The Formula that Fails Me Part Two

The Formula That Failed Me – Part 2

I didn’t walk away after that moment. I didn’t stand up and call anything out. I didn’t make a dramatic change. On the outside, nothing really shifted. I kept preaching and leading and showing up. But something inside me had changed.

For the first time, I couldn’t ignore what I was feeling. The anxiety wasn’t random. It wasn’t just stress. It was a signal. Something deeper was off. And slowly, I started to see it.

The system I had trusted didn’t just give direction. It demanded certainty. Everything had an answer. Everything had a position. Everything had a clear line between right and wrong. At first, that felt like strength. But over time, I realized something.

 Certainty can look like faith… without actually requiring it.

 When everything is already defined, there’s no need to wrestle. No need to sit in tension. No need to depend on God in the unknown. You just follow the pattern.  You say the right things, do the right things, and stay in the right lane. And as long as you do, you feel secure. That’s what I had learned. Not how to walk with God through uncertainty, but how to stay inside a system that removed it. And the longer I lived that way, the more I confused confidence with depth.

 I sounded sure, but inside, I was unsettled. I began to notice it in small ways at first. I could preach about peace, but I didn’t feel it. I could counsel others, but I didn’t know how to process my own struggles. I could quote Scripture, but I had no language for what was happening in my own heart. That gap kept widening.

 And instead of slowing down to face it, I did what I had always done. I pushed harder with more preparation, more discipline, and more commitment. Because if something isn’t working, the assumption in that system is simple: Try harder. Be better. Get it right.

 But effort wasn’t the issue. I wasn’t lacking discipline. I was lacking something the system never taught me how to pursue. Honesty. I didn’t know how to admit I was struggling. I didn’t know how to say I felt anxious, or tired, or unsure.

 Because in the environment I was shaped in, those things didn’t feel like normal parts of the Christian life. They felt like failure. So I learned to manage them instead and keep the image intact. To stay strong in public… while quietly coming apart in private. And the weight of that started to build.

 There was this unspoken pressure that sat in the background of everything. If you’ve never lived inside it, it’s hard to explain. But it felt like more than just personal responsibility. It felt like I was carrying something bigger. I had been trained. Invested in. Given a platform. I wasn’t just living my life. I was representing something.

 So if I started asking questions… If I started stepping outside the lines… If I admitted something wasn’t working… What would that say about everything I had been part of? About the people who trained me? The message I had preached? The life I had built? That pressure kept me quiet.

 It convinced me that questioning was dangerous. That honesty could cost me everything. So I stayed committed. But commitment without health will wear you down. And eventually, it did. The cracks that started internally began to show up externally. Ministry felt heavier and home felt strained. My mind never seemed to rest. And underneath all of it was a question I didn’t want to face, but couldn’t escape:

 If I stopped doing all of this… would I still be okay? Not as a leader. Not as a pastor. Just as a person. Would I still be loved? Would I still have value? Would I still belong?

 Because for years, my identity had been tied to doing it right. Following the formula, holding the standard. But now the formula wasn’t holding and I didn’t know who I was without it. That was the tension I was living in. Not a loss of faith, but a growing realization that what I had built my life on, wasn’t strong enough to hold the weight of my real life.

 And once you see that, you can’t unsee it. You can ignore it for a while. You can stay busy and you can keep performing. But eventually, you have to decide: Do I keep protecting the system, or do I start being truthful with myself?