HIS GRACE
He Knows What You're Going Through
He is not observing your life from a safe, clean distance and rendering a verdict. He has been inside the specific thing you are carrying. That is why He can help.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
SAMHSA Helpline: 1-800-662-4357 (free, confidential, 24/7)
You are not alone. Reaching out is not weakness — it is courage.
Nobody quite gets it
There is a particular loneliness that comes from trying to explain what you are going through and finding that no one quite lands on the truth of it. People try. They say the right things. They are kind. But there is still a gap — between what you are actually experiencing and what they are able to receive and understand. You can feel that gap even when someone is trying their hardest to close it.
Maybe it is the specific texture of your grief — not just loss but the complicated layers of it. Maybe it is the shame wrapped around your addiction that makes it impossible to tell the whole truth even to the people you trust most. Maybe it is the particular quality of your fear, or your depression, or the doubt that lives in a place you can barely articulate to yourself, let alone to another person.
The Christian gospel makes a claim about this that most people do not fully receive. It is not the claim that God is sympathetic — that He observes your suffering from a safe distance and feels bad about it. The claim is more specific and more extraordinary than that: He has been there. From the inside. In your specific kind of pain.
That is what Alma 7:11-12 says. That is what Hebrews 4:15 says. And if it is true, it changes everything about how you can come to Him.
Alma 7:11-12 — the most specific description of what He knows
"And he shall go forth, suffering pains and afflictions and temptations of every kind; and this that the word might be fulfilled which saith he will take upon him the pains and the sicknesses of his people. And he will take upon him death, that he may loose the bands of death which bind his people; and he will take upon him their infirmities, that his bowels may be filled with mercy, according to the flesh, that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people according to their infirmities."
Five categories beyond sin. Pains. Afflictions. Temptations of every kind. Sicknesses. Infirmities. The word "infirmities" is significant — it means structural weakness, the places where you are simply not sufficient for what is being asked of you. The gap between who you need to be and who you are.
And the reason Alma gives is not abstract: "that he may know according to the flesh how to succor his people." He did not take these things upon Himself in order to record that He experienced them. He did it so that He would know from bodily experience — "according to the flesh" — how to run to His people in their specific kind of need.
The word translated "succor" comes from a Latin root meaning to run to. He knows how to run to you because He has been where you are and knows the terrain. He is not offering advice from outside your experience. He is offering help from inside it.
Touched with the feeling of our infirmities
"For we have not an high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin. Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."
The phrase is striking: "cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities." The writer is working to correct a possible misunderstanding. You might think — and many people do think — that God is holy and therefore somewhat removed from the messiness of human struggle. The writer says: no. He can be touched. He is not untouchable by the feeling of what you are going through. He is a high priest who has been in it.
"In all points tempted like as we are." This is categorical. Not "in the major spiritual temptations." In all points. Every type of temptation you face — including the ones you are most ashamed of, the ones you have never told anyone, the specific pulls that own you — He has felt the pull of those, from the inside, without yielding. Which means He knows what it costs to resist. And when you do not resist — when you fail — He knows what that felt like too, because He has been in the exact moment before the choice.
The conclusion the writer draws from this is not "therefore be comforted that He understands." The conclusion is: "therefore come boldly." Because He has been there, because He can be touched by the feeling of your infirmities, the invitation is to come without hedging. Not timidly, not after cleanup, not with a speech prepared about why you deserve help. Come boldly. That is what it means to know that He knows.
He has specifically been where you are
This is worth naming concretely, because the general claim "He understands your suffering" can remain abstract if we do not look at what the scripture actually says He went through.
"Jesus wept." (John 11:35). He wept at the tomb of Lazarus knowing He was about to raise him — not from ignorance or despair but from love. He felt the loss of His friend and the grief of Mary and Martha and He let it move through Him. He did not manage it or perform strength over it. He wept. Isaiah 53:3 calls Him "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Not above grief. Acquainted with it. Personally. From the inside.
In Gethsemane, He asked His disciples to watch with Him while He prayed. Matthew 26:40: "And he cometh unto the disciples, and findeth them asleep." He faced the weight of the Atonement with His closest friends asleep a short distance away. On the cross, He cried: "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" (Matthew 27:46). He experienced the withdrawal of divine presence — the specific loneliness of facing something enormous with no one adequately there. He has been in that particular darkness.
