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Part 6 of 16
He Can (Part 2)
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I'm starting with a thought I've been chasing for two weeks. Rather than a typical exegetical approach—line-by-line unpacking of a single scripture—I want to chase a topical thought today.
The core truth that should excite your spirit: When you cannot, he can. When you are not, he is. When I don't feel enough, he is enough. This matters most when life feels impossible and your faith feels thin, not just when you're feeling strong.
There are two critical spaces where faith is tested most intensely:
These are the battlegrounds where the enemy wants to confuse you most.
The enemy's goal is to confuse weakness with defeat. But there's a vital difference:
A condition can change. A conclusion is something you decide. This distinction is everything.
Weakness is a moment where your strength is insufficient. It's temporary. But when you confuse weakness with defeat, you decide the moment is final. You declare it's over when you're actually just tired.
Many of you right now are in a moment where your strength is insufficient. But that's not the end—it's halftime.
When you're used to being strong, weakness feels foreign. You exaggerate it. Because you're consistently strong, the moment you feel weak, you assess: "This must be the end." You don't realize that weakness is simply an invitation to rely on God's strength.
"Each time he said, 'My grace is all you need.'" — 2 Corinthians 12:9
Paul experienced this firsthand. God took him to the third heaven—the very presence of God. Can you imagine the spiritual high? Then God brought him back to earth and gave him a thorn in the flesh. The scripture says this thorn was given because of the greatness of the revelation, as a reminder: "It is not you, it's me."
Paul begged God to take it away. Three times he pleaded. Three times God said no. God's response: "My grace is all you need. My power works best in weakness."
Grace is unearned, undeserved favor.
If you work seven days a week, you expect to be paid based on how much you work. If you don't work and don't punch a clock, why would you expect a check? That's what grace is—you don't earn it.
But there's more: Grace is not just God excusing you. Grace is God enabling you.
It's mercy that cancels what you owe, and power that supplies what you lack. Grace covers you when you fail. Grace carries you when you are weak. Grace compels you when you can't go any further.
Grace is God doing for you what you could never do for yourself—and empowering you to become what you could never become by yourself.
God isn't just concerned with you doing. God is concerned with you becoming. God doesn't give you grace so you can accomplish; he gives you grace so you can transform. That's why people around you might be frustrated when 2026 becomes the year you're not doing as much—because you're becoming much more. They're used to you doing. They're not used to you being.
The enemy is the author of confusion. His superpower is confusing. And specifically, he confuses definitions.
He makes you stop being who God called you to be—not because you don't trust God, but because of how things are defined where you live. He takes spiritual terms and applies earthly definitions to them.
When someone calls you weak, the culture says that's an insult. Your first instinct is to get offended. But what you should recognize is: "When I'm weak, he is strong."
When preachers talk about giving, the culture says you're losing. So when you put an earthly definition on a spiritual term, you think you're losing it. But God is saying: "If you're bold enough to lose it, it'll come back."
Many of us are stressed and anxious because we're worrying about things above us. We're worried about next month when we're still in this month. We're taking on God's job.
God's names declare his roles:
When you can't, he can. When you are not, he is. Yet we brag about being strong. We make strength a badge of honor. If you're not careful, you won't let anyone help you suffer. Someone opens up: "Pray for me, I'm struggling." And you respond with your own struggle, competing over who has it worse. You won't let yourself be down for one moment.
Because we live in cultures where being strong is everything, we carry weight that isn't ours to carry.
H — Humble yourself. You cannot receive what you refuse to admit you need.
If you need strength, confess it. If you need patience, confess it. If you need wisdom, confess it. This is critical. James 4:6 says: "God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble."
E — Expose the issue. Healing begins where hiding ends.
You cannot fix what you fake. If there's a problem, expose it to God. You cannot heal what remains hidden.
