May 11, 2025, Message by P. Kevin Clancey
Transcribed by Beluga AI.
All right, so we’re going through Romans. We’re going to be starting. I already read Romans 8:17. We did a few weeks ago, but I’m going to start with Romans 8:17 and go through 8:27 tonight.
So, here’s what Romans 8:17 says.
17 and if children, also heirs —heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. 18 For I consider that the sufferings of this present time are not worth comparing with the glory that is going to be revealed to us. 19 For the creation eagerly waits with anticipation for God’s sons to be revealed. 20 For the creation was subjected to futility —not willingly, but because of him who subjected it —in the hope 21 that the creation itself will also be set free from the bondage to decay into the glorious freedom of God’s children. 22 For we know that the whole creation has been groaning together with labor pains until now. 23 Not only that, but we ourselves who have the Spirit as the firstfruits —we also groan within ourselves, eagerly waiting for adoption, the redemption of our bodies. 24 Now in this hope we were saved, but hope that is seen is not hope, because who hopes for what he sees? 25 Now if we hope for what we do not see, we eagerly wait for it with patience. 26 In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. 27 And he who searches our hearts knows the mind of the Spirit, because he intercedes for the saints according to the will of God. (Romans 8:17-27, CSB)
And God, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of our hearts be acceptable in your sight, O Lord, our Rock, our Strength, and our Redeemer. Amen.
14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be acceptable to you, Lord, my rock and my Redeemer. (Psalms 19:14, CSB)
So, I want to talk tonight about suffering and glory, suffering and glory, which are two themes that run throughout the New Testament.
And the Bible says in Romans 8:17, we’re heirs of God and co-heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with him, so that we may also be glorified with Him.
17 and if children, also heirs —heirs of God and coheirs with Christ—if indeed we suffer with him so that we may also be glorified with him. (Romans 8:17, CSB)
And so in this world, the Bible makes no bones about it. I mean, the distortion of a prosperity gospel is that you know you’re going to prosper in all things and your Heavenly Father is a good Heavenly Father, which is true, you are going to prosper in all things.
But it also distorts it by saying that, you know, suffering is not a part of the deal. But suffering is a part of the deal. We suffer for this.
We suffer first of all because we live in a broken world, and everybody suffers. Nobody gets off this rock without suffering. Some people seem to suffer more than others, but we all suffer.
We all have physical sufferings. We all suffer what I call opp: other people’s pain. Our loved ones suffer. We all lose people through death. Who we love, we grieve. We have heartbreak.
We have just wars and rumors of wars, tortures, atrocities. People suffer. But as a follower of Jesus Christ, you suffer again. You suffer because now you are set against the standards of this broken world. You have now set yourself in opposition with sin, the flesh and the devil. The reason people give up on Christianity isn’t because of intellectual doubts. The reason people give up on Christianity is because they get tired of the fight with the world, the flesh and the devil, and they just cave. And then they come up with intellectual reasons not to believe.
I’m not talking about people who don’t believe from the beginning. I’m talking about people who walk away from their faith. I have just experienced this so often. It’s like, well, I don’t believe anymore because of all the evil in the world or this or that. It’s like, no, you knew about all the evil in the world when you used to believe. You don’t believe anymore because you wanted to live with your girlfriend. And it was just too hard to resist not doing it. And you felt too guilty as a Christian doing it.
Or you just wanted to keep smoking weed, and it was too hard to give it up. And so you just felt the weight of that guilt, the weight of that, you know, I keep caving to this and not taking it to God. You just kind of gave up. You quit.
That’s why I tell you all the time, right? Kevinism, 101. You cannot lose if you what? Do not quit. All right? This race is a race of perseverance. It’s a race of endurance. And we suffer. We suffer, but we will also be glorified.
And in the New Testament, there is no separating the cross and the resurrection. There’s no separating suffering and glory.
I remember as a young disciple, and I’m reading through the Gospels, and Jesus is performing signs and wonders and miracles. And I’m just thinking, man, I want to do that one day. I want to have that power. I want to heal the sick and cast out demons and all of that.
And I got down on my knees and I prayed. And this was an earnest prayer. This was a. It’s a good prayer to pray.
