Douglas Vandergraph

There are questions that sit quietly in the human heart long before we learn how to say them out loud. Questions born in the tension between what hurts and what we hope for. Questions that rise in the middle of long nights, heavy seasons, and the kind of silence that feels too deep to measure. And one of those questions — one that has echoed across generations, across cultures, across the secret rooms of the soul — is this:

What if God was one of us?

It is simple. It is haunting. And it carries more truth than most people realize, because the question itself contains the doorway to a world-shaking reality. When we ask it honestly, when we let the ache behind the words rise to the surface, we discover that the question is not hypothetical at all. It is historical. It is theological. It is deeply personal.

And it is already answered.

There was a moment in time — a real moment, in a real world, with real dust on real roads — when the God who created galaxies stepped into human skin. Not as a metaphor. Not as an illusion. Not as a distant king testing out the view from below. But as a child who grew into a man who carried our sorrows, felt our feelings, and lived a life rooted in the same fragile humanity you’re navigating right now.

For most people, God is imagined as distant, detached, holy-but-far-away, watching from a throne so high above our experiences that He might as well be reading our stories through a telescope. But the moment Jesus stepped into the world, that illusion was shattered forever. God did not stay in the heavens and send down instructions for humans to figure out. He came Himself. He lowered Himself. He wrapped Himself in the limitations of the very bodies He designed. And in doing so, He answered every lonely heart that has ever whispered, “Does God even understand me?”

Yes. He does. Because He lived it.

Think about this: the Creator of the universe chose to feel hunger. He chose to feel exhaustion after long days of walking village to village. He chose to feel the emotional weight of rejection, betrayal, and heartbreak. He chose to enter a world that He knew would wound Him, misunderstand Him, and ultimately crucify Him. And He did it willingly, not because He needed to suffer, but because you needed a Savior who could look you in the eyes and say, “You are not alone in anything you face.”

Most people don’t realize the depth of this truth. They think God sees everything from a safe distance, protected from the chaos and pain of human life. But Jesus grew up in a small, misunderstood town. He worked with His hands. He had callouses on His palms. He walked miles under a hot Middle Eastern sun. He knew laughter and friendship, sweat and sorrow, joy and grief. Nothing you face today is outside the range of His understanding.

When you are exhausted, remember what it meant for Jesus to fall asleep in a boat during a storm — not because He was dismissive, but because He was tired. Deeply tired. Humanly tired.

When you feel misunderstood by the people closest to you, remember what it meant for Jesus’ own hometown to reject Him, to look at Him and essentially say, “Who do you think you are?” The Messiah stood in His own synagogue and was met with suspicion, resistance, and disbelief from the people who watched Him grow up.

When you feel betrayed, remember that Jesus shared meals, conversations, prayers, and dreams with Judas — and still faced the sting of a kiss that led Him toward death.

When you feel alone, remember Gethsemane. The place where the Son of God knelt in the dark, sweating drops of blood, asking His friends to stay awake with Him… only to turn around and find them sleeping. That kind of loneliness is not theoretical. It is not symbolic. It is raw, human experience — and Jesus lived it.

You see, God didn’t send sympathy through the clouds. He brought empathy to earth. He stepped into the very story we were drowning in, not as an observer or a critic, but as a participant. And that changes everything about how you understand your life today.

Because if God was one of us — and He was — then every prayer you whisper is heard by Someone who knows exactly what it feels like to be you. Not in theory. Not by divine imagination. But through lived experience.

He knows the weight in your chest when life feels like too much.
He knows the ache of wanting people to understand you but watching them misread your heart.
He knows the emotional exhaustion of loving people who don’t love you the same way.
He knows what it’s like to feel torn between divine purpose and human pain.
He knows what it’s like to wake up carrying responsibilities that feel heavier than your strength.
He knows what it’s like to face a future that demands courage you don’t feel like you have.

And still — He kept walking. He kept healing. He kept speaking life into the broken. He kept offering forgiveness to those who didn’t deserve it. He kept loving people who struggled to love Him back. He walked all the way to a cross He didn’t deserve and carried sins that weren’t His, because He saw your face in His future and said, “You are worth it.”

If God was one of us, it means you can stop pretending that your sadness is a spiritual failure. It means you can stop hiding your weariness behind fake positivity. It means you can stop thinking faith is about being strong all the time.

