2026 - The Year Of New Things | Pastor John Greiner

In this message, the speaker launches a faith-filled vision for 2026: the Year of New Things, drawing from Revelation 21 and Israel’s crossing of the Jordan in Joshua 3. Emphasizing God’s promise to “make all things new,” the teaching explores spiritual reset, fresh direction, and the courage required to follow the Holy Spirit into unfamiliar territory. Through biblical insight, personal testimony, and practical application, listeners are challenged to win the battle of the mind, release old weights, realign priorities, and break through limiting barriers. This episode calls believers to ask, seek, and knock—embracing change, renewal, and forward momentum as God leads them into new assignments, new growth, and new victories.

Chapters

• 0:00 Declaring 2026 As The Year Of New Things
• 2:45 Revelation 21 And God’s Rhema Word
• 6:40 Joshua 3: Crossing Into The Unknown
• 12:20 Winning The Battle Of The Mind
• 18:40 Reset: Roles, Strengths, And Alignment
• 27:20 A Personal Reset And Galveston Signs
• 34:50 Leadership Change From Moses To Joshua
• 42:20 Following The Ark And Supernatural Crossing
• 50:30 New Territory Requires New Obedience
• 56:20 Countdown Years And Breaking Barriers

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:00

Let's reach down and pick up our Bibles, please, and and uh lift them up, wave them around, make Jesus glad, the devil mad. Glory to God. I never get tired of doing that. We're his biggest stumbling block. Let's wave them around. Let's say this together. Say, Heavenly Father, I'm so glad for 2026. 2025 was wonderful. I experienced milestones. I heard about others' milestones. I rejoice over victory. I'm looking forward to this year. My heart is open to receive further information that will fuel my faith to receive all that you have in store. In Jesus' name. Amen. You can be seated. Let's go to Revelation chapter 21 to start with. And also you can find Joshua chapter 3 on the other end of the Bible. We'll start with Revelation 21. John is, Apostle John is encountering a mighty visitation from Jesus, and he says to him, verse 5, and he that sat upon the throne said. He said, See, God spoke it so it could be written. And it's written so it could be spoken. So God told John to write something. I'm going to speak it to you, John, and then you go home, you go and write it. The one that sat upon the throne said, Behold, I make all things new. And he said unto me, Write, for these words are true and faithful. They're true and faithful. And then we go back to Joshua chapter 3 in verse 1, talking about the children of Israel just about ready to go into the promised land. Verse 1, and Joshua slept in, and about noon he got up, wiped the sleepy at now. He rose up early in the morning. And they removed from Shechem and came to Jordan, he and all the children of Israel and lodged there before they passed over. Passed over what? Well, passed over the Jordan River in flood stage. And it came to pass after three days. After they had an opportunity to meditate on how difficult it was going to be to cross a flooded river. Three million people. I mean, that's I mean, you know, in that that that area, I mean, it's it's not that big an area, and you've got all those people. It's going to take a while. I mean, you know, it's going to take a while. And here it is in flood state. So after three days, everybody say three days. That the officers went through the host and they commanded the people, saying, When you see the ark of the covenant of the Lord your God and the priests, the Levites, bearing it, then you shall remove from your place and go after it. Yet there shall be a space between you and it, about two thousand cubits, half a mile. By measure, come not near unto it, that you may know the way by which you must go, for you must have not passed this way heretofore. You've not passed this way heretofore. And so today I wanted to share and start a series of messages on 2026, the year of new things. The year of new things. Jesus said for John to write it down. These words are true and faithful. It's written so it could be spoken. We're going to need to speak this over our lives, speak this over Glorious Way Church, speak this over My God votes. Speak this over Global Aid Partnership. Everything that we have anything to do with. That God is doing new things. I make all things new. He didn't say I'm making 49.7% of things new. He said I'm making all things new. Everybody say all things new. That's a big, that's a that's quite a lot, you know. New revelation, new assignments, new strategies, new ways of thinking, new ways of working, new methods, new vision, new priorities, new favor, new fire. You know, that's that's something that we've got to work on quite a lot. Because there's a lot of water hitting us in the face all the time. I'm talking about the contrary tide of this world. Wednesday night, if you weren't here, there were just a handful of