d be looking for a new job. In government, that’s just Tuesday.
The system is designed to avoid mistakes rather than serve people. You end up with endless meetings, mountains of paperwork, and processes designed in 1975 that were never updated. Government workers aren’t bad people—they’re stuck in a system that rewards playing it safe over getting things done.
We encounter these delays everywhere: grocery store lines that move at a glacial pace, post office queues that test our patience, and don’t even get me started on the DMV experience. These mundane frustrations seem trivial compared to life’s bigger waits—medical diagnoses, job searches, relationship healing—yet they’re all part of the same human condition.
Earlier that day, I’d spoken with a retired state commissioner about government inefficiency. After 48 years in public service, he just laughed and quoted an old adage often attributed to Aesop and Coach Lou Holtz: “After all is said and done, more is said than done.” His wisdom came from decades of learning that systems move slowly, people move slower, and change happens at its own pace regardless of our urgency.
As I write this, I’m listening to a sermon on Romans chapter 8, where Paul describes all creation as “groaning” while waiting for restoration. It strikes me that my DMV frustration and Paul’s cosmic vision aren’t unrelated. Whether we’re waiting for a renewed license or renewed hope, we’re participating in something universal—the human experience of living between what is and what should be.
The following article explores how ancient wisdom from Romans 8 can transform our perspective on life’s inevitable delays, from the trivial to the profound.
A Season of Waiting
None of us are good at waiting—and yet, waiting is an unavoidable part of living in this broken world. How does God equip us to wait for restoration?
This sermon was preached for Capital Pres Fairfax on December 1, 2024 as a part of our Advent series “Waiting with Hope.” Advent is a season of waiting, but it is also a season of hope and light, of warmth in the midst of longing. We will spend the five Sundays in December this year looking to Scripture’s sure promises as a solid foundation for our hope in Christ’s return, and the restoration of all things which he will bring. This week we focused on Romans 8:18-25. A recording of this sermon will be available on Spotify and Apple Podcasts.
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We’ve officially entered the season of “waiting.” We’re waiting for the year to end. We’re waiting for Christmas and all its festivities: visiting family, opening gifts, watching favorite Christmas movies. One of my favorite “waits” is waiting for my mom’s gingerbread cookies to come out of the oven because it fills the whole house with delicious smells. But this can also be a season of unpleasant waits. I know many of us are waiting for the days to get longer. We’ve still got three weeks to go before we turn the corner. Hopefully this won’t be you this year, but many will be waiting for planes that will never take off, stuck in an airport with a cancelled flight.
It’s also around the holidays that we feel all the more keenly whatever long season of waiting you’re enduring: waiting for a good report from a doctor that never comes, or waiting for an apology that is never made. Waiting is no small matter.
This advent—the month leading up to Christmas—we’re going to be sitting in a sermon series titled “Waiting with Hope” because in the midst of these long waits, it can be all too easy to lose hope. But when we open up God’s word together, and we encounter the living God who fills it, we find exactly what our hearts were made to hope for. Our passage this morning is Romans 8:18-25.
18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility, not willingly, but because of him who subjected it, in hope 21 that the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to corruption and obtain the freedom of the glory of the children of God. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 23 And not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies. 24 For in this hope we were saved. Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what he sees? 25 But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience.
This morning, we’re starting with a very simple thesis: Waiting is an essential part of our world that God equips us for. We’re gonna break that thesis down with three observations from our text.
Waiting is normal
Waiting is hard
Waiting is worth it
Waiting is normal
Friends, you don’t believe this. No one alive in 2024 in our culture really believes this. Here’s why: we’ve got these little devices in our pockets, and with just a few clicks, we can order a 5lb gummy bear from Amazon and have it sitting on our front porch within 36 hours. We can call or text someone on the other side of the world and then annoyed when we don’t hear back within a day. If they don’t respond we can hop in a car with this as a GPS or buy a plane ticket off an app and be at their front door in a matter of hours. We are not used to waiting, and if we ever have to wait, it almost feels like a surprise.
In our passage, Paul is not surprised by waiting. “Waiting” is the fundamental status of the world right now. Look to our passage, see the repetition. In verse 19, it says creation “waits with eager longing.” Verse 22 says “whole creation has been groaning [like in] childbirth.” In verse 23 “we ourselves…groan inwardly as we wait eagerly.” And verse 25 “wait with patience.”