Jesus was not ashamed of His humanity, so why are you ashamed of yours?
Jesus cried openly.
Jesus felt overwhelmed.
Jesus asked God why things had to be the way they were.
Jesus experienced the kind of pressure that makes your knees buckle.

And yet none of that made Him less holy. It made Him relatable.

Your humanity is not an obstacle to God. It is the very reason He came close.

But here is where the message becomes even more powerful: God didn’t just walk among us. He walks within us. The same Spirit that strengthened Jesus in His weakest moments now dwells inside you. That means when you face your battles, you fight with borrowed strength. When you step into your calling, you step with borrowed courage. When life hurts, you heal with borrowed hope.

If God became human to walk with you, then He also became human to lift you. He didn’t become one of us to observe our struggles — He came to transform them.

And this is where so many people miss the heart of the gospel. They think Christianity is about climbing a ladder to reach God. But the reality is the opposite: God climbed down the ladder to reach you. He didn’t wait for you to figure out your life. He didn’t wait for you to heal first or get stronger or become “worthy.” He came into the middle of your brokenness — into the noise, into the fear, into the mess — and said, “I’ll take it from here.”

You don’t have to earn what He already offered.
You don’t have to impress Someone who already knows your weaknesses.
You don’t have to be perfect for a God who chose to experience imperfection all around Him.

If God walked the roads you walk, then every step of yours is sacred, because you’re following footsteps already pressed into the dirt.

And if God carried a cross, then you never have to carry your burdens alone.

This changes the way you face your nights. It changes the way you understand your failures. It changes the way you handle your fears. You are not walking through life hoping a distant God notices you. You are walking with a Savior who lived your life before you did, so He could guide you through every moment of it.

Your tears are not foreign to Him.
Your loneliness is not unfamiliar.
Your heartbreak is not unrelatable.
Your confusion is not surprising.
Your heaviness is not rejected.

Because if God was one of us — and He was — then there is not a single part of your story that He looks at and says, “I don’t understand that.”

He understands it completely.

And He loves you completely.

And He is with you completely.

Even right now.

When you sit with this truth long enough, something begins to shift inside you. You stop imagining God as a distant observer and start experiencing Him as a present companion. You stop trying to earn His love and start resting in the love He already gave. You stop trying to hide your struggles from Him and start trusting Him with the parts of you that hurt the most. Because once you understand that God stepped into human life on purpose, you begin to realize just how personal His love for you really is.

He didn’t come to earth because He had to. He came because He wanted to. He wanted to know what it felt like to walk your kind of miles. He wanted to experience the vulnerability you feel every time you try again after being disappointed. He wanted to understand the emotional ache of being human so that when you cry out to Him, you’re crying out to Someone who can say, “I’ve felt that too.” There is a comfort in that truth that no other belief system in the world can offer. God doesn’t just forgive you. He gets you.

And this reshapes how you interpret your own story. If God lived a human life, then your human life is not a failure. Your struggles are not disqualifiers. Your tears are not signs of weak spirituality. They are signs that you are living inside the same environment that Jesus willingly stepped into. Your humanity isn’t something God despises — it’s something He dignified by taking it on Himself.

Think about what that means for your darkest nights. Jesus knows the feeling of standing in a place where the future looks heavy, where the path forward feels impossible, where fear presses against your chest like a weight. He knows what it’s like to ask God for another way — not because He lacked faith, but because He felt the full force of human dread. When you feel overwhelmed, Jesus doesn’t stand over you and shake His head. He kneels beside you. He knows the ground you’re kneeling on. He’s been there.

And when you feel misunderstood by people who should have understood you best, Jesus stands with you in that too. He preached good news and healed the sick, and still His hometown dismissed Him, questioned Him, minimized Him. They couldn’t recognize the greatness inside Him — and sometimes the same thing happens to you. The people who watched you grow don’t always see who you’ve become. The people closest to you don’t always recognize your calling. Jesus experienced that wound firsthand, and He walks with you through your version of it.

Even when you’re betrayed, you’re not walking in unfamiliar territory. Jesus shared meals with Judas. He washed Judas’s feet. He gave Judas opportunities to turn back. And still Judas chose betrayal. If Jesus could experience deep relational pain and continue walking in love, then your own heartbreak is not a sign of spiritual weakness. It’s a sign that you are loving in a broken world.