people here, but you might have heard on the message on Facebook. But if you haven't, get the message on what I preached on Wednesday night because it ties into what we're going to be doing this year. And uh, you know, we've got to win the battle of the mind. The mind is the battleground. This is where the devil is unleashing his hordes of disinformation and outright lies and deception. I've seen it over and over. I've seen people that were just going along just fine. And the next thing you know, they're haywire. They're off in a tangent. I've seen it in ministers, I've seen it in pastors, I've seen it in churches, I've seen it in individual believers. No one's immune. You have to work at winning the battle of the mind. So be sure and get that message. I'm not going to redo it today. So I saw this verse in December. It was in my normal reading, and I knew it was Rhema for us. I know it's really set in the book of Revelation, and it's talking about he makes a new heaven and a new earth. It's at the end of the judgment of the devil. He throws the devil into the lake of fire and, you know, the Antichrist and all of that. And I know it's, you know, if you really look at what he's talking about in that context, he's talking about then, but really that Rhema came for us now. How do you know? Well, I just know. I mean, that's my job to know a Rhema word. Jesus practiced that all the time. He would take, he would take the word of God out of its out of its context, and it would be, it would apply to us right now. And so everybody say a rhema word. See, a rhema word is a God-breathed word. You know, you you this is the this is the general word of God. This is God speaking to you, but a rhema word is God speaking directly to you about something more specific. And you need rhemos. And you can have them. I mean, it's not reserved for just pastors and real holy people. It's it's for every believer to have the rhema of God. So uh around GWC, we've been talking some about uh working on a reset. I I mentioned the word reset in in my preaching here recently. I don't remember if it's November, December, but recently I talked about how, you know, if you ever had your iPhone or your computer and it just goes haywire and it quits doing what it's supposed to do, it gets frozen. And you know, I'd call Jay. Hey, Jay, my phone is locked up. He said, Well, reset it. I said, Oh yeah. And you just turned it off and on, and poof, whatever problems, it just kind of went away. And so we've been talking about a reset in our staff, and and and we we have interviewed our staff. We want to make sure every member of our staff is all of our staff that's in the sanctuary, just wave at me, would you? Let's see, these are the people I'm telling you, they they they're amazing people. Each and every one of them. And uh they all have job descriptions, they all have job descriptions that have been added to. Their plates have become loaded up. Do you load your plate up on Thanksgiving? I mean, you know, you just there's not enough room, and so you need sideboards on it, you know, you need where you can just pile up. Their plates piled up. They got more than they can do. How much of that is really what they're called to do? How much of that is really what they're wired to do? What are the strengths of each individual staff member? And is that strength being applied to the utmost? Is it is it being used in the proper fashion, or are we just piling everything on top of their head and eventually they get worn out and they don't even like coming to work? I don't want that. I don't want my children like that, I don't want my grandchildren like that, I don't want my staff like that. I don't want to be like that. So we've been talking about reset, we've been talking about it, and you know, we had a strength assessment uh expert come in and we had some testing done. Oh, Pastor, that's all uh that's a bunch of uh psychology. Well, no, it's it's about the mind. We're all different. My grandchildren taught me that. My in fact, my kids taught me that we only had two kids to compare, and they were different. Threw up in the same house, but they're different. But each of the five grandkids is different, they came out of the womb different. It's weird. It's just crazy. Every human being is is got strengths that are natural. And how how stupid would God be if he anointed you and called you to do something you hated? That wouldn't be God, would it? Wouldn't he want what I want for my kids? I want them to be happy every day. I want them to be fulfilled every day. Are y'all with me now? And so that word reset is kind of, you know, uh an interesting word. You look it up, and uh it means, you know, one one part of the of the meaning is to set a broken bone. I mean, uh you break an arm, it's gotta be set. It's got to be reset because the broke bone is cracked, sometimes it's displaced. Pretty serious. It's got to be set back in place before it'll heal properly. Dislocation of a