"My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." (Matthew 26:38). He said this in Gethsemane — not as a metaphor but as a description of His actual interior state. Something that we would today recognize as the overwhelming quality of profound despair. He did not experience this from a removed vantage point. He was in it. He has been in the darkest kind of sorrow.
Isaiah 53:3: "He is despised and rejected of men." John 1:11: "He came unto his own, and his own received him not." He was rejected by His hometown (Luke 4:28-29), misunderstood by His family (John 7:5), abandoned by His disciples at His arrest (Matthew 26:56), denied three times by His closest friend (Matthew 26:75), and mocked by the crowd at His crucifixion. He has been in the specific pain of not being received, not being believed, and being publicly humiliated by people who should have known better.
Matthew 4:1-11 records forty days of specific, targeted temptation by Satan — hunger, power, pride, the bypassing of God's plan. Hebrews 4:15 confirms He was "in all points tempted like as we are." He felt the pull. He felt what it is to be in the moment before the choice when the wrong option is genuinely attractive. He did not yield — but He knows the specific weight of the pull from the inside.
Judas — one of the twelve, someone who had eaten with Him, walked with Him, seen His miracles — led soldiers to Him and identified Him with a kiss. John 13:21 records Jesus being "troubled in spirit" at the knowledge of the betrayal. He has been in the specific pain of being betrayed by someone close, by someone who chose something else over their relationship with Him. He knows what that feels like.
The Atonement began in Gethsemane with sweating blood (Luke 22:44). It continued with scourging (a near-fatal Roman beating), a crown of thorns, being stripped, carrying the cross until He collapsed, and crucifixion — a form of execution designed to maximize both duration and suffering. He has been in physical pain. He knows what it is to have a body that is in agony.
What this changes about how you can come to Him
If this is true — if He has actually been in your specific kind of pain — then the way you come to Him in prayer can change fundamentally.
You do not need to explain yourself. You do not need to justify why you are suffering or convince Him that your situation is serious enough to merit attention. He knows. He has been in the terrain you are describing. You can be fully honest — more honest than you can be with anyone else — because He is the one person who cannot be shocked, cannot be overwhelmed, and cannot be unable to relate.
Psalm 62:8 says it plainly: "Trust in him at all times; ye people, pour out your heart before him: God is a refuge for us." Pour out your heart. Not the edited version. Not the version where you have already explained yourself in the most understandable terms. The actual contents of what you are carrying — all of it, unedited. He can receive it. He has already been in it.
"The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart; and saveth such as be of a contrite spirit."
Nigh — close. Not at a dignified distance. Close. The broken heart is not the thing that keeps Him away. It is the thing that draws Him near. He is specifically close to the people who are in pieces. Not "close once they have begun to heal." Nigh — right now, in the breaking.
The person who feels too much to pray
Sometimes you are in a state where articulate prayer feels impossible. The pain is too great or the confusion too complete or the numbness too total to produce words. Romans 8:26 speaks to exactly this:
"Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities: for we know not what we should pray for as we ought: but the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered."
When you cannot find words — when the prayer you need to pray is too deep for language — the Spirit prays for you. With groanings which cannot be uttered. This is not metaphor. It is a description of what happens when you turn toward God in a state where you have no words to offer. The Spirit carries what you cannot articulate. You do not have to have it together enough to pray. You only have to turn in the direction of God. That is enough for Him to work with.
He sees what no one else sees
One of the most painful experiences in human life is doing something costly — struggling against something, persisting through something, making a change nobody notices — and feeling entirely unseen. The effort is real. The cost is real. And no one knows.
Matthew 6:4 says: "thy Father which seeth in secret shall reward thee openly." The word is not "observe" — it is "see." God sees the thing you did that no one else knows about. The time you chose differently when you were completely alone. The kindness you showed that no one witnessed. The fight you are in the middle of right now that you haven't told anyone about because you can't find the words or you are ashamed or you simply have no one to tell.
He sees it. Not because He is monitoring you — because He cares. The seeing is the proof of the caring. And because He has been in the specific kind of struggle you are in, the seeing is not judgment. It is recognition. It is the look of someone who has been there and knows what it costs.
"Can a woman forget her sucking child, that she should not have compassion on the son of her womb? yea, they may forget, yet will I not forget thee. Behold, I have graven thee upon the palms of my hands; thy walls are continually before me."
Graven upon the palms of His hands. Whatever the original context of this image, for Christian readers it carries a specific weight: the palms that held the nails. The wounds that Thomas touched. You are not forgotten. You are literally inscribed on the very hands that bore what He bore for you. He cannot look at His hands without seeing you.