So many Christians believe the lie that their emotional battles somehow disappoint God. But the gospel tells a different story. Jesus embraced human emotion so fully that He wept, groaned in anguish, felt righteous anger, and expressed sorrow openly. If the Son of God lived openly in the tension of being fully divine and fully human, then you don’t have to hide the tension of being a believer who still feels deeply.

Your emotions are not a threat to your faith. They are part of the landscape of it.

And this is the deeper invitation behind the question “What if God was one of us?” It’s the invitation to stop approaching God as if He is far away. It’s the invitation to stop putting on a performance. It’s the invitation to let Him into the real, unpolished, complicated places of your life. God didn’t come near so you could pretend. He came near so you could finally stop pretending.

Imagine a God who understands loneliness not from observation but from memory. Imagine a God who understands physical weakness from His own muscle fatigue, not theoretical knowledge. Imagine a God who understands heartbreak because He lived inside a world capable of wounding Him. That is the God who walks with you now — not a detached ruler, but a familiar companion.

And the beauty of all of this is that Jesus didn’t erase His scars after the resurrection. He didn’t hide the evidence of suffering. He showed His scars to His disciples as a way of saying, “Pain does not have the final word.” He could have healed the marks. He could have removed every trace of what He endured. But He didn’t — because your own scars matter. Not because they define you, but because they testify to how far He has carried you.

If God became human, then He knows how it feels for your heart to break. But if God rose again with His scars still visible, then He knows how to rebuild you after the breaking.

There is no moment too painful for Him to understand. No road too heavy for Him to walk with you. No fear too big for Him to calm. No loneliness too deep for Him to enter. When you say, “God, I don’t know how to do this,” Jesus answers, “I know exactly how to guide you through this. I’ve lived this journey before you.”

This is why your relationship with Him can be so profoundly intimate. You’re not following a God who stayed untouched by human experience. You’re walking with a God who breathed human air, felt human pain, dreamed human dreams, and endured human grief. And because of that, He doesn’t ask you to be strong on your own. He invites you to lean into His strength, a strength that was forged in the real human experience of real suffering for real people He truly loves.

Every day you wake up feeling overwhelmed, remember that Jesus woke up to days filled with constant demands, endless crowds, misunderstandings, spiritual warfare, and emotional strain. And He still walked forward in purpose. Not because it was easy for Him — but because He was empowered by a love bigger than the world around Him. That same love empowers you.

Every time you feel like you don’t belong, remember that Jesus came into His own and His own did not receive Him. He knows what it’s like to feel out of place, unseen, undervalued. And yet He kept showing up. He kept loving people anyway. He didn’t let the absence of acceptance diminish the presence of His purpose. And neither should you.

If God was one of us, then He understands everything about us — and loves us not in spite of it, but through it. Nothing about your humanity pushes Him away. It draws Him closer.

And this is the part so many people miss: Jesus didn’t walk among us just to prove He understood us. He walked among us to show us what is possible with Him. He lived with compassion so we could learn to love boldly. He endured pain so we could learn endurance. He faced rejection so we could learn resilience. His humanity wasn’t only identification — it was invitation.

Jesus wasn’t just God walking in human skin. He was God showing humanity what it looks like to walk in divine purpose.

And now, the same Spirit that raised Him from the dead lives in you. The same Spirit that guided Him through grief guides you through your challenges. The same Spirit that gave Him peace in the storm offers you peace tonight. You don’t face anything alone. You don’t fight anything alone. You don’t rise from heartbreak alone.

You rise because He rose.
You endure because He endured.
You stand because He stood in your place.
You walk because He walked ahead of you.
You hope because He placed hope inside you.

This is why your story is not over. This is why your future is not fragile. This is why your weaknesses are not disqualifying. Everything you feel — everything you face — is part of a life that Jesus Himself chose to enter, bless, redeem, and transform.

So the next time your heart whispers, “What if God was one of us?” you can answer boldly:

He was.
He is.
And He walks with me still.

Because He became like us…
So we could become more like Him.

And that truth will carry you forward for the rest of your life.

—

Your friend,
Douglas Vandergraph

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