joint. I mean, you see that on the football field. God bless the Houston Texans. Let them let them keep going, let them keep winning, beat, beat the Patriots today, New England. Boston stinks. That place is terrible. But Houston is a great city. Anyway, I digress. I'm a football fan. Uh so I got reset my clock in 2018. I I was I was home, you know, recovering from open heart surgery in January of 2018, weak as water. I was paler than a man. I mean, my face. I talk about pale face. I mean, you talk about white supremacy. White, white was had taken the supremacy of my faith. I mean, it it was it was shocking. Just looking, I tried to avoid the mirror at all costs. And uh one day in my study, I was praying and praying in the Holy Ghost, and he said, I'm resetting your clock. Your clock had wound down, but I'm resetting your clock. I was thinking about the referee in a football game, how they'll say, reset the clock to two minutes, and you know, they'll reset the clock sometimes and add time to the clock in certain situations. God added time to my, he reset my clock. And since then, my my health has had, you know, it took a it was a battle. Oh, I tell you, it was a battle right at first. I mean, I had every adversity, I had every kind of thing happen to me the first two or three years after that surgery, but you know what? I've got victory over every one of them. I passed up three or four opportunities to go to heaven again even after he said that. When God says something, that's when the devil goes to work trying to stop it. That's why we've got to win the battle of the mind. So here we've been talking about this reset. We've been talking about, you know, getting people fit into the right position. And so I went to Galveston on the day after Christmas. And I usually go every, you know, four times, three, four times a year, but the last couple of years with Gladys, it's uh she's overcoming things. Thank you for your agreement and prayer. She's doing better all the time and she's making improvement. And uh, but I can't just leave her uh overnight. I don't feel comfortable leaving her overnight, so I can't really go to pray that much. I just have to stay, hang in there, and just and do my praying at home. But I really prefer to go to Galveston and really have a special time. It's a place where when I go, God always reveals things to me. And so I hadn't had a chance to go since last year when God said milestone. In fact, the milestone came in a prophetic word on a Sunday morning. I he didn't even speak that to me in Galveston. So anyway, I went to Galveston and I my my usually I get there around the noon hour. Quick check-in time. I've been staying the holiday in there on the on the beach there for 40 years, even before the church started. I've been going out there and I would go, and back in the years before the church, I was mostly broke. I didn't didn't look for places to go spend money like go to a hotel, but I would do that from time to time when I needed to hear from God. I'd go and and I'd I'd go to Galveston and you know that's been a place where I would pray. And so, and it's a lot of times God gives me things that I've never seen before. So here I am sitting there, I've got communion. It's noon on East Beach. I'm watching the ship channel right there in front there, and I'm parked in a little sandy spot right there by that channel, and there's uh tankers anchored there, and there's some boats going back and forth, and and my phone has a text. I look down, it's the hotel, and it says, Your room is ready, Mr. Griner. They've never done that before. I mean, it's four o'clock, and and I'm doing good to get in by two. But here it is, they texted me, your room is ready. So I get down and I check in by 12:30. I'm walking into the room, you know, same, same kind of room. It's the same room. I've been staying in the same room. I think one time in 2009 they did a little paint work, you know, a little dab of nothing. I mean, it's the same bed, it's the same laboratory, same toilet, same bathtub, same floor, same carpet. In 30, some odd, 40 years. It's all the same until that day I walk in there and everything is new. It's got vinyl plank floor on the on the flooring. It's got a new bed. I looked at the bathroom, it's got a new uh walk-in shower, sliding glass, no more, no more tub and shower with a shower curtain that that intrudes where you gotta take a shower like that. I'm a shower person. You take a shower like this, you know. I mean, it's all updated, new vanity, new cabinet, new sink, new toilet, new everything, new bed, new light fixtures, new furniture, new. Everybody say new, brand new, all of all things new. And I start laughing. I said, Well, God, I guess I'm on the right track about new things. Here you are. You first time it's ever happened. New things, new new microwave, new refrigerator. I like a hotel room with a microwave and refrigerator. You can stay in real fancy hotels, they don't have any of