We hope you enjoy this re-post from November 13, 2014. Be blessed! The Today’s Quote From God Team

And taking with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, He began to show grief and distress of mind and was deeply depressed. Then He said to them, My soul is very sad and deeply grieved, so that I am almost dying of sorrow. Stay here and keep awake and keep watch with Me. – Matthew 26:37-38, Amplified Bible (AMP)

Not long ago a friend of mine lost his mother. After I offered my condolences, he said something like this to me:

I really appreciate that. I know you lost your mother recently, too. I know folks have good intentions when they say, “I’m sorry for your loss,” but it’s a lot more comforting – it means a whole lot more – when it comes from someone who has experienced the same kind of sorrow.

My friend is absolutely right. Comfort coming from someone who has experienced (and therefore understands) pain like ours just means more than comfort coming from someone who hasn’t.

The Bible teaches us to cast our cares upon Christ, but many Christians don’t do this because they don’t understand the extent of Christ’s empathy* for their situation. In other words, they don’t really believe that Christ understands their situation, so they don’t bother to ask Him for help. The irony of such thinking is that Christ understands the depths of our sorrow better than we do. For example, consider this excerpt from Apologetics Press, which discusses the great drops of blood that Christ sweated in the Garden of Gethsemane:

A thorough search of the medical literature demonstrates that such a condition, while admittedly rare, does occur in humans. Commonly referred to as hematidrosis or hemohidrosis (Allen, 1967, pp. 745-747), this condition results in the excretion of blood or blood pigment in the sweat. Under conditions of great emotional stress, tiny capillaries in the sweat glands can rupture (Lumpkin, 1978), thus mixing blood with perspiration. This condition has been reported in extreme instances of stress (see Sutton, 1956, pp. 1393-1394). During the waning years of the twentieth century, 76 cases of hematidrosis were studied and classified into categories according to causative factors: “Acute fear and intense mental contemplation were found to be the most frequent inciting causes” (Holoubek and Holoubek, 1996). While the extent of blood loss generally is minimal, hematidrosis also results in the skin becoming extremely tender and fragile (Barbet, 1953, pp. 74-75; Lumpkin, 1978), which would have made Christ’s pending physical insults even more painful.

From these factors, it is evident that even before Jesus endured the torture of the cross, He suffered far beyond what most of us will ever suffer. His penetrating awareness of the heinous nature of sin, its destructive and deadly effects, the sorrow and heartache that it inflicts, and the extreme measure necessary to deal with it, make the passion of Christ beyond all comprehension.

I dare say that most of us never have, and most of us never will, be under such stress that we will sweat blood. Yet Christ did, making him extremely qualified to understand our pain and to help us bear it.

Can you obtain comfort for your pain from sources other than Christ? Sure you can. But no one understands your situation better than Christ does, and if you choose not to seek His counsel in the Word of God and in prayer, then you are missing out on the greatest source of comfort you could ever hope to have.

* Empathy: the feeling that you understand and share another person’s experiences and emotions : the ability to share someone else’s feelings