A prayer for the person who feels unseen and alone
Lord — I have been carrying this alone for longer than I want to admit. I have tried to explain it to people and it hasn't worked. I have tried to carry it quietly and that isn't working either.
The scriptures say you have been in this. The specific kind of pain I am in — the pains and sicknesses and infirmities — that you took upon yourself so that you would know how to help me. I do not fully understand how that works. But I am choosing to believe that you know what I am carrying from the inside. That you are not judging me from a safe distance. That you have been here.
So here I am. I am not going to explain it or make it sound better than it is. You already know. I am just turning toward you. Present. As broken as I am. And asking you to do what the scripture says you know how to do — come and help me carry this.
Thank you for the wounds on your hands. Thank you for the weeping at the tomb. Thank you for having been in the dark place. I need to know someone has been there. I needed to know it was you.
Amen.
Questions to sit with
Alma 7:11 lists pains, afflictions, temptations, sicknesses, and infirmities. Which of those categories does what you are carrying fall into? What would it change if you genuinely believed that Christ has been in that specific category of experience — not as an observer but as someone who carried it Himself?
Hebrews 4:15 says He can be touched with the feeling of your infirmities. What would it mean to let Him be touched by what you are going through — to bring it fully to Him rather than a sanitized version? What are you holding back when you pray? What would it look like to stop holding that back?
Romans 8:26 says that when you do not know what to pray for, the Spirit makes intercession with groanings that cannot be uttered. Is there something you are carrying right now that you have not brought to God because you don't know how to say it? What would it look like to simply turn toward Him with that unspeakable thing and trust the Spirit to do the rest?
Isaiah 49:16 says you are graven on the palms of His hands. Where in your life right now do you feel like the effort you are making is invisible? What would it change to know that He sees exactly what it is costing you — and that He knows the cost because He has paid a version of it Himself?
Questions about whether God understands
Does Jesus understand what I am going through?
Yes — specifically. Alma 7:11-12 says He took upon Himself pains, afflictions, temptations of every kind, sicknesses, and infirmities — so that He would know from the inside how to help. Hebrews 4:15 confirms He was tempted in all points like we are. This is not distant sympathy. He went through the actual experience of your specific kind of suffering so that when you bring it to Him, you are bringing it to someone who has already been there.
Does God understand loneliness?
Yes. Matthew 27:46 records Christ crying "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me" — He experienced spiritual abandonment, the complete withdrawal of divine presence. In Gethsemane, He asked His disciples to watch with Him and they fell asleep (Matthew 26:40). He faced the weight of the Atonement largely alone. He has been in the specific loneliness of facing something enormous with no one adequately present to help.
Does Jesus understand grief?
"Jesus wept." (John 11:35). He wept at the tomb of Lazarus knowing He was about to raise him — not from ignorance but from love. He felt Mary and Martha's grief and let it move through Him without managing it. Isaiah 53:3 calls Him "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief." Not above grief — acquainted. Personally familiar from the inside.
Does God understand depression or mental health struggles?
Alma 7:11 includes pains, afflictions, and infirmities in what Christ took upon Himself. Matthew 26:38 records Him saying "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death" in Gethsemane — a depth of despair that closely parallels what we would today recognize as severe depression. He has been in the specific darkness of overwhelming sorrow. He is not managing your mental health struggles from a clean distance.
What does 'the Spirit maketh intercession with groanings' mean?
Romans 8:26 says that when we do not know what to pray for, the Spirit intercedes with groanings that cannot be uttered. This is God's provision for the moments when you are too broken or too confused to find words for prayer. You only have to turn in the direction of God — and the Spirit carries what you cannot articulate. You do not have to have it together enough to pray eloquently. You only have to turn. That is enough for Him to work with.
988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline: Call or text 988
Crisis Text Line: Text HOME to 741741
SAMHSA Helpline: 1-800-662-4357 (free, confidential, 24/7)
You are not alone. Reaching out is not weakness — it is courage.
More that speaks to this
Know someone who needs this?
Pass it along — sometimes the right words find people through the right person.
You don't have to carry it alone
You now know He has been there. The next step is daily practice — returning to Him with what you are carrying each morning, not just in crisis. Covenant Path gives you a daily scripture reading plan, prayer journal, and habit tracker to make this encounter a daily reality.