that. Why? Because they want you to run water room service and spend$100 for next to nothing. I prefer Kroger's and warm it in the microwave. I might sneak to Guido's and get something, you know, during the trip, maybe. All right. So uh everybody say all things. So in Joshua, let's, let's, let's, when I when I sat down, I started meditating on Revelation, and I and I was reminded of Joshua chapter 3, where that we read the beginning of that of that story. I mean Joshua, uh, they had a reset in leadership, didn't they? Because Moses, uh, you know, he had uh spoke ill-advisedly with his lips back when the children of Israel were chiding and murmuring and said, Gad, can God furnish a table in the wheels? Can he can he give us any water? And you know, and and Moses struck the rock, and water came out of the rock that that watered three million people. That's the size of Houston, Harris County. That's a lot of water. You know, we've got 36-inch water mains in Houston that break on a regular basis. Millions of gallons of water fall out and waste all the time. That's how incompetent these people are that collect our tax money in this city. It's horrible. We've got a whole staff full of DEI people. People that were hired because of their color, because of their sexual preference, because and nothing to do with whether they're qualified. You know, we want qualified people. Pastor, you're getting off the track. Well, it's just all see this. You know, Moses had he had it all together, but he had a temper problem. So the second time that they ran out of water, they griped again, and God said, okay, this time don't strike the rock. Go up and speak to the rock. And he was so mad at him that he just struck the rock and he violated the type and shadow that God wanted to develop. The Old Testament is types and we're and shadows, and we're living in the substance. And so, what did that violate? Jesus was struck one time for sin. He didn't die over and over. He died one time. You know, strike the rock. The rock of our salvation was struck once for sin. Once and for all. It's taken care of. There's no more sacrifice for sin. That is what that is supposed to be the type of. When he struck the rock the second time, he destroyed what God was wanting to prefigure and wanting to lay out in the future. And he said, You know what? Because you've done this, you're not gonna get to go into the promised land. So that was his punishment. And so he spoke. Ill-advisedly with his lips because of the pressure he was under. I mean, these people were just stiff-necked and hard to deal with day and night. It's like herding cats, and he had three million of them. And so, right before they got to where they were going after 40 years, and so you know the story. So they sent the spies. They sent the 12 spies to spy out the new land, and they brought the fruit of it back and said, Yeah, it's just like God said, it's a map, a land that flows with milk and honey. This is the fruit of it. Nevertheless, there's giants in the land. And we be not able, we be not able to possess the land because of the giants. Besides that, there's walled cities. They're walled up to heaven. Exaggeration. We're in our their sight like grasshoppers, and in our sight too. In fact, we look, we look at ourselves and we think we're grasshoppers. That's what they actually had the gall to tell God as if they had the ability to do any of it. God was going to do it. God was going to be with them. God was going to anoint them to take over, and they refused. And the ten of the twelve spies brought the evil report. And all of Israel listened to the ten rather than to Joshua and Caleb. Joshua and Caleb said, No, no, if God be for us, they're bred for us. Let's go up at once. Let's go right now. Come on, let's go, boys. And they wouldn't. So the ten spies died of the plague right on the spot. And all of the of the parents, the everybody that was 20 years of age and older that were not the spies, took for the next 40 years dying in the wilderness. So what have you got now? You've got this group of people that are none of them are approaching. The oldest of them is 59 and a half. You know, they're they were they were 20 and younger when all that happened. So now they survived it. So so back 40 years before that, see, Moses was 80 at that time. And he had to get into youth ministry. He had to get into college and career ministries. He had to come out of adult ministry. He had to reteach the law. The book of Deuteronomy is the second giving of the law. He had to teach them that for 40 years. All they heard about that promised land was just hearsay, what they overheard their unbelieving parents talk about, and what Moses taught. They had never seen it. Are y'all with me now? And so they needed a reset in leadership. So Moses went away and looked at the uh at the promised land from Mount Pisgah where he died, and God hid his body so that the devil couldn't find it, and so that Israel couldn't find it. And