We also pray this prayer. I said, Lord, I want to be more like Jesus. And immediately in my mind came this picture of a man hanging on a bloody cross. And, you know, you can give me. You can. You can pick on me for my response to that, or you can give me at least credit for honesty.
Immediately out of my mouth, I said, no, not that, Jesus. And then this word came to me. Kevin. You don’t get one without the other. You don’t get one without the other.
You don’t get the power without the suffering. You don’t get the glory without the suffering. Now, they are inseparable in this life. But verse 18, that’s what verse 17 says. Verse 18 says, though they’re inseparable, they are not comparable.
You need to get this. They are inseparable, but they are also incomparable. Why? Well, here’s the obvious reason. One is transitory, temporary, and finite. That’s the suffering. The glory is eternal, will get better, and is overwhelmingly glorious, rich.
They represent two ages. In this age, suffering and glory are inseparable.
In the age to come, it’s glory with no suffering. And forever is a long time. This life goes by quickly. The older you get. We’re just talking about this. The older you get, it seems like time speeds up exponentially.
I remember very vividly as a young Methodist pastor and my other young Methodist pastor friends and the older Methodist pastor saying, oh, we’re so glad you guys are here. you’re the young lions. You know what? I’m an old, toothless thing now. I’m an old lion now. Man, that happened quick.
When did I stop being a young lion and start being an old? I went to a church to preach a while back, and the young man who was moderating the service, as I was a guest preacher, was very gracious. But here’s what he said. He said, isn’t it wonderful to have a seasoned man of God here to speak to us?
Yeah, Brian, I knew you’d get that right. Isn’t it wonderful to have a season? In other words, I’ve lived lots of seasons. He didn’t say it. He said, isn’t it wonderful that this old guy is still vertical so he can talk to us a little bit?
I don’t know when I went from being a young lion to a seasoned man of God, but there’s no young lion left. I’m a seasoned man of God. And it goes quick.
And so Mother Teresa says that the struggles of this life compared to the glory to be revealed in us will seem like no matter how atrocious. Remember, she dealt firsthand with the real suffering of the poorest of the poor in India.
She said, the sufferings of this world will just seem like nothing more than one night, one inconvenient night in a bad motel. And I’ve always said it will be like a gnat’s eyebrow. All right? My wife told me, you know, you’ve that gnat’s eyebrow for 10 years. you’ve got to come up with another analogy. She said, the sufferings of this world will be no more consequential than a pimple on a rhino’s butt. And she said, no, go back to the gnat’s eyebrow. I said, well, you asked for it. You asked for it.
What do you think? You think it was going to get better? You know, be careful what you ask for. Pick whichever one of those three analogies you want.
The sufferings of this age are inseparable from the glory we experience in this age. But the sufferings of this age are incomparable with the glory to be revealed to us and in us. They cannot be compared. And that is good news.
Now, in God’s creation, because human beings have fallen, all nature suffers. The Bible says the past was subjected to frustration. Nature has suffered.
The future says that nature will be liberated. There will be no more death in glory, no more animal death, no more plant death. And it says, nature groans.
Now in the present, in our present world, nature groans. And you know, you’ve got all the controversy, and it isn’t new. It’s been my whole life, there’s been climate controversy and there’s truth to it, right? There’s truth that nature groans, all right, that sinful humans have made a mark on nature, and nature groans. And even before there were sinful humans, nature groaned.
All right, I saw it today.
I get up this morning, I look out in my backyard, and there’s all this commotion going on.
There’s about four blue jays dive bombing a cat. The reason they’re dive bombing that cat is because nature is groaning because one blue jay was on the ground, and that cat was doing the pounce on it thing.
That blue jay kept trying to get away, but you could tell its wing was broken. It couldn’t fly, it couldn’t lift.
And so the cat kept going back to that blue jay, and the other blue jays were trying to save the life of their fellow blue jay by dive-bombing the cat. The cat was in distress. Nature was growing.
The big groaner, of course, was that poor blue jay with the broken wing that ultimately the cat, I think, finished the job. The other blue jays were groaning out of whatever kind of camaraderie blue jays have with other blue jays as they were trying to defend that thing.
And I saw the predatory nature of nature right there in my backyard. I was so glad my wife did. She came down. She didn’t see the scene. All she saw was these agitated blue jays.
