“No Man Stood With Me”: Making Sure Your Pastor Never Has to Say It
❧ ✦ ☙
“No Man Stood With Me”
The hall is cold, and the old man in chains stands alone. Rome has summoned the apostle Paul to answer for the gospel before an imperial tribunal, and the places where his friends should be standing are empty. Later, writing to Timothy from a prison cell, he records that moment in one sentence heavy with ache:
“At my first answer no man stood with me, but all men forsook me: I pray God that it may not be laid to their charge.”
— 2 Timothy 4:16, The Holy Bible, King James Version
Ligon Duncan, recalling Sinclair Ferguson, calls it one of the saddest verses in the New Testament. He adds a haunting thought: if we ever learn what happened in that courtroom, we will have to hear it from Paul, because no one else was there to tell it.
Now picture a different scene. It is late Sunday night. Your pastor sits at his kitchen table, rereading an email that arrived during the evening service. It is three paragraphs long, and it is not kind. The half-dozen people who thanked him at the door that morning have already faded from his mind. This one message will keep him awake until two.
Faithful pastors still find themselves standing alone. The question for the rest of us is whether we will be among those who stood with him.
❧ ✦ ☙
The Hidden Weight of the Pulpit
In a recent episode of The Everyday Pastor, a podcast from The Gospel Coalition, Duncan and co-host Matt Smethurst devoted an entire conversation to pastoral discouragement—what they called an occupational hazard of the ministry. What they described should move every church member to prayer.
The Loneliest Chair in the Room
Pastors carry burdens their congregations rarely see: budget disputes, church discipline cases, tension among leaders, and funerals no seminary prepared them to preach. Duncan admitted that as an interim pastor he lost count of the suicide funerals he conducted. When the buck stops with you, he observed, a sense grows that no one understands what it is like to sit in that chair.
“Loneliness is a dangerous, dangerous, dangerous thing. It’s very interesting that the aloneness of Adam is the first thing that God seeks to remedy.”
— Ligon Duncan, “The Pastor and Discouragement,” The Everyday Pastor (The Gospel Coalition)
Smethurst named the more dangerous next step: moving from “no one understands what I’m going through” to “no one cares either.”
The Grief Behind the Sunday Smile
Sometimes the heaviest load is carried home. Duncan spoke of a faithful friend whose ministry has brought many to Christ, yet all four of his children have turned their backs on the Lord. Men like him must still write the sermon, step into the pulpit, and set their heartbreak aside to feed the flock. Your pastor may be one of them, and you may never know it.
When Faithfulness Doesn’t Look Like Fruit
Then there is the quiet ache of results that do not come. Smethurst confessed that he forgets, week after week, that ministry is not efficient. Duncan pointed to James Montgomery Boice, whose Philadelphia congregation endured long years of decline before growth finally came near the end of his life. Duncan’s counsel to young pastors is worth every church member hearing: “You don’t get to choose how the Lord will use your faithfulness.”
❧ ✦ ☙
Pray for Him Without Ceasing
The apostle who stood alone before Caesar never stopped asking ordinary believers to pray for him. “Brethren, pray for us” (1 Thessalonians 5:25). He asked the Ephesians to pray “that utterance may be given unto me, that I may open my mouth boldly” (Ephesians 6:19). If Paul needed the intercession of the saints, the man in your pulpit needs it too.
“It is absolutely necessary for the preacher to pray. It is an absolute necessity that the preacher be prayed for. These two propositions are wedded into a union which ought never to know any divorce: the preacher must pray; the preacher must be prayed for.”
— E. M. Bounds, Power Through Prayer, ch. 18 (Christian Classics Ethereal Library)
How to Pray for Your Pastor This Week
Pray for his soul, that he would feed on the Word before he feeds others. Pray for his marriage and children, that the pressures of ministry would not crush his home. Pray for his study and his preaching, that God would give him clarity, courage, and unction. Pray against discouragement and against the enemy’s whisper that his labor is in vain. And pray for his joy. Duncan closed the episode with a petition every congregation could adopt:
“Strengthen us with the strength that only comes from the Holy Spirit so that people will say, it’s not the strength of my pastor, it’s the strength of my pastor’s God.”
— Ligon Duncan, closing prayer, “The Pastor and Discouragement,” The Everyday Pastor (The Gospel Coalition)
❧ ✦ ☙
Hands That Hold Up the Arms
When Israel fought Amalek, Moses stood on the hilltop with the rod of God in his hands. When his arms were raised, Israel prevailed; when they sagged, Amalek gained ground. So Aaron and Hur “stayed up his hands, the one on the one side, and the other on the other side; and his hands were steady until the going down of the sun” (Exodus 17:12). The battle in the valley was won by two men who refused to let their leader’s arms fall. Prayer lifts your pastor’s hands first. Here are five more ways to hold them steady.
