Sessions Include:

1. Do You Thirst for God?
2. Are You Increasingly Governed by God’s Word?
3. Are You Becoming More Loving?
4. Are You More Sensitive to God’s Presence?
5. Do You Have a Growing Concern for Others
6. Do You Delight in the Bride of Christ?
7. Are Spiritual Disciplines Increasingly Important?
8. Do You Still Grieve Over Sin?
9. Are You Quicker to Forgive?
10. Do You Yearn for Heaven?

You may judge of a man by what he groans after. — C. H. SPURGEON

AS A YOUNG PASTOR, I was sometimes frustrated by the emphasis elderly church members placed on heaven. What about now? I wondered. Don’t you have any goals for your spiritual life, your church, or the Kingdom of God at large before you die? Now that I am more than twice the age when I mentally muttered these semi-disparaging thoughts and am much closer to the age of those folks to whom I directed them, I realize that some of those thoughts were merely the musings of a zealous, but immature, minister.

Those who have been on a long pilgrimage increasingly desire to reach their destination, especially one as glorious and excellent as heaven. Those who have spent decades loving and living for Jesus naturally long to see Him. While it’s obvious that such anticipation should characterize those older believers living right on the borders of heaven, the truth is that these yearnings surge in the hearts of all growing Christians.

Growing Christians Are Groaning Christians

In Romans 8:22–23, the apostle Paul calls attention to the groans of the entire creation, especially the groans of that human part of the creation indwelled by the Spirit of God, as they await the removal of the corruption they have endured since sin’s entrance into the world. He writes,

For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together in the pains of childbirth until now. 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.

Notice that the human groaners here are not exceptionally committed Christians, but simply “we ourselves, who have the firstfruits of the Spirit.” In other words, every Christian, every person in whom the Holy Spirit has begun an eternal work, experiences these groans “for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.” These longings for the coming great change in body and place are simply part of a normal, healthy, growing Christian life.

Paul reiterated this fact in 2 Corinthians 5:2 when he declared, “For in this tent [referring to our earthly bodies] we groan, longing to put on our heavenly dwelling.” Of course, the groans of the Christian are not simply for the clothing of a new, glorified body but for all that such a transformation represents. Six verses later Paul again uses a kind of theological shorthand when he looks forward to when we will be “at home with the Lord” (verse 8). In each of these references, the apostle specifies only one aspect of the Christian’s hope, but each is representative of the believer’s entire experience in eternity. So when the Christian groans for “the redemption of our bodies,” he is also groaning to be in the presence of the Lord, who will redeem (that is, glorify) his body, and to live in heaven forever, and to enjoy eternal fellowship with God’s people.

“Okay,” interjects someone, “but what is it like in daily life when a Christian yearns to be in heaven and with Jesus?” An excerpt from the diary of David Brainerd provides a good example. Brainerd was a missionary to Native Americans in New England in the mid-1740s. He died of tuberculosis in the home of Jonathan Edwards at age twenty-nine. Edwards soon published Life and Diary of David Brainerd, which remains a classic of Christian devotion. An entry from 1742 is typical:

Saturday, June 12. Spent much time in prayer this morning, and enjoyed much sweetness. Felt insatiable longings after God much of the day. I wondered how poor souls do to live that have no God. The world with all its enjoyments quite vanished. I see myself very helpless, but I have a blessed God to go to. I longed exceedingly to be dissolved and to be with Christ, to behold His glory. Oh, my weak, weary soul longs to arrive at my Father’s house!

Notice the “sweetness” and the joy that permeate Brainerd’s longings. Despite the agony of separation from something much desired, and the dissatisfaction with the present whenever we yearn for something yet future, the Holy Spirit intersperses both sweetness and happiness into our heavenward groans. This is what C. S. Lewis portrayed in his retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche, Till We Have Faces. Think of a Christian’s longing to be in heaven and with Jesus as Psyche explains to her friend Orual,

It was when I was happiest that I longed most. It was on happy days when we were up there on the hills, the three of us, with the wind and the sunshine. … Do you remember? The color and the smell, and looking across at the Grey Mountain in the distance? And because it was so beautiful, it set me longing, always longing. Somewhere else there must be more of it. Everything seemed to be saying, “Psyche come!” But I couldn’t (not yet) come and I didn’t know where I was to come to. It almost hurt me. I felt like a bird in a cage when the other birds of its kind are flying home. …

The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing—to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from.

Does Psyche give voice to your soul? Do you find more and more that the life you long for in heaven seems more natural to you than the one you are living on Earth? Does it seem that your deepest longings were made to be fulfilled in another world? These are the groans of a growing Christian, one who knows that God made us for glorious communion with Him and that we are never at home, never fulfilled, until we are there.

Growing Christians Groan for Holiness

As I mentioned, age and experience have tempered my evaluation of the often-heavenward mindset of some of those older folks I pastored. But I remain reluctant to regard all longings for heaven as rightly motivated. The older I get and the more easily my body fatigues, the more sympathetic I am to the desire for rest—eternal rest. But even Buddhists, Muslims, and atheists want that. There’s nothing uniquely Christian about longing for an end to a wearying existence and the beginning of a new, more restful one.

In a similar way, pining for lasting relief from the cares of the world are also universal and not exclusively Christian. Every person on Earth dreams of a time when he can lay his burdens down. Should we then base our confidence that we are growing in grace because we want only what everyone else in the world, even self-confessed God-haters, wants?

Like the desires for rest and relief, yearning for reunion with deceased loved ones is as common among non-Christians as Christians. Just because someone looks forward with increased hope to seeing a child or parent or spouse in heaven does not mean he or she is growing as a Christian. Realistically, it’s no mark of faith at all, but nothing more than what the Bible calls “natural affection” (2 Timothy 3:3, KJV).

Even an interest in seeing Jesus is not necessarily a confirmatory sign of knowing Christ, much less of growth in His likeness. Some people want to see Jesus in the same way they would like to see the Virgin Mary or King David or the apostle Paul. Natural curiosity, or simply the desire to see someone so well-known, may be the deepest motivation.

So the question I ask is not merely, “Do you yearn for heaven and to be with Jesus?” but also “For which heaven and which Jesus do you yearn?” Growing Christians increasingly long for a holy heaven, not just a restful one.

Donald S. Whitney, Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health (NavPress; Tyndale House Publishers, 2021), vi–3.

Check out our Bible Study on Ten Questions to Diagnose Your Spiritual Health . A bible study on the book of Lamentations as well as some Psalms of Lament.

These lessons are available on Amazon, as well as a part of Good Questions Have Groups Talking Subscription Service. Like Netflix for Bible Lessons, one low subscription gives you access to all our lessons--thousands of them. For a medium-sized church, lessons are as little as $10 per teacher per year.