Does your body groan? 2 Corinthians 4-5

2 Corinthians 5:1-5 (NASBStr)

 For we know that if the earthly tent which is our house is torn down, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For indeed in this house we groan, longing to be clothed with our dwelling from heaven, inasmuch as we, having put it on, will not be found naked. For indeed while we are in this tent, we groan, being burdened, because we do not want to be unclothed but to be clothed, so that what is mortal will be swallowed up by life. Now He who prepared us for this very purpose is God, who gave to us the Spirit as a pledge.

Does your body groan?   Does your body ache?  Do you groan over sin in the world?  Are you tired of sin and how it ravishes the world, your community, your family, your children, yourself?   Do you groan in your body and wish things were better? Does that sin-habit you can't break continue to beat you down where you have days of almost complete feelings of defeat?  What Paul describes in the above verses are these feelings, thoughts, experiences and issues in this life.   In our United States Constitution we are told that we have the "right" to pursue "happiness and liberty."   We are told, by our government, that we have the right to be happy and free.   What Paul is telling us, however, is that, for believers, in this life, we will have groaning!!   He tells us that our bodies will groan because we have be reborn for a new body ... one we long for in this life.   We long for the body (Paul calls it a "tent", a "house", a "temple") that God has prepared for us in heaven.   Believers SHOULD be groaning in this body.  Despite the fact that we spend an inordinate amount of money and time trying to make the body comfortable, pleasing, happy and free, Paul's teaching tells us that the believer won't be comfortable in this body ... IF they are earnestly seeking God's Glory.  The weight of our body, the shape of our body, the complexion of our body are only temporal.   The real tent, house, temple for us to dwell in is eternal and in the heavens.   We are to be spending our time in this temporal body glorifying God for our eternal body, in the heavens.  Psychologically we are taught groaning is bad.   In reality, this groaning we feel in this life is really a confirmation of the life to come and our desire for it.   But, what do we do until that happens?   Paul gives us the answer to that question by telling us that God has prepared us so and that to assist us in this groaning we are given the ministry of the Spirit, as a pledge of God's promise to redeem us from this groaning.   As we live by faith and walk in the Spirit by faith, we can handle the groaning (read on verses six and seven of this same chapter).   God has given us the Spirit so that when the pains of this world inflict the body and we are groaning out of a desire to finally be redeemed we can still have strength.  The Spirit is God's pledge to us that the final redemption is going to take place.    The next time you groan because of the world's sin in our lives and the lives of others, don't go out and buy something to make yourself comfortable.  Don't eat something to satisfy yourself.  Don't engage in wrong sexual patterns to make yourself feel good because the groaning is so bad.   Don't spend money to feel good.   The next time you groan in this body, acknowledge it as a part of the believers life in a sinful world and instead of finding happiness and freedom in those things find it in the ministry of the Spirit and the Love of Christ.   Walk by faith and not by flesh.