Immanuel, which means “God with us,” might be my favorite word. The saying, “You don’t know what you don’t know” holds true. If you haven’t grown up in a ghetto looking for scraps of food to get by, you don’t know. If you haven’t been married, you don’t quite comprehend the complexity of bringing two lives together. If you haven’t been single for an extended season, you likely don’t remember the tinge of loneliness that sometimes creeps in, and for some, the longing for a relationship to take that loneliness away.

Believers go from the comparative poverty of earth to the glory of heaven. We look ahead knowing the pains and frustrations of this life are momentary. We are on a pilgrimage, journeying to a better, never-ending life in glory.

Jesus left glory—the perfect splendor of heaven, where angels adored him and the Father and Spirit consulted and communed with him—for life on earth. To descend would be daunting. Mary and Joseph had never raised a child. Jesus entrusted his life to amateurs.

In heaven, the devil knew Jesus’ majesty and power, and he knew he was no match. But as a human, Jesus submitted to a weakened state. He became hungry. He experienced fear. And in his weakness, the devil tried again and again to plant seeds of doubt, to twist the truth and seduce Jesus from righteousness.

As a human, Jesus felt emotions. He knew Lazarus had entered his eternal rest, and knew he was better off, and even so, standing outside the grave, with Mary and Martha and those closest to Lazarus, he felt the pain of separation.

Despite being sinless, Jesus went to the cross where he felt the divide that existed between sinful humans and a holy God. God the Father allowed Jesus to feel the weight of sin—the full weight of the punishment of sin that we will never have to feel.

Because Jesus set aside his power and walked in our shoes, he knows loneliness and frustration. He understands rejection and what it is to be cold or misunderstood.

The author of the letter to the Hebrews reminds us of this significance. “For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need” (Hebrews 4:15,16).

Jesus knows what we are going through. We go to him in prayer knowing he understands. And because he understands, we go to him confidently. He knows what we need and is able to supply it in abundance from the storehouses of heaven.