1. Speak the Encouraging Word
Some believers withhold encouragement for fear of inflating the pastor’s ego. Smethurst dismantled that worry:
“One ill-timed, ill-advised word of discouragement can muffle a hundred encouraging ones. … No one that we meet with during the course of an ordinary day is struggling from over-encouragement.”
— Matt Smethurst, “The Pastor and Discouragement,” The Everyday Pastor (The Gospel Coalition)
Be specific. Name the sermon, the hospital visit, or the counsel that helped you, and tell him how God used it. A two-minute word after the service may carry him through the entire week.
2. Put It in Writing
Duncan made a painful admission about the discouraging words he has received: “I can remember the letters, the emails, the texts, and the words at the door.” The encouragements, meanwhile, slip easily away. So give your encouragement staying power. A handwritten card is something he can pull from a drawer on a dark Monday and read again.
3. Assume the Best When You Disagree
Budget season, building plans, and ministry priorities often involve wisdom issues on which equally godly people differ. Smethurst warned that suspicion takes root quickly in such moments. Assume good motives. Go to your pastor directly, privately, and kindly (Matthew 18:15). Never be the anonymous critic. Scripture asks us to let our leaders serve “with joy, and not with grief” (Hebrews 13:17).
4. Guard His Rest and His Home
Charles Spurgeon, who battled deep depression while preaching to thousands, wrote candidly to his students:
“Fits of depression come over the most of us. Usually cheerful as we may be, we must at intervals be cast down. The strong are not always vigorous, the wise not always ready, the brave not always courageous, and the joyous not always happy.”
— C. H. Spurgeon, “The Minister’s Fainting Fits,” Lectures to My Students
Honor your pastor’s day off. Hold that late-night text until morning. Support time for study, rest, and renewal, and let his wife and children be ordinary members of the church rather than exhibits of it.
5. Show Up and Take the Long View
Answer “no man stood with me” with your presence. Attend the prayer meeting. Volunteer before being asked. Stand beside him when criticism comes. Then remind your pastor that the work is slow because it is meant to last. In 1791, John Newton wrote to Richard Johnson, the discouraged first chaplain to the penal colony in Australia:
“I have not been disheartened by your apparent want of success. I have been told that skillful gardeners will undertake to sow and raise a salad for dinner in the short time while the meat is roasting. But no gardener can raise oaks with such expedition. You are sent to New Holland, not to sow salad seeds, but to plant acorns; and your labour will not be lost, though the first appearances may be very small, and the progress very slow.”
— John Newton, letter to Richard Johnson (1791), Anglican Church League, “John Newton to Richard Johnson”
❧ ✦ ☙
The Strength of My Pastor’s God
Holding up our pastor’s hands is not about making him great. It is about joining God in upholding the servant He has given us, so that when the battle is won, everyone knows whose strength won it.
At the close of the episode, Smethurst urged listeners who are not pastors to send the conversation to their own pastors with a simple message of love and encouragement. Do it this week. Pray for him today. Write the note tomorrow. And perhaps add the words Smethurst spoke over every weary minister:
“If you’re exhausted, God isn’t. If you’re discouraged, God isn’t. If you’re unfaithful, God isn’t. If you’re weak, God isn’t. We have a hope and a future because God is not like us.”
— Matt Smethurst, “The Pastor and Discouragement,” The Everyday Pastor (The Gospel Coalition)
The next time your pastor steps into the pulpit, let him look out over the congregation and know he is not standing alone.
❧ ✦ ☙
Sources
Smethurst, Matt, and Ligon Duncan. “The Pastor and Discouragement.” The Everyday Pastor. The Gospel Coalition, 2026. https://www.thegospelcoalition.org/podcasts/everyday-pastor/pastor-discouragement/
Bounds, E. M. Power Through Prayer. Chapter 18. Christian Classics Ethereal Library. https://ccel.org/ccel/bounds/power.XVIII.html
Spurgeon, C. H. “The Minister’s Fainting Fits.” In Lectures to My Students. Baptist History Homepage. https://baptisthistoryhomepage.com/spurgeon.lectr.faint.fits.html
Newton, John. Letter to Richard Johnson, 1791. In “John Newton to Richard Johnson.” Anglican Church League, 2010. https://acl.asn.au/john-newton-to-richard-johnson/
“John Newton: Mastermind and Mentor of Early Australian Anglicanism.” Moore Theological College, 2026. https://moore.edu.au/resource/john-newton-mastermind-and-mentor-of-early-australian-anglicanism/
The Holy Bible. King James Version. Exodus 17:12; Matthew 18:15; Ephesians 6:19; 1 Thessalonians 5:25; 2 Timothy 4:16; Hebrews 13:17.
❧ ✦ ☙
Colophon
This devotional was researched and drafted with Claude (Anthropic) serving as a research collaborator. Source material was taken from a podcast transcript on The Gospel Coalition website. The author retains full editorial authority over the content, theology, and final wording. Prepared September 2026 for The Righteous Cause.