Who is waiting for what? We have two different answers here. First, we see that the creation—or the world, or nature—is waiting for freedom. Look at verses 20-21, Paul says the world has been subjected to futility as it suffers on account of fallen humanity. In other words, Scripture tells us that the world is buckling under the weight of the burden of sinful humanity. Think about that one old chair at grandma’s house that you had to pull out for Thanksgiving. You’re all crowded around the table and you drew the short end of the stick so you’re in the antique chair with the wobbly legs. And the more stuffing you eat, the more that old chair creaks. Paul tells us that’s how creation feels under the weight of sin, it’s splintering and tearing at the seams.
This passage is probably looking back to Old Testament prophets like Isaiah when he writes this: “The earth mourns and withers; the world languishes and withers; the highest people of the earth languish. The earth lies defiled under its inhabitants; for they have transgressed the laws, violated the statutes, broken the everlasting covenant. Therefore a curse devours the earth, and its inhabitants suffer for their guilt” (Isaiah 24:4-6a). Friends, we need to recognize this morning, the world is not the way it’s supposed to be. Cancer is not supposed be here. Miscarriages are not supposed to happen. Death is not natural.
Paul’s language is so helpful here, he personifies the world with the things you and I feel; the whole creation is groaning, and choking, and crying out. The world knows this isn’t how it’s supposed to be and is waiting to get out from under the crushing weight of sin; creation is waiting for freedom.
But that’s not all. Paul also tells us that we are waiting for rescue. Paul uses a lot of different words to communicate this idea: waiting for glory, for the sons of God to be revealed, for adoption. This is what he’s been describing through the whole book of Romans so far. Romans 1-3 tells us that all humanity is guilty of sin, and because we are guilty of sin, we are enslaved to it. We can’t not sin even if we wanted to stop. Romans 3-5 says that God has sent Jesus to forgive us and rescue us from sin, so when we trust in Jesus, we’re no longer guilty and no longer enslaved. In Romans 6-7, Paul addresses the tension every Christian experiences. Even though we’ve been forgiven by God and freed from sin, because we still live in this same old broken bodies in this same old broken world, we still continue to act as if we’re slaves to sin.
Here in Romans 8, Paul reassures us that one day, we will be free from this “body of death,” God has promised that we will experience the full freedom from sin that he’s already achieved through the death and resurrection of Christ. Think about it like this: when Abraham Lincoln delivered the emancipation proclamation, that act immediately freed every slave in the country. But there were plenty of slaves in the Deep South who had to wait months and even years before they could experience that freedom. The gospel of Jesus Christ works in a similar way: if you are a child of God, he has declared you free from sin—which means you are truly free!—but we still have to wait for that freedom to be fully realized. The world is waiting, and we are waiting—in short, waiting is normal and there’s no getting around it.
What does that mean for us? Don’t be surprised by waiting. The next time you give in to that same old sin, don’t be shocked and don’t drown in shame. Of course don’t excuse yourself either, but like Paul in Romans 7, give thanks to God in Christ and let it fuel your eager longing. When you or a loved one receives bad news from a doctor, Scripture gives you categories to process that news—you can be heartbroken without having your whole worldview collapse. We live in a broken world, subject to futility; it’s not supposed to be this way, and it won’t be this way forever. Waiting is normal; that’s the first point.
Waiting is Hard
Point #2: waiting is hard. This one we don’t want to believe, we don’t want it to be true—and we avoid it at all costs. And when waiting finally catches up to us, we tend to face it in one of two unhelpful ways: either anger or denial.
First let’s talk about anger. We are confronted with the reality that waiting is hard, we don’t like it and we can’t change it, and the anger starts to bubble up inside of us. I’m reminded of the movie Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and the character Veruca Salt. She’s the quintessential spoiled rich kid. Her affluent parents treat her like a princess and give her anything she wants, no matter how ridiculous the price. Veruca gets a whole song to herself titled “I WANT IT NOW!” Where she throws a tantrum so severe it ends with her falling into the factory’s furnace. Veruca is such a miserable character that when she’s gone, nobody misses her—and yet, it is so easy for us to be just like her.
Think about the things that set you over the edge, when is it easiest for you to lose your patience? How fast do you lose your temper with your children? Or your roommates? Or your family members? When life takes a turn you didn’t expect, or God hits the pause button on your plans, think about your attitude toward God—how often does our prayer life sound like Veruca’s song “I want it now!”? Waiting is hard, and that can make us really angry.
The other extreme we can go to is to pretend like waiting isn’t hard. We can go full stoic and try to detach ourselves from our emotions. Maybe for little things, this can be helpful; if the thing you’re waiting for isn’t that great, maybe you shouldn’t get too invested in it. But when it comes to what Paul is talking about—the greatest desires of our hearts, the promise of restoration—denial doesn’t work because it ends up killing our joy. If you force yourself to believe the wait isn’t that bad, you’ll end up not appreciating the thing you’re waiting for. C.S. Lewis expresses this well; in his book The Four Loves he writes:
There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket – safe, dark, motionless, airless – it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers of love is Hell.1
We can’t afford to deny that waiting is hard, if we do we only harden our own hearts.
