Here are two ideas that could help the situation:

They are NOT mutually exclusive!

1; Change your prophet's environment and situation

If you want to create a struggle for the prophet and make his journey less straight-forward and less predictable, surround him with people/a society that doesn't believe him.

Maybe they don't believe in 'that God'.
Maybe they don't see why HE should suddenly be chosen as a prophet by God.
Maybe the message he brings from God doesn't fit with their understanding of X...

2; Make the prophet an important 'side character' - take away his POV

A neat trick for creating tension, that could also make the story less predictable, is to make your prophet a non-pov-character - Hear me out:

I imagine you've spent a great deal of time creating and getting to know your characters - That time is never wasted!
What we as writers sometimes miss, is that "knowing the truth" or "knowing too much" can take something away from the story - and make it more difficult to write... The more the audience can question and/or try to figure out, the more potential there is for curiosity, tension and drive in the story.

Perhaps the POV-character that we follow is the prophet's best friend (and they are both shepherds) and the POV-character's bother is still a commander in the war. His "main goal" becomes one of figuring out whether the prophet is true and then how to support his mission if he believes him.

Disadvantages;

You might have to change quite a bit about the parts that follow your prophet directly.
The challenge in the prophet's timeline becomes something slightly different; The question for the prophet storyline changes from "How do I convince X?" to "What would convince me?"
You would need an additional character in that storyline (which you might already have).

Advantages;

You don't have to write the 'conversations with God' but can simply refer to them. Same for any other God-act.
The reader is probably as skeptical as the surrounding characters.
Switching the "prophet POV-parts" to a person that is close to the prophet can make for a lot of interesting dialogue, that would contain more mystery, than if we were following the prophet himself.

This answer could apply to a number of different stories. Simply switch the 'prophet' with the 'character'.

I hope it works out, and good luck writing!

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