The cat had kind of finished the blue jay under the slide. And then the blue jays chased the cat under the bushes. She didn’t see any of that. She said, oh, those blue jays are active this morning.
As I know, my wife does not like predation. I didn’t give her the rest of the story. It would have just harshed her morning.
Me, I kind of like the nature show. But I also realized that’s a groaning, right? That’s a groaning.
I saw a cartoon one time, and the Bible actually never says the lion will lie down with the lamb. It’s actually the wolf will lie down with the lamb. But this had a lion and a lamb, and the lamb was braiding the lion’s mane. And the lion was kind of looking over at the lamb going, hey, don’t push your luck.
But we will all be. We will all eat vegetables if we eat at all in heaven.
Unless my theory or my request that we get meat trees is, well, you know, we’ll hold. We’ll hold. Nature will be liberated. But presently it groans. And it groans because human beings who are called to subdue nature, to heal nature, to bring nature into its fullness, we fell.
And so nature, just as we are lifted up and redeemed in Christ, so nature, it groans for what? The redemption, the completion of the sons and daughters of God. This is the verse I look at. These are the verses. I look at that. Tell me.
Yes, there will be animals in heaven. All right. Emmy, your beloved dog will be in heaven with you one day. You don’t lose your animals. Just as my wife, her puppies will be there with her. The dogs that she has loved. And I have repented on this. Even cats will be there.
My grandsons asked if they could ride dinosaurs. Maybe nature will be redeemed. All of creation will be redeemed as we are redeemed. And then God’s children, we experience suffering and glory. We too, groan with creation as in childbirth.
What a perfect example, right, of suffering and glory.
I remember during my son’s delivery, and they taught us. I had gone to the Lamaze classes. I don’t know if you know. Do they still do Lamaze? I don’t even know, but it was a way of breathing and trying to lessen the pain by getting other focus during labor.
And the husbands were there with their wives, and you would breathe with them as like, you know, kind of a rhythmic. And you would have a focal point.
You would pick something in the room for the wife, for the woman. And this actually works. When I was a kid and I’d get four allergy shots a week, I realized if I watched the nurse put the needle in my arm, it would hurt a lot more than if I was counting the dots on the ceiling. If I distracted myself by focusing on something else, it didn’t hurt as much. And so you try to get your wife to focus on something else.
We had a picture of my daughter, my two-year-old daughter. She’s delivering our second child, and I would hold that in front of her face, and I would breathe. I don’t know if you know, but it was groaning; it was tough.
At one point, I’m pretty tired. This is hard work, right? I’m sitting in the recliner they have for me, and she’s lying in bed. It’s between contractions.
So between contractions, I’d sit down in the recliner, and I’m swinging my leg. As I’m swinging my leg, apparently it was hitting the bed. Click, click, click, click.
Well, I’m old enough, Brian, you’re probably old enough to remember the 1970s release of the movie The Exorcist. In that movie, Linda Blair, this girl who was demonized, at one point, her head went 360 degrees around. This demonized head did a full circle all the way around. You know, everybody knows that’s physically impossible. No, I saw it that night. Click, click, click.
My wife’s head went 360 degrees around and she looked at me. Stop kicking the bed. Nature groans. But you know what? Several hours later, she was holding a new baby boy. Hours before it was, you did this to me. And now it’s like, look what we did. Glory following the suffering.
Nature. As in. And Paul uses that analogy, he says, as in childbirth, one of the greatest celebrations is bringing a new life into the world. One of the greatest groanings is bringing a new life in the world.
And so we groan along with creation in this fallen world. But we have a hope. And that hope is solidified by the first fruits of the Spirit. God has given us His Holy Spirit as a down payment of glory to be revealed.
Listen, how do you know you’re saved? People always ask, you know, how do I know I’m saved? You know, I keep sinning. I’m not perfect. How do I know I’m saved? You got the Holy Spirit.
Yeah, I have the Holy Spirit. you’re saved. you’re saved.
Any evidence of the Spirit in your life is evidence that you will be liberated from this groaning into glory. And therefore, we eagerly hope for our full redemption, our full adoption, our heavenly bodies.