L — Lean on God and godly people. Most of us are afraid to be weak because we're not surrounded by spiritually strong people. The most toxic thing we can do is practice toxic positivity—being positive in a way that's not spiritual.
When someone is struggling, toxic positivity says: "Man up, bro. You got this. You're cut from a different cloth." That's positive, but what does it have to do with the spirit? It hypes you up temporarily, but it doesn't address your actual need.
P — Pray. (This completes the acrostic, moving into the next section.)
Help is not a moment; it's a movement. Growth takes consistency, not just confession. When Paul cried out for help, he wasn't looking for a quick fix—he was committing to a process.
Weakness exposed Paul's dependency on God, and that's a beautiful thing. Spiritually, weakness is not something to hide; it's something to surrender. Weakness says, "I can't do this alone." Defeat, by contrast, says, "I can't do this at all."—and that's the enemy's lie.
Let me ask you something. When you think about what's currently stressing you, now that you have the right definition of weakness—you're not saying "I can't do this at all." What you're really saying is "I can't do this alone."
Consider Philippians 4:13. You can say, "I can do all things through Christ." You can be the best husband. You can be the best wife. You can be an entrepreneur. You can be creative. You can be a student. The only problem is you've been doing it by yourself.
Weakness invites grace; defeat rejects hope. This is critical. When you reach a point of weakness, you're inviting grace into your life.
Jesus himself experienced weakness in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knelt to pray and was presented with a cup—a vision of what lay ahead: the beatings, the thorns, the nails, the piercing, death itself.
"He went a little further and bowed down with his face to the ground praying, 'My Father, if it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.'" (Matthew 26:39, NLT)
Jesus looked into that cup and experienced a moment of weakness. He said, "There's nothing else we can do." But then he checked himself: "Nevertheless, thy will be done." Being weak isn't bad. You're human.
Here's what's crucial: the battle was never about the nails, the thorns, or the cross. The devil was after his yes. The devil didn't need Jesus to sin; he just needed Jesus to say no. A "no" in the garden would have meant no victory on Golgotha.
The devil is not after your talent. The devil is not after your marriage. The devil is not after your gift or your finances. He's after your yes. He's trying to pressure you and show you such a scary picture of what it will cost that you say no—because he realizes the moment you say yes, it activates your purpose.
The devil knows that the moment you surrender your yes to God, things shift in your life. That's why he doesn't know what to do with some of you, because no matter what he shows you, no matter how hard it gets, no matter how many problems you face, something in you still has the ability to tell God, "Yes."
Here's what I need you to understand: every yes in scripture was wrapped in weakness. But every weakness surrendered to God becomes a doorway of power.
We read biblical figures as characters, not as real people. But David was real. Jesus was real. Every person in the Bible who told God yes told him yes through weakness. The problem is we read their yes before we see their weakness—which is why people can't figure you out. They see what you're doing but don't know what you had to come through.
Some of you should apologize to the people in your life. You should say, "I'm sorry because I made this look so easy. You don't realize what I had to go through to become who I am. My yes was not free. My yes was not painless. My yes was not convenient. My yes cost me more than I ever thought it would, but I'm still standing."
Moses: His weakness was insecurity about his speech—he had a stutter. God asked him to do the one thing he couldn't do: talk. He had to go before Pharaoh with a deficiency that could have cost him his life. But Moses said, "I will go." He surrendered his weakness and trusted that if he gave God his will, God could do more with those imperfect lips than anybody else could.
Jeremiah: He said, "I feel too young and too unqualified, but here I am."
Gideon: He said, "I felt insignificant and least in my family, but if you want me to fight, I'll fight." God didn't give him baby steps. He went from never fighting to leading a war.
Mary: She said, "Let it be to me as you have said," even though she was confused.
Peter: He said, "Lord, you know I love you," even though he was ashamed.
When you stop running from your weakness and give God your yes, God will do exceeding and abundantly more than you can imagine.