embalm it, they learned the art of embalming in Egypt. They would have embalmed his body and worshiped his body as a God, even though they never did really do what he said. They never did really cooperate with him. That's how weird human beings are without God. Well, they're not without God. Well, they're not born again. That's what I mean. They're spiritually dead. Even the Jews were spiritually dead. Jesus told the Pharisees, You are of your father the devil, the works of your father you will do. They weren't, you know, they weren't children of God. They weren't born again yet. They were, they were, they had, they had an imputed righteousness based on the blood of bulls and goats that would cover their sin. So that what I'm getting back to is that this generation here, what were they? Well, their parents had been farmers, not warriors. They were slaves. But this group had never even farmed. They've been in the wilderness for 40 years. They had never grown anything. They had to live on manna. That's how they ate. God fed them manna in the wilderness. Every day they'd gather it for just that amount of manna for that day. And then on, you know, Friday they'd gather twice as much so they wouldn't have to work on the Sabbath. And then the following Monday, they'd go back to doing the same thing. And they did that for 40 years. God was putting his word in their heart. God was putting his ways into them. But yet they were still, what are they? They're not farmers and they're going to have to go farm. Remember, it's an agricultural society. He said the land that you're going to is not like the land you're leaving. The land you left in Egypt, you got a crop by watering it with foot-powered irrigation. You watered the land with your foot. They had foot-powered pumps that would pump the Nile River out of the Nile and it would flood that rich soil that was once a year the Nile would flood and bring silt and rich soil, and that's what they planted their crops in. But you still had to water it, so they watered it by the more that they worked, the better crop they had. But this time you're going into the promised land. It's a land that flows with milk and honey. It drinks in the rain of heaven. It drinks in the rain of heaven. So, in other words, God is in control of their abundance. I mean, when they get into disobedience, the rain dries up. And that's what happened to Israel. I mean, they would have famines. They would have crop failures. Why? Because they didn't get rid of the idols. They didn't get rid of the false gods. So this group here, getting back to who they are, number one, they're not farmers. They're just, and they're not slaves. They really don't even remember slavery because they were too young to know what that was like. They didn't probably none of them was whipped. Probably none of them had it. They probably knew that their dad and mom had some scars on them, but they they they'd never experienced that. They're certainly not warriors. What are they? Well, they're just a mob of people that God had to do a reset. Are y'all getting this now? God had to go in there and change everything for them to succeed. They had a reset of leadership, as I mentioned. And so then Joshua sent his officers. See, Joshua had a line of authority. He didn't do everything himself. He had officers. All through the the Old Testament, you see there in Egypt. Uh the Jews had officers. They had they had a hierarchy that would that would lead the people and tell them what the leader said. And you've got to have a line of communication. So important. I can't do this job myself. I have to have lots of people around me to help that I can delegate to and that I can task with things that I can't necessarily pay 100% of attention to. I take overall attention, but I mean I can't just deal with every little thing. It takes officers, it takes a staff of people, it takes resources, leaders. Everybody say leaders. So he sent the officers and said, now the Holy Ghost in the person of the Ark of the Covenant. See, that's where the Shekinah glory was. And the priests are going to bear it on their on their. Why? Well, there's two reasons. Number one, they are not born again. They're not, they cannot touch the glory. They got to be careful anytime they're anywhere around the glory. They they learn through experience when the glory shows up to flee. Because if you get too close, just ask Uzzah down, you know, a few chapters down. Uzzah was just moving the Ark of the Covenant. It was on a cart, and the cart uh, you know, almost fell, and he put his hand out to steady it, one of David's officers, and he died on the spot. Why? Because he's not anointed to touch that. You can't touch it. Only the high priest, and only once a year, and only after a whole bunch of blood has been shed. That's the only access to God is over the bleeding sacrifice. So you can't get very close to it, but what we want you to do is hang back a half a mile, and that way all 12 