Living as a believer on a fallen planet in a frail earthen vessel, we face what seems an impossible task: to live holy and achieve the supernatural. The call of Heaven is far above our natural skill set. Now we see in Romans chapter eight:

“Likewise the Spirit also helps in our weaknesses. For we do not know what we should pray for as we ought, but the Spirit Himself makes intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered. Now He who searches the hearts knows what the mind of the Spirit is, because He makes intercession for the saints according to the will of God.”

Romans 8: 26

The Holy Spirit knows the perfect will of the Father, and our perfect Father always has a perfect plan for us. All too often, we walk with a self-preservation mindset and deem our plan as the greatest. We are taught to trust no one, so we struggle to release the reigns and give the Lord full control. But His plan is always better in every way than ours. Our vision is too small, and our desires too shallow. But He has something extraordinary for us.

The Lord wants to lift us out and from the natural into the supernatural by the Holy Spirit. It is in the natural that we are weak and fail.

Paul wrote to the Corinthians:

“For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands eternal in the Heavens. For in this we groan earnestly desiring to be clothed with our habitation which is from Heaven, if indeed, having been clothed, we shall not be found naked. For we who are in this tent groan, being burdened, not because we want to be unclothed, but further clothed, that mortality may be swallowed up by life. Now he who has prepared us for this very thing is God, who also has given us the Spirit as a guarantee.”

2 Corinthians 5: 1-5

In the days of our flesh tent, where we deal with mortality, we groan. We have been given the mighty Holy Spirit who seeks to groan in us and through us that we might be clothed.

All of our needs come from the natural man and mortality. Because of mortality, we need food, clothes, shelter, etc. All of these weaknesses need to be met by His strength.

We need to learn the importance and power of groaning. We groan because, first and foremost, we recognize who He is. He is greater and mightier than us. He is the answer, and we recognize that everything we need is Him.

Secondly, we recognize we need Him. We see our mortality and long for the immortality found in Him. Notice our needs are not things but Him. We focus on things like food or clothes, and we miss them.

“Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

Matthew 6: 25

Jesus tells us not to worry about the things attached to this mortality and then asks the question, basically questioning whether we understand our real need is Him. The Church of Laodicea sees itself as rich and in need of nothing, and it misses the greatest need. All too often, if we are secure naturally, we miss the greatest need: Him. We pursue God out of our natural needs and not spiritual ones. Such that when we are comfortable naturally, we backslide spiritually.

But when we catch our greatest need, Him, and need to be clothed by Him, we groan. Going back to Second Corinthians, Paul speaks of this earthly vessel as a tent but then says we have a glorious building in Heaven. The Heavenly far exceeds the natural in every way. This natural will dissolve, but the Heavenly is eternal. In this life, we lack security and have to struggle through life, hoping that we have a good tomorrow. But we are weak, and we can’t control the future. We might plan and do all things right naturally, but any number of curve balls can come our way and change everything. Many people thought they had arrived at success only to watch their dreams crumble. But in Heaven, we have absolute security. We never have to fear tomorrow or losing what we have.

All weakness is on this earth. So, how can we birth His strength and his provision in our lives while we are on this earth? We groan by the Holy Spirit. We have a deep longing for Him and who we are in Him.  Our eyes are not on earthly things or earthly needs, but Him. We long and desperately cry for the day when we will be swallowed up in Him and all of this old man will finally be consumed in the new man in Him.

In verse two, it reads, “earnestly desiring,” from the Greek, ‘epipotheo, ‘ in which we intensely crave, pursue with love, and desperately long for. This groaning is the expression of this earnest desire in the earthen vessel by our spirit under the anointing of the Holy Spirit.

Paul added:

“For we walk by faith, not by sight.”

2 Corinthians 5: 7

We groan in faith. We understand Who He is, what He did for us, and who we are in Him. We now see in Him every need is meet. We understand as Jesus explained in John chapter six, that we are not to work for the food we eat, but the spiritual food found in Him. We become consumed in the Secret Place as we see Him and understand our need for Him. That holy desperation and passionate desire for Him expressed in our groaning must grow daily.

This groaning is a sowing to the Spirit. Because even with our groan we understand our weakness and that all of our efforts can truly show our desperation. We are weak and in need. Thank God we are not alone and we have the Holy Spirit who comes and His strength is perfected in our weakness as we surrender and obey Him.