Here's what you need to put in your notes: the devil attacks you at the point of decision. When you were comfortable, he didn't bother you. When you weren't doing anything, he left you alone. The moment you said, "Let me pray about it," all hell breaks loose.
Notice—the pressure never intensifies during the miracle. It doesn't intensify during the sermon. The pressure gets real when it's time to decide. Every major move of God in your life will be preceded by unusual pressure. That's prophetic.
Pressure is real. You may see someone's smile and not know the pressure behind it. You don't know what some people are carrying—trying to be the best mother without resources, trying to graduate without knowing how to pay for next semester. Be careful how you treat people. When someone suddenly "crashes out," they didn't crash out of nowhere. They've been stuffing and subduing pressure for years until it became too much.
But here's the truth: pressure is proof that something significant is about to be birthed. When you experience pressure, welcome to your baby shower—you're getting ready to give birth to something that eyes have not seen and ears have not heard.
Just as pregnant women's organs start moving to make way for what's coming, God starts shifting things in your life. People may leave. Support may disappear. But that's okay—if they won't be in the delivery room, they don't need to show up afterward.
The devil magnifies the cup to make you forget your calling. Every entrepreneur gets excited about their business, then doesn't do it because the devil showed them how much it would cost—the lease, the lack of support. But you probably should have fasted longer, because you don't know that your yes has a miracle attached to it.
Your next yes is going to come with miracles attached to it.
Put this in your notes: your yes breaks cycles you didn't start. Jesus' yes in the Garden of Gethsemane reversed the no that Adam gave in the Garden of Eden. Two gardens, two different answers. The enemy fights your obedience because he sees the ripple effect.
Your yes isn't just your yes. If you say yes, everything connected to you gets ready to shift. The devil is after your yes because he knows your yes just isn't your yes—it's going to change the trajectory of everyone around you. That's why your obedience matters so much.
I dropped out of college to support my brother. When he was playing football, I had finally made the traveling team at West Alabama as a walk-on. My brother called me and said, "Mike, we play Hoover tonight. I'm just worried." I left the football game—I wasn't even getting playing time. I told the coach, "Hey, I'll be back next week. Get somebody else. My brother needs me."
I got back the next week and was way at the bottom of the depth chart. I didn't care. I was in the stands cheering. But I can't help but think about what my yes did. If my brother followed me into ministry, would he have followed me into the streets? Because the yes has a ripple effect.
Your yes restores your family. Your yes launches a ministry. Your yes heals a marriage. Your yes can shift the bloodline. I got a message from a guy named McClure—we're not related at all. He lives in Milwaukee, goes to a job interview, and they see his name. The guy says, "Are you related to Michael McClure?" He said yes. The interviewer says, "Oh, that's my internet pastor." For 30 minutes, all they talked about was Rock City and "you know how he is." He got the job and reached out to thank me, saying, "If anybody ever asks you, we cousins."
My yes is blessing the ripple. Your yes isn't just your yes—it's going to change the trajectory of everyone around you.
Here's the real message for today: He can strengthen you. He gives power to the weak and strengthens the powerless. There are three truths about this.
Weakness is an invitation, not a disqualification. We think weakness disqualifies us from being used, but weakness qualifies us for dependency. You're so afraid to be weak because you think, "No, I don't want to be disqualified." But God says, "When you're weak, can I step in?"
I love wrestling—the old tag team matches especially. Remember them? Two wrestlers in the ring, they hit each other, then one gets beat up, stomped out. Then out of nowhere, he knocks the person down and the announcer yells, "Oh my god! He finally has a chance!" And the other guy at ringside is reaching out, trying to get tagged in. Right when he's about to tag, he remembers he's beaten up. Then the other guy comes in, hits his finisher, and you're in the house asking, "Why didn't you tag?"