We were reading today about the transition of our bodies. This earthly body 1.0, the heavenly body we get in intermediate heaven that is very spiritual, very light, very luminescent, but very real, very recognizable, is body 2.0. And then in the end, our earthly bodies are resurrected, brought together with that spiritual body.
And we get Our Eternal Bodies 3.0, and the New Heavens and the new earth. And so we wait for the groanings of this body to come to an end and for our new bodies to come.
We eagerly hope for our full redemption and our full adoption as God’s children. We will be like him, and it will be well, and the glory will last forever.
And he says, in this hope, we were saved. And dear ones, there’s three tenses to being saved. Just like there’s three tenses to nature’s groaning, there’s three tenses to us being saved.
When we came to Christ, we were saved. We use that language, brother, when were you saved? And some people have a spiritual birthday. Other people, it’s kind of a process. I can tell you the night I was saved. I can tell you how it happened when I got born again.
If you ask my wife, she’ll say, well, I was a good Catholic girl. And then I started dating you and you started talking about Jesus.
And before I knew it, I was saying my prayers, and I was reading my Bible, and I had a relationship with Jesus. I wasn’t just a good Catholic girl anymore.
She can’t give you a date. She can give you a process. Doesn’t matter. We were all saved. In this life, we are also being saved. We are progressively becoming more like Jesus.
We’re working out our salvation with fear and trembling as God is working in us. It’s equally accurate to say, yes, I’m saved and I’m being saved.
I’m being saved from this groaning. I’m being saved from my old sinful past. I’m being saved from those.
We talked about it last time. We talked about how those tracks get drawn in our body, those sinful tracks get drawn in our mind and our body, and how hard it is to break out of those patterns because we were created by a good God to be creatures of habit. But now sin has twisted that.
And our flesh has learned, deeply learned, our minds, our brains have deeply learned, and our flesh has deeply learned these ways of reacting that become sinful habits. And it’s hard to break.
And yet each of us can tell two things with honesty. We can tell an area in our life where we’ve had victory, and we can also speak of an area of life where we still struggle. Is that not true? There’s area, all right. You know, I have victory every day for six years.
I created a habit in my life of dealing with the groaning of this life by using marijuana, by smoking weed. All right, I don’t smoke weed anymore. Haven’t smoked weed for about 40 years. Haven’t done it.
It became legal in Washington. I didn’t say, yippee, now I can do it legally. I said, not going to do it. I don’t want it anymore. I’ve been set free. I’m not going back again to slavery.
Now here’s the interesting thing about habits. They draw tracks in your brain, man. So now marijuana is legal in Washington.
I drive down the street. My wife says, I’m going to a fabric store. I said, is there such a thing? Oh, yeah, there’s Michaels. There’s, I don’t know, whatever ones there are. She says, they’re fabric stores. There are. There are. Or I’m going to Hobby Lobby. I’ve heard of Hobby Lobby, but I don’t. I couldn’t tell you where a Hobby Lobby is. I could not tell you where any Hobby Lobby. I couldn’t tell you where a fabric store is. I can’t tell you where any of those stores my wife goes to are.
They’re bigger, they’re more visible. I haven’t been in one. But I can tell you where every pot shop is between Port Orchard and Silverdale that I’ve driven by. I know where they are. Why? Pot Ding Radar. All right, those tracks are still there, but thanks be to God, right? I don’t go in those stores. I don’t go in those stores. However, today, the Sunday school teacher brought doughnut holes for the kids. I got me one. All right.
I know at my age and my weight that, you know, I would probably just be better if I didn’t eat any doughnuts at all. But doggone it, I mean, donuts are so good. They’re so good. And so there’s still a struggle there.
Now I’ll say I eat less than I used to, eat less of everything than I used to. Problem is, it doesn’t do much good anymore. But there’s still a struggle. There’s other struggles. You have struggles. You have places of victory and places of struggle.
What does that say? We are being saved. And ultimately.
What? We will be completely saved. Those struggles are not eternal. Those struggles are not eternal. They’re just not. They’ll be done. Now we are required to be patient and not quit, but also not be passive and stay in the game. Pray about your struggles. Confess your sins. You will get better. You will get better. And God is at work in you. He has promised. God will perfect the work he has begun in you. He has promised. The only thing that’s fatal is to give up, to quit. Don’t do it. We groan inwardly, we struggle inwardly.