So where does that leave us? If we shouldn’t go to anger and we can’t afford to deny it, how are we supposed to cope? We can be honest with how hard waiting is, because while we’re waiting for God to set all things right, we’re waiting with God in it. Look at verse 23 “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait eagerly.” God has given us his Spirit of adoption, as it says in Romans 8:12-17, so that we aren’t alone while we wait. And what does the Spirit empower us to do? See the language Paul uses here: “groaning” and “eagerly”, earlier he uses the phrase “eager longing.” This is a deep emotion, it holds both excitement and weary, stomach-churning pain together. It’s like the worst homesickness you could ever feel mixed with the anticipation of starting the journey home. The Holy Spirit equips us to hold both, to recognize that waiting is hard and to be at peace in it.
So friends, keep this in mind as you wait for God in whatever hard circumstance you’re facing. God sits with you there, he gives you the freedom to feel your deep longings, and he gives you the strength to wait with patience. The next time sitting in the waiting room at the hospital or at the terminal in the airport to fly home for a funeral, come back to this passage and cry out to God in prayer with your deep longings. Waiting is hard.
Waiting is Worth It
Third and finally, #3: Waiting is worth it. We don’t want to accept the truth that waiting is hard, but this one we’re scared to believe. Because so often, the wait isn’t worth it. How often have you sat on hold for two hours with your bank to ask a simple question and you still never get an answer? Who hasn’t waited forty-five minutes at a restaurant for a mediocre meal? How can we be sure that this promise of restoration is any different?
Again, look at verse 23 when Paul tells us we have “have the first fruits of the Holy Spirit.” That term “first fruits” doesn’t just refer to the ways the Holy Spirit is at work in us; it’s actually a narrow, technical religious term. In the Old Testament, “first fruits” refers to the earliest produce to ripen at the start of harvest. Old Testament law required God’s people collect the first fruits and give them to God as a sacrifice. It served as a sort of deposit, or down payment—a promise to God that one would devote his whole life to the Lord.
One commentator on Romans I read this week writes this: “The most interesting and significant feature of the use of [firstfruits] in Rom 8:23, however, is this: Paul uses the term not with reference to a sacrifice offered by a person to God, but as a gift given by God to his people as a pledge of something even greater yet to come.”2
Think about it like this. About two weeks ago now, my wife and I bought a new car. Before we could buy it, the car dealership ran our credit scores. Kids, do you know what a credit score is? It’s like a grade your bank gives you based on how good you are at keeping your promises to them—how reliable are you at paying your debts. Fortunately, Erin and I have good enough credit scores, so the dealership was confident in accepting the check I wrote them.
Now let’s imagine this: what if we were to run God’s credit score? Where do you think that would be? 790? 820? The all powerful God of the universe, the triune Father-Son-and-Spirit, the author and perfector of our salvation—how likely is God to keep his promise? Romans 8:23 tells us that God has cut us a check; the new life we experience in the Holy Spirit is just a down payment, just a foretaste of the glory we will receive when Christ returns to restore all things. When God cuts a check, you can take that to the bank. Have you experienced the first fruits of the Spirit? Have you received the Spirit of adoption, can you join with Paul in knowing God as your Father, have you experienced liberation from the dominion of sin? If so, you can be sure that God will bring you through to the end.
So what does that mean for us here today? Friends, let me invite you: lean into hope this Advent. That’s our whole theme: waiting with hope, so think of specific ways you can practice hope this month. Here’s one suggestion: Pray specific prayers. Maybe you’ve got a family member or friend who doesn’t know Jesus or who’s wandered from their faith; lean into hope as you pray for their salvation. Maybe you’ve got a loved one whose body is failing them; lean into hope as you pray for their healing and as you wait for God to bring an end to all sickness and death. Find one area in life you’re scared to hope for and bring it to God in prayer.
As we enter this season of waiting and this Advent series, remember: waiting is an essential part of our world that God equips us for. We need to recognize the fact that waiting is normal. The Holy Spirit helps us accept that waiting is hard. And we can believe with a certain hope that the wait is worth it, because God always keeps his promises.
1C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves. 147. C.S. Lewis Signature Classics Edition. (London, UK: William Collins, 2012), 147.
2Richard N. Longenecker. The Epistle to the Romans. The New International Greek Testament Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Eerdmans, 2016), 520.