tribes can watch as the priests go into the river. Now remember, the the river, if you've ever looked at a map, it goes from north to south. It flows from the north of Israel. It starts way in the north in the Dan area, Jordan. So the Dan area is where it comes out of the ground. I've been there, where the Jordan River begins, comes bubbling up out of the ground. And then it starts flowing down there. And before it gets to the Sea of Galilee, that's where they crossed. So if they're going from east, which they were, they were on the east side of the Jordan River, headed west toward the sea, Mediterranean. And so then the river would be flowing from their right to their left. He said, take about a half a mile and watch the priests as they get into the river. And as their feet get into the river, the river's going to start stacking up. The river started acting like it was dammed up on the right. It got deeper and deeper. Way on the right, it got harder over there. But on the left side, all that water that was held back, it just drained off, went to the Sea of Galilee, and the ground dried up. They walked over the Jordan on dry ground. Can you say supernatural power? They saw, they all got a chance to see from their vantage point. Three million people. I mean, if they'd all jammed up next to the Shekinah, the people in the back row wouldn't have known what was going on. Listen, you know, they've got to overcome fear. They've seen that thing run for three days. It's it's it's roaring through there. I mean, it's in flood stage. And so they had to watch God do this parting of the way there for them to prepare the way for them to go over. Plus the fact they couldn't get too close, see, because they're not redeemed yet. But in the process of crossing, they did go right past with God's permission. They went right past the priests. And so the anointing was near to them. Are y'all getting this? They they received an anointing to possess their promises. By faith, they crossed that river. Are y'all getting this now? Glory to God. You've never been this way before. You're going into territory you've never been in. It's unfamiliar territory. It's nothing like the wilderness. It's nothing like Egypt. It's new. You know, when you go to some place it's new, and you know, it's it's a little unnerving. You know, I've been going around Houston all my life. I know Houston like the back of my hand. I can't get lost in Houston. I don't care what part of it I'm in, I can get back to my house. I mean, I don't have any problem. I know people that get really nervous. If they're not from here, they get really nervous in all those interchanges and all those freeways and all of that kind of stuff. I just kind of grew up with that and I don't I don't even think about it. But you know, when I go to Dallas, I'm I'm a little concerned. I never know where I am when I go to Dallas. I guess that's why I don't ever go. I mean if I don't have GPS, I don't have a navigation system, I just say forget it. If I can finally get to the place I'm supposed to go, I'll just stay there. And I won't leave till it's time to go home. Because I can't figure that place out. It's crazy. I don't know. San Antonio's not much better, but I'm better in San Antonio. And it's not near as big. So unfamiliar territory means that you're gonna have to have, he said, follow the Holy Ghost. See, they needed to follow the lead of the Holy Ghost. In 2026, we are going to end territories that in the spirit and in the natural that we're not totally familiar with, and we're gonna have to be keen in the spirit, sharp, attentive, not asleep at the wheel, and we're gonna have to be quick to obey when the Holy Ghost tells us to turn, or to do this, or to do that. He's making all things new. That means if it's new, it's what? Unfamiliar. Whoever saw anybody walk on water? Talk about unfamiliar. And they're out there in that boat, and here's Jesus, you know, walking on the water. And I mean they're all afraid, and they're all just, oh, oh, it's a spirit, oh, it's I, be not afraid. And then Peter says, Well, if it's you, what's he gonna say? No, it's not me. No, if it's you, then bid me come to thee on the water. He wanted to go do what Jesus was doing. Whoever did that? Nobody, nobody's ever walked on the water but Jesus. And now Peter presumes that he can do it too. And Jesus didn't say, Oh, little darling, this is not for you. You can't do that. You better stay where you are. You you're about to get over your head. You that you can't. No, he said, Come. Come do something you've never seen anybody do. And guess what? He did it for a while. Not for long, but he did it for a while. Jesus said, Oh, you of little faith. So little faith walked on the water. Little faith can get you into places that you've never been, but it's going to take all your faith to stay there. It's going to take all your faith to complete the task that you have in front of you. Are you getting this now? Come on, lift