Get Strong is a living book, an audio experience, and a growing community for anyone learning to face weakness, stop performing, and rise with real strength.
The state of our union is strong — that's what we say. This is the chapter where we stop saying it and start telling the truth.
Most of us aren't weak. We're leaking. There's real strength in you — but something's got a hole in the tank. This chapter starts where every honest thing starts: naming the leak before trying to fix it.
The State of our Union is strong.
Every year a president steps up to a podium, looks the whole country in the eye, and says some version of that line. The state of our union is strong. It doesn't much matter what kind of year it's been — wars, recessions, division, fear. The headline holds. Somebody decided a long time ago that you lead with strength, you project strength, you say strength, whether or not it's true in the room.
We do the same thing. Every single day.
We step up to the podium of our own lives — the post, the story, the group chat, the Sunday hug in the church lobby — and we declare it. I'm blessed and highly favored. I'm good. We're good. It's the State of My Union, and the state of my union is strong. And maybe it is. But maybe it's a headline I'm reading off a card while something behind me is quietly on fire.
So let me ask you the question this whole book is built on. Not the one you answer for the crowd. The one you answer alone, in the car, before you turn the key.
What's draining you?
Because here's what I've learned the hard way: most of us aren't weak. We're leaking. There's strength in you — real strength, God-given, more than enough for the day — but something's got a hole in the tank. And you can keep pouring in prayer and willpower and one more conference and one more fresh start, and still wonder why you're running on empty by Wednesday. We spend so much energy looking strong that we never stop to find the leak.
Let me go first, because I'm not going to ask you to get honest if I'm not.
For a stretch of my life, the state of my union was a press release. Up front I was Pastor Fred — running the ministry, working the inner-city kids, delivering the goods, the man with the word. And in the dark, I was reaching for a screen I had no business reaching for, telling myself it was nothing, just a slip, just tonight. I had a temper that my congregation never saw but my wife and kids did. I was so busy being spectacular for everybody out there that I was running on fumes for the people who actually had my last name. Three different leaks. Same empty tank. And the whole time, my podium voice kept right on saying: the state of our union is strong.
It wasn't. And the first strong thing I ever did was stop saying it was.
That's where we start. Not with adding muscle. With finding the leak.
There was a famous ad back in the 1950s — the Charles Atlas program. You've maybe seen it. A scrawny kid is on the beach with his girl, and a big buff bully kicks sand in his face, takes the girl, runs him off. "Hey Skinny! Yer ribs are showin'!" So the kid orders the program, comes back muscle-bound, beats up the bully, gets the girl, and proves he's a real he-man after all. Roll credits. That ad sold a lot of programs, because it sold a lot of people a feeling they already had: I got sand in my face, and I'm tired of being the weak one.
I want to be straight with you up front, because this book is going to ask a lot of you. This is not the Charles Atlas program. This is not a quick fix that promises you'll never get sand kicked in your face again. I'm not handing you a list of verses to make you bulletproof, sculpted, and always right.
This book is about a stranger kind of strength. The kind that comes up out of vulnerability and surrender, not out of a 90-day program. The kind you find by confronting the weak places before the enemy of your soul kicks any more sand in your face — not by pretending those places don't exist.
Because here's the trap: left unchecked, recklessness will call you out. Either the enemy does it, or your own "inner-me" does it. Both forces, ignored long enough, wreck the soul. We talk a lot about the enemy — that outside, tempting, derailing voice. We don't talk near enough about the lies we tell ourselves. The ones that sound so reasonable in our own voice that we never think to question them. I call those the lovable lies. Well, God knows my heart. It's not that big a deal. Everybody's got something. Lovable, because we'd defend them like family. Lies, because they're slowly bleeding us dry.
Myth #1: The strong have no weakness.
That's the lie underneath every press release, every podium, every "I'm blessed and highly favored" we hand out when somebody actually wanted to know how we're doing. We think strength means the leak disappears. It doesn't. Strength means you finally stop pretending the tank isn't low.
David — a man strong enough to be called after God's own heart — wrote it straight: "To the merciful You show Yourself merciful; to the blameless You show Yourself blameless; to the pure You show Yourself pure; but to the devious You show Yourself shrewd." (Psalm 18:25-26, NKJV) God isn't fooled by our press releases. He sees the leak before we admit it's there. And He's not waiting on the other side of our confession with a clipboard — He's waiting with the very strength we've been trying to manufacture on our own.
The Step: Face your weakness.
Not fix it. Not fight it into submission in your own strength. Face it — name it out loud, to God first, then to somebody you trust. That's it. That's the whole first move. Everything else in this book builds on that one act of honesty, because you cannot get strong in a place you refuse to look at.
Jesus put the whole law in two lines: love God with everything you've got, and love your neighbor like you love yourself. (Matthew 22:37-39) You cannot do either one from behind a press release. You cannot love God with your whole heart while hiding half of it from Him, and you cannot truly love the person next to you while performing strength at them instead of showing up real. Love, like strength, only works when it's honest.
So before you turn the page — before one more myth gets busted, one more step gets taken — I want you to do the one thing this whole book hangs on.
Stop reading for a second. Stop performing, even for yourself.
Name your drain.
Not the polished version. Not the one you'd say in the lobby. The real one — the leak that's been costing you strength while you kept telling everybody, including yourself, that the state of your union was strong.
You don't have to fix it tonight. You just have to stop lying about it. That's strong enough for today.
The state of our union — yours and mine, together — is finally about to get honest. And honest is where strong actually starts.
Sometimes the truth lands different when it's spoken instead of read. Audio drops soon.
Get Strong isn't just a chapter — it's becoming a sermon, a sound, a whole world. Here's what's growing around it.
Get Strong is being built in real time. New chapters, reflections, and stories drop as they're ready — this isn't something you read once and shelve.
You're not the only one
trying to get strong.
Whether you were at camp or you just found this page — this is the moment. Scroll down, write what's true, and hit send. It doesn't have to be polished. It just has to be honest. That's the whole game.
Tell My Story Now ↓What's draining
your strength?
Not the polished version. Not what you'd say in the lobby. The real one — the thing quietly costing you strength while you keep telling everybody the state of your union is fine. Name it here. You don't have to fix it tonight. You just have to stop lying about it.
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icangetstrong.com — Pastor Fred Lynch