The Pastor’s Secret Battle

The congregation saw a man of faith—confident, kind, always ready with a word of prayer. On Sundays, he stood behind the pulpit like an oak tree, unwavering, voice ringing with Scripture and assurance. People came to him for counsel. They brought him casseroles and prayer requests. They asked him to bless their babies and bury their dead. They thought he was close to God.

No one knew that every night, Pastor Nathan lay in bed with his eyes wide open, staring at the cracked plaster ceiling, feeling as if he were the only man on earth God wouldn’t speak to.

It had started subtly, after the funeral of a child. A six-year-old girl with leukemia. Her name was Rose, and she had hair the color of apricots and a laugh like windchimes. He’d sat with her mother in the hospital chapel, praying, weeping. He’d told her God was near. That He was good. That He heard every cry.

But after the tiny white casket was lowered into the earth, something inside Nathan snapped.

He continued preaching. He continued praying. He said all the right things. But the words no longer reached his heart.

There were moments, fleeting and sharp, when he felt like a fraud.

He’d wake before dawn to pray but found only silence. He’d read Scripture, but it felt hollow, as if someone had torn the living breath from the pages. He buried himself in church work—visitations, sermons, counseling—but it all began to feel like theatre.

His wife, Beth, noticed first. “You don’t smile after services anymore,” she said one evening, pouring him tea.

“I’m tired,” he replied.

“You used to be tired and still smile.”

He didn’t answer. How could he tell her that he was afraid to look at the cross because it reminded him of a God he couldn’t feel?

One Saturday evening, a knock came at the parsonage door. A teenager named Lucas stood there, clutching a small Bible. His hands were trembling.

“I… I don’t know who else to talk to,” Lucas stammered. “I think I want to believe. But I’m scared. What if God doesn’t want me?”

Nathan blinked. The words struck like a stone in the gut.

He invited the boy in, made hot cocoa, and listened. Lucas poured out his story—abandonment, depression, a suicide attempt the year before. “I don’t think I’m worth anything,” he said. “But when I read this”—he held out the Bible—“I feel… something. I don’t know.”

Nathan looked at him. And for the first time in weeks, maybe months, he didn’t feel like a pastor. He felt like a beggar, holding out a hand to another beggar.

He cleared his throat. “Sometimes,” he said, “faith is just showing up when you don’t understand. Even when it hurts.”

Lucas looked up. “Is that what you do?”

Nathan hesitated.

“Yes,” he said quietly. “That’s exactly what I do.”

After Lucas left, Nathan sat on the front porch for a long time, the mug cooling in his hands. The stars were faint that night, veiled behind clouds. But still, they were there.

He thought of the Psalm he’d once loved: “The Lord is near to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit.” The words returned to him not like a lightning bolt, but like a trickle of rain through dry ground.

The next morning, he stood before the church with a different kind of honesty.

“I want to speak today,” he said, “not from strength, but from weakness.”

He told them how hard it had been to pray. How sometimes he felt God was far. How he had said all the right things, but sometimes didn’t know if he believed them.

A hush fell over the sanctuary. Not one of judgment, but one of recognition. Because deep down, many of them had felt it too.

An elderly woman in the second row began to cry. A man who rarely looked up from his Bible raised his eyes and nodded slowly.

Nathan didn’t cry. But he felt something inside soften.

After the service, people came to him not to praise the sermon, but to thank him for telling the truth. For giving them permission to admit their own struggles.

Over the weeks, he began to pray again. Not long, eloquent prayers. Just whispers.

“Are You there?”

Sometimes, all he heard was the rustling of trees. But sometimes, he heard silence with a warmth behind it. And once, when he sat with a grieving mother, the words “I am with you always” came not from his lips, but from somewhere deeper—so deep it didn’t feel like his at all.

He began to find Jesus not only in the victories, but in the valleys. Not just in the answer, but in the question. Not in strength, but in surrender.

His secret battle never fully disappeared. But it changed.

It became less of a war, and more of a walk.

And in that quiet walk, step by trembling step, he found the Shepherd who never stopped looking for him.