God Feels Our Pain
Post 3 in the “God Can’t” Series: A Wounded God Who Weeps With Us
God Feels Our Pain
Part 3 in the “God Can’t” Series
A Wounded God Who Weeps With Us
TL;DR: If God is love, then God doesn’t just observe our suffering, God experiences it. Not from a distance, but from within. God weeps with us, aches with us, and breathes through the pain beside us. That’s not weakness. That’s what love looks like.
The God Can’t Framework (5 Core Truths):
1. God can’t prevent evil.
2. God feels our pain.
Does God Feel?
If God can’t prevent every tragedy, does that mean God is just watching from a distance?
Is God unaffected by our suffering, dispassionately aware, but emotionally detached?
If you’ve ever sat in silence after a diagnosis…
If you’ve ever wept beside a casket…
If you’ve ever begged heaven for a miracle that didn’t come…
Then you’ve probably asked:
Does God feel this? Does God care?
My answer: Yes.
A thousand times YES!
But not because of an abstract theological argument.
Because of Jesus.
A Wounded God
When I lay in a hospital bed with lungs damaged from chemotherapy, struggling to breathe, I didn’t need a God who could explain my pain.
I needed a God who had lungs.
A God who had cried.
A God who had bled.
A God who had begged for another way.
What changed me was not a theory.
It was the image of Jesus in Gethsemane, sweating blood, overwhelmed with grief, abandoned by his friends, whispering, “My soul is crushed with sorrow to the point of death” (Mark 14:34).
That’s the God I needed.
And that’s the God I found.
Not Watching. Weeping.
puts it, God’s love is not passive, God suffers with us.That’s the second insight in his God Can’t framework:
1. God can’t prevent evil.
2. God feels our pain.
Not only does God not cause suffering, and not control outcomes,
God feels our pain.
God experiences our sorrow in real time.
God is not the unmoved mover.
God is the most moved mover.
This is not weakness.
It’s love.
Love doesn’t ignore suffering.
Love enters it.
“Jesus Wept”
Shortest verse in the Bible.
One of the most powerful.
Jesus wept when Lazarus died.
Even though he knew resurrection was coming.
Even though he knew death would not win.
Why?
Because grief matters.
Because loss is real.
Because presence doesn’t skip pain, it honors it.
This is not just Jesus being “fully human.”
This is Jesus revealing God’s heart.
God isn’t standing above your grief.
God is sitting in it with you.
God Suffers With and Because
God doesn’t just suffer with us.
God suffers because of us.
Because love gets hurt.
The love of God is not fragile.
But it is vulnerable.
That’s what makes it real.
The theologian Jürgen Moltmann put it this way:
“A God who cannot suffer is poorer than any human.”
God doesn’t suffer because God is weak.
God suffers because God is love.
And love always feels the pain of those it loves.
A Theology That Breathes
This is one of the reasons I’ve embraced Open and Relational Theology:
Because it gives us a God who is truly present.
Not the god of the unmoved throne.
Not the god of stoic sovereignty.
But the God of tear-streaked cheeks and outstretched hands.
This is a God whose heart breaks with ours.
A God who listens without fixing.
Who stays even when healing doesn’t come.
Why This Matters
If God feels our pain, then we are never alone in it.
Not one cry goes unheard.
Not one tear is wasted.
Not one sleepless night is dismissed.
And if God suffers, then suffering is not a punishment.
It’s not a test.
It’s not a divine lesson plan.
It’s a wound in the world, and God is wounded with us.
You Are Not Alone
I don’t know what you’re carrying today.
But I do know this:
You are not carrying it alone.
There is no shame in your sorrow.
There is no weakness in your grief.
God is not waiting for you on the other side of healing.
God is here now, in the ache, in the fog, in the quiet sadness that no one else sees.
God is here, breathing with you.
Because that’s what love does.
Next Time: God Works to Heal
If God can’t prevent evil…
If God suffers with us…
Then what does God actually do?
Does God just sit in the pain with us forever?
Next week, we’ll explore what I believe is the most hopeful truth of all:
God always works for good.
Even when the system resists.
Even when the healing takes time.
Even when the outcome isn’t what we prayed for.
God is never inactive.
Love is never indifferent.
And healing is always on the move.
Reflect + Respond
How were you taught to think about God’s emotions?
Does it comfort you or unsettle you to imagine a God who suffers?
Where in your own life have you most needed a God who feels?
Living in Texas, glued to the news as we continue to pray for the families of those who have lost loved ones and for the young girls still unaccounted for, I can barely breathe. I cannot imagine the fear the children faced as they awakened in the night to floodwaters rushing in sweeping them away; many to their death. How does any parent survive this? The agony of the loss and not even being able to say goodbye is absolutely heart wrenching. Most of what we learn in our evangelical churches fail us in these moments. I remember my daughter sitting next to her sister-in-law in a church service after her husband’s tragic death at only 24 years old. The band was singing while the congregation clapped and danced to the lyrics “Cause You are good, You're good, oh-oh
You are good, You're good, oh-oh, You are good, You're good, oh-oh. You're never gonna let, You're never gonna let me down.You're never gonna let, You're never gonna let me down. You're never gonna let, You're never gonna let me down.” And her sister-in-law passed out. It was just too much. The only way I have held on to my faith over the past ten years of heartache and disappointment is to lean into the God who not only feels our pain but enters into it. The God who comes in co-suffering love. This is what anchors me. Thank you for your posts that continue to remind us that God is always present with us. Thank you for this. ~ “But I also get this holy ache, a longing to be a haven in the chaos. A space where people are seen, heard, and gently held. A place where grace is more than a theory.”
God can. He/She is not like us. At least not until He chose to join us. Which He did. Something happened that we don’t have the capacity to understand yet. That’s what Mystery means. Michio Kaku, the rock star physicist from Columbia U, wrote several books about what physics has been able to learn about dimensional space. Put simply, it boils down to this: there are too many to measure. Every time we try to put God, the Creator and Sustainer in our little human box, the science we can understand tells us we are too small to understand - so far anyway. But a change is gonna come. He promised. And that’s why He came. So by joining us, we can join Him.