But we have the Spirit who gives us hope. Not only that, now the Spirit helps us in our prayers. God knows we are weak, and he sent the Spirit to help us.
So that those groans that we don’t even have words for. Those pains, that we don’t even have words for. Those deep hurts that we groan inwardly. God comes to us in the Spirit of Jesus and says what? I groan with you.
The King of Heaven groans to the King of Heaven to intercede for us, to mediate for us.
So that we can get better, so that we won’t quit, so that we will progress.
26 In the same way the Spirit also helps us in our weakness, because we do not know what to pray for as we should, but the Spirit himself intercedes for us with inexpressible groanings. (Romans 8:26, CSB)
God is on our side. He helps us in our prayers.
There are times we don’t know what to pray for. Here’s a good prayer. Oh God. O God. O God. O God. It’s a good prayer. That’s a groaning. Help. That’s a groaning. And when the Spirit intercedes for us, he does it right. He intercedes for us according to God’s will. Why? He carries God’s will. He’s God.
Can you imagine a God so good that the means the person through whom we come to the Father is the Son? And the prayers we utter through the Son to get to the Father are inspired by the Spirit.
Now, I’m not saying all your prayers are necessarily Holy Spirit inspired. It doesn’t matter. You can pray them anyway. God wants to hear what you think. God wants to hear what you’re feeling. He’s a Father. He’s having a relationship with you.
But the Spirit intercedes for us, mediates for us, according to God’s will. Tongues.
Different people have different interpretations. Some Charismatics look at this passage and say it’s about tongues. That’s how the Spirit does it. I don’t think that is true. I don’t think this passage is about tongues, but I think the principle of praying in tongues that Paul alludes to in 1 Corinthians 14 ties in with this.
I think tongues can be a way of groaning because Paul says in 1 Corinthians 14, when we pray in tongues, we speak an unknown language to God, and it edifies ourselves.
There’s another use of tongues where tongues is a prophetic language that somebody else interprets for the body. I’ve heard the discernment ministry guy say, no, that’s the only use of tongues. Well, read 1 Corinthians 14.
When you pray in tongues, you pray to a language that no one understands, and God uses it to edify yourself. That sounds an awful lot like a prayer language to me.
18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you; 18 I thank God that I speak in tongues more than all of you; 19 yet in the church I would rather speak five words with my understanding, in order to teach others also, than ten thousand words in a tongue.(1 Corinthians 14:18-19, CSB)
When Paul says, I pray in tongues more than all of you, or I speak in tongues more than all of you, but in a gathering, I would rather speak a few intelligible words than a bunch of words in tongues.
Well, what does that mean? It means that when Paul uses tongues, most of the time he’s not using it in a gathering. Therefore, he’s not using it prophetically like it was in Acts 2. He’s using it as a prayer language as it is in the beginnings of 1 Corinthians 14.
That seems abundantly clear to me that there are two uses to this language. And so if you groan and you have a prayer language, I suppose you can groan in your prayer language.
Having said that, if you don’t have a prayer language, that doesn’t mean what Romans 8:27 is talking about. It’s talking. In fact, it says groanings that words can’t express. At least, least your words can’t express. And so you can groan those words out.
And God hears our prayers. God answers our prayers. God is at work in us even when we don’t realize it.
And one of the things I’ve noticed as being a longtime Christian, being a seasoned Christian, one of the things I notice is oftentimes I’m praying for A, but to get to A, God’s got to work on B, because B is the underlying issue.
And I’m praying God, I want this behavior to stop or I want this situation to change, and God’s working something deep inside of me to actually make that possible.
Have you ever noticed when you really crave something, but it’s potentially an idol? Even though it’s a good thing, it’s an idol, and you cry out to God and say, I want this. I want this.
One of the ways I see this is with young people. I want a wife. I want a husband. I want a partner. I want a partner. I want a partner. God, I need to get married. I need to get married. I need to get married. They keep striking out. They keep striking out. And finally, they reach a point.
They say, you know what, God, you’re enough. you’re enough. Time and time again I’ve seen this. Like next month, it’s like, oh, I met him. Because if you’d have met them before that, they would have been an idol taking God’s place on the throne of your life.