God is literally saying, "Do you know how easy this is? I bring people back from the dead. This is a bill. Tag. I opened blind eyes. That's just a bad relationship. Tag. I healed somebody with leprosy. What is cancer to God? What is diabetes to God? Tag. Oh, you want to be strong? So you'd rather lose the match trying to prove to the crowd you're strong? You're trying to prove to people who are going to talk about you either way it goes."
Someone checked me a week ago and said, "Hey, I know you don't raise offerings and don't do all that stuff, but I hope you get some money." I asked why. They said, "I know you don't care about it and it's obvious—you're the only person I've been around who gives so much away." They said this while I was blessing people. They told me, "If we look up in 40 years and you ain't got no money, they're going to say, 'Oh, he's a fool. All the stuff he did and he ain't got nothing to show for it.' And if you have all the money, they're going to say he stole. Either way, they're going to talk about you."
You're going to be strong trying to impress people who are going to say you're stupid for trying to do it by yourself anyway. I'm not saying be weak and ask them. I'm saying be weak and go to Him.
Strength from God does not depend on your energy. I thought I had to have good energy to be used by God. I thought I had to hype myself up. But feeling should not be fuel.
There are going to be seasons where you don't feel motivated. There are going to be seasons where you don't feel emotionally strong enough. There are going to be seasons where you don't even feel spiritual. I go through that. As the pastor of this church, I go through seasons where I don't even feel spiritual. It's like I just can't catch my rhythm.
Some of you who pray a lot know you can pray so much sometimes you don't feel like it's really connecting. It's almost like you ask yourself, "Am I doing this out of routine? Is it working?" In your head, you think if you stay spiritual, problems won't come. But then you can be spiritual and problems still come, and you go through this mental space where you feel like, "Well, then what was I being spiritual for?" Then you have to recalibrate your mind and say God never promised me ease.
I had a season where I didn't pick up the weight I picked up. I just didn't feel motivated. I was in my head a lot. I had accomplished everything I ever dreamed of in my profession and it was like, "Okay, God, what's next?" You get to this mountaintop and there's nothing up there. You climb this big old mountain to get to the top and you're like, "Oh, this is it?" Then you realize the only thing that mattered was at the bottom of the mountain. So you have to go all the way back down to recalibrate your life.
Feelings fluctuate. Feelings magnify the problem and minimize the promise. I'm very emotional—any emotional man in here can say yeah. We act like we aren't, but we are. We can go from being silly to not caring in 3.2 seconds. The sillier we are, that means the safer we feel.
When a man's money isn't right, nothing is right in his life. Food doesn't taste the same. You don't want to breathe. Nothing. Feelings can't be fuel because they fluctuate. I can't make permanent decisions based on temporary emotions.
I wasn't coming to church today. My son is in a 707 tournament in Georgia. Last night I was in Georgia and I was tired. I thought, "They'll be all right." But my family is my first ministry. My family wants me to be a father first. You know what I did? I jumped up and drove three and a half hours. I got here and couldn't even go to sleep. It's 3:34 in the morning and I'm just sitting there looking. I don't feel like it. My body hurts. My foot hurts.
But here's what I learned: feelings magnify the problem and minimize the promise. My boy's going to graduate. See how quickly it shifted? Because when you focus on what matters, the feeling changes.
What must be the fuel? Faith. Feelings can ride. They can't drive. I have been guilty of allowing my feelings to drive when faith should have been driving. I should have told my feelings to get in the backseat—faith's got this.
But because I was immature in certain seasons, didn't have the knowledge I have now, my feelings would tell me I wasn't doing any good because I didn't like it. Now at 40, 42 years old, I'm sitting back thinking, "I could have pushed through that."
Faith is not denial. Faith is direction. The Bible declares we walk by faith and not by sight. There are seasons where you're at the brink. There are seasons where you feel like you're on the verge of quitting. Even the prophet in the book of Kings called fire from heaven in one chapter, and in the next chapter he says, "God, take my life." It's because feelings can exaggerate.
I speak by faith that you realize there are more for you that are against you.
