“You just don’t understand!” Everyone has heard that phrase as some point. Many of you have uttered it yourself. It might come from a distraught teenager who feels like her world has just collapsed. A young family that has dug themselves into a deep financial hole might think this thought. Someone who has lost a spouse or a child will offer the same phrase as he struggles to come to grips with that awful reality: “You just don’t understand.”

Often well-meaning individuals will try to console someone by saying “I know just how you feel…” and then share a time they went through a similar experience. While their hearts may be in the right place, that is seldom received well. In fact, rather than helping, it can lead the person they are trying to help to feel anger and resentment instead. They will think or say, “How can he/she possibly know how I feel?”

I have recently been going through the Gospel of John. In doing so, I was reminded that there is someone who knows how I feel and what I am going through. God Himself came down here to be one of us: The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us (John 1:14). And in the next chapter is says, many people saw the miraculous signs he was doing and believed in his name. But Jesus would not entrust himself to them, for he knew all men. He did not need man’s testimony about man, for he knew what was in a man (John 2:23–25).

That last phrase really struck me: he knew what was in a man. As one of us, he can relate to our lives. As God, He has complete and full understanding or all we go through. In fact, He went through the same temptations we face day after day: For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet was without sin (Hebrews 4:15).

We have one who understands. He sympathizes with us. He does know how you feel. And He wants to help. You are encouraged to cast all your anxiety on him because he cares for you (1 Peter 5:7). He does so from the perspective of one who has been through it Himself and as one who can help you as no one else can. In fact, that was why He came.

Jesus knew and still knows the mess you are in because of sin. He knew you could not fix that on your own. He understood. And He did something about it. He took your place. He took your guilt. He took your sin and carried it with that cross to Calvary. When He died, it was for you. Because of Him, you have peace with God. That was why He could say, Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. (Matthew 11:28)

He understands.