I tell people this all the time. When do I know I’m ready for a relationship? When you don’t need one. When you don’t need one. you’re ready. When you need one, it’s still an idol.
And so you can pray, God, give me a wife, give me a husband, give me a spouse. You know, that’s fine. You can pray that. But God’s working on, first of all, I’m going to work in our relationship in such a way.
It happened early for me. I was 18. I was trying really hard to find a girlfriend. I was trying, oh, God, I gotta get a girlfriend. I gotta get a girlfriend. Gotta get a girlfriend. Actually, I wasn’t praying for a girlfriend because I didn’t want the kind of girlfriend God was gonna give me.
That was an area of my life that wasn’t surrendered. And finally, I got so frustrated and so hurt and so upset. Finally, I gave God. This is a great prayer. I gave God a fine. Not the kind of like, oh, fine, God. No, I gave him the fine that, you know, fine, fine, fine. God, don’t give me a girlfriend then. Or if you do give me a girlfriend, you pick her out. And she’s probably going to be some poor pathetic gal that I’m going to have to lift her self-esteem up and yada, yada, yada.
Fine. That was my holy prayer. And a merciful, gracious God heard it. Two weeks later, Jill called me up and asked. She asked me out once. I gave up the idol.
You see, keep praying because even when you’re praying wrong, God is working, the Spirit is working, and he’ll get you to the place to answer your prayers. Why? Because Romans 8:28 says God works all things for the good of those who love him and are called according to his purpose.
28 We know that all things work together for the good of those who love God, who are called according to his purpose. (Romans 8:28, CSB)
But that’s a spoiler alert. That’s next week.
Right now, I want to say suffering and glory, dear ones. I got good news and bad news. You the bad news first. You know, whenever I tell somebody I got good news and bad news, I said, well, give me the bad news. End on the good news.
Suffering and glory. I got good news and bad news. Here it is. The bad news is suffering is going to be there. Life’s going to be hard. I wish you could come to church and I could say it’s all flying rainbows and glitter. It’s not. you’re going to struggle.
Now, here’s the good news. Though suffering and glory are inseparable, they are also incomparable. They are also incomparable. And there’s an addendum to the good news. Here’s the addendum. The world in the midst of their suffering has nobody to depend upon but the resources of this broken world. But you, dear children, in your suffering, you have the resources of heaven that come to you. That come to you through the Spirit of God, who he has given to you out of his gracious, merciful love. And so, dear ones, you cannot lose if you do not quit.
And God gives you the grace by his Spirit to finish the walk so that one day when the suffering is gone, the glory will last forever. And the best I can tell, that’s a long time. All right, we’ll all be seasoned and forever, but none of us will be old. And dear ones, it’s one of the reasons I do this, one of the reasons we come here. Hang on to that hope. Because hope is a great weapon against suffering. Hope is a great weapon against suffering.
And so I pray in the Name of Jesus for that beautiful virtue given to us by God in the power of the Holy Spirit, to hope in the midst of our struggles, in the midst of our sufferings, to have a glorious hope because we have the first fruits of the Spirit.
Holy Spirit, reveal yourselves in our lives so that we might have hope. We might know that you’re interceding for us. you’re working in and through us, and you’re bringing us into the conformity of the likeness of your son, Jesus.
And we will be your forever family. You will be with us. You will be our God, and we will be your people. There will be no more crying, no more death, no more pain, no more tears, no more suffering anymore. And the glory will last forever. And we’ll look back on the sufferings of this world, which I do not want to minimize at all. Dear ones, I don’t want to make light of your suffering. I know it’s real. So is mine. But I do want to say this from this perspective. It’s heavy and it’s hard.
From that perspective, inconvenient night in a hotel. Nat’s eyebrow, pimple on a rhino. Come up with your own picture. Cannot be compared. Cannot be compared. Cannot be compared.
Lord, we thank you for this meal that sustains us in this world of woe, this meal that reminds us of what you have done for us and that we are saved. It then feeds us for the life we’re living now, as we’re being saved, as we’re working out our salvation, and as it points toward the feast we will have with you forever, as we are completely saved.
So, Jesus, thank you for inviting us to this meal. And feed us on the food of God. Tonight we ask, feed us on your presence, we ask in your name, Holy Spirit, we pray, Amen.
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