your hand right now, Lord. I'm a willing, I'm a willing vessel. So they couldn't enter into their inheritance, Israel couldn't, without being made new and following the Holy Ghost. Now, I mentioned going to Galveston in 2000, uh, December of 2000. I went there. And uh that particular year, you know, uh remember why everybody remember Y2K, the 99 going into 2000. And a lot of people, you know, Christians, they flakos, so-called prophets. They were buying land in Arizona to camp out on the mountaintop. They thought Jesus was coming in at 2000. And uh they thought planes would fall out of the sky when the computers. I I had a guy who come into our church that worked for IBM, and his whole task for four years before that was to solve the problem of Y2K on the computers because they weren't sure what was going to happen when the numerical uh timers inside those computers went all went all four digits, went to you know to two thousand from 1999 to 2000. That that's a whole nother century. It's a whole nother millennium. It's a whole nother millennium. So they they didn't know for sure what was gonna happen to the computers. They didn't know, they didn't solve it. I think I guess the computers were really smarter than all the guys that designed the computers. I think AI was already in charge today. But anyway, so that's the next year, next year after that. I go to go, and it's two things, it's gonna be 2001. So I get to Galveston, and you know, I'm praying in that room, you know, looking out over the Gulf of America. I call it the Gulf of America. And uh, but it was the Gulf of Mexico back then. And uh I saw uh I heard in my spirit uh uh 2001 is a premier year. And I saw 2001, comma, 2002, comma, dot dot dot. And uh and then premiere, the first in a series of years, he said. And then he said, a year of first. And when I saw the year of first, I thought about and I saw in my mind, I don't know if it was a vision or what, but it was like Hollywood premiere back in the old days when the when they would have premieres in Hollywood, they would, the actors and the actresses that made the movie, and it's the first showing of it in the in the movie theater, they would roll up in their limo, and there would be spotlights, you know, in the and going up in the sky, and there'd be the red carpet and the paparazzi, and they'd go in and watch the movie for the first time since they made the movie. It'd be a movie premiere, and so that the it, you know, a year of firsts is what I got. And I was thinking in the positive. But how many of you remember what happened in 2001? Specifically 9-11, 2001, the first time that America was attacked on its own soil by Islamic enemy. And what did we do? What was our response? Import more of them, invite them to open up mosques all over our nation. Are you stupid? There's no agreement, none with what we're about between Islam and America. No, no agreement at all. No, no, no agreement in who we worship, no agreement in what we're trying to do. And now look at look at all these years later now, 26 years later, look at what we're facing. We've got communists and Islamists getting together with homosexuals. Isn't that weird? That's a weird, it's kind of weird, isn't it? It's not gonna last. So uh I later on I realized it was a countdown. In other words, every year since then, God gives me something about every year. And what is that? We live in the city of countdowns. I re I watched Apollo 13 the other night just to hear the countdown. For them launching Apollo 13. You know, Tom Hanks is the is the guy driving the thing, and and you know, Kevin Bacon and and uh what the other actor, he's dead now. I can't think of his name. But anyway, they they played the three. It touched my heart because I I knew guys that got saved at NASA. They were engineers, and they all knew that man didn't get those people back. That was God. He did a sovereign act, getting those guys out of outer space and bringing them back home. It was an absolute miracle. But anyway, 15, 14, 13, 12, you know, and you see the television, you know, and then those big old rockets, you know, men just a mass, it's just amazing. I mean, we're we're in the city of countdowns. What is this countdown? It's in reverse order. Uh the years are counting down toward the coming of the Lord. Where are we now? We're 26 years down the highway now. But at 24, we had the year of power. Remember, uh excuse me. Me, 23. Remember the locomotives I saw in Galveston all sitting on the side and all the wasting of power there was, all those old locomotives that are just sitting there. They used to, you know, they used to pull trains everywhere, and now they're just rotting over there on the sidrack. We had talked about the year of power, how the power of God. And uh and then 24 was the year of momentum. Last year, the year of milestones. This year, of course, the year of new things. Um these new things are breaking through barriers. Let's look at look at Peter. He broke through the barrier of gravity. He walked on water. That's impossible. But there are natural barriers that people go through. You know, that for the longest time of back when we used to run the mile instead of the 1500 meter or whatever they call it. That's another pet peeve of mine, meters versus feet and inches. We're the greatest country on the face of the earth, and we got to bow our knee to Europe's measurements. It's stupid. But anyway, I digress. Um the the the four-minute mile. Nobody could run the mile under four minutes until this one guy did it finally. And when once he did it, and then everybody did it. And then you had, you know, breaking the sound barrier. Chuck Yeager broke the sound barrier in 1954. And just look at flight itself, Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, where the Wright brothers were able to take off in the first airplane in 1903, and look how quickly that accelerated into just 66 years later, we land a man on the moon. Figure that one out. I mean, just look at the acceleration once a barrier is broken. We're gonna break barriers this year. There are things that have limited us, there are things that have uh put a lid on what God wants to do in our lives, and part of the new things is we're gonna have to adopt God's way of thinking about a whole lot of things to break through those barriers. I think about my God votes. I mean, we weren't, we had no plan when we started My God Votes. We started My God Votes as after we opened for during COVID and we became very controversial. We were called the renegade pastor from Houston. And we had enemies in the city government, the county government. We had enemies all around, people, you know, death threats online and all of that. And we had the news media right out here interviewing us, wanting to know what we're doing, trying to catch us in something that was controversial. They caught me hugging brother uh Dr. Hoatesy. They didn't like that. We're violating our six-foot rule. We found out later the six-foot was a made-up number. They just made it up. We found out all the garbage that we already knew ahead of time. That's the way this church is. It's cutting edge. It's out on the, it's out on the tip of the spear. If you don't like that feeling, don't come here. Tip of the spear. So you know, in 23 we had a a request from one of the state legislators, man, we need capital, we need worship in the Capitol. And we said, Yeah, we'll do that. And we didn't even know how to do it, but we did it. And we established capital worship. We knew it needed to be pastors, and it turned out to be a fantastic way to wake up the local churches, get their pastors going and their worship teams going to the Capitol, having a worship service, and then touring the Capitol and understanding what goes on there and getting acquainted with their own legislators, and all of a sudden, now you know you've gotten churches, and that's what we're supposed to do. We're supposed to wake up the church. I've been trying for 20 some odd years with no success, and suddenly with my God votes, we're having some success. So in 23, we did we did Austin. In 24, it spread to Oklahoma and Louisiana, and that was supernatural. In 25, we added uh Maine, Michigan, and Indiana, not exactly the Bible belt. James just got back from Missouri. We've got Idaho waiting. There's gonna, and all, there's gonna be 26 states that we know of that are gonna, that are, that are ready. And we're running to keep up with the demand. I'm talking about we are taking off. I mean, God is doing new things, we're going new places, we're having to get acquainted with how things are done in individual states and individual uh uh capitals and individual ministries that are related to those capitals and being able to interface with the right. Are y'all getting this now? This is being done with one of our outreaches, my God votes. But I'm gonna say something, and you might take it negative, and I don't mean it negative, I just mean it as a report. You're part of Glorious Way Church. And you realize that we have plateaued. Our growth is just like this. It went up and then it just leveled off. And it's been too level too long, and I'm not willing another year to go by until we break out of this lid, we break out of this plateau and start growing. We need the resources. We need the people, the time, and the money it takes to fulfill our mandates. It's not gonna be, listen, we just have to have more, and we have to have the right kind of people. And God told me he was gonna do it. He said, I'm gonna send a hot, dry wind. And people are sitting in church and they're gonna get so dissatisfied with where they are, they're gonna get so dissatisfied with what they're hearing that they're gonna come running to you and you make sure they've got water and food for them when they get there. You feed them. Well, we've seen that after a measure, but a lot of them don't stick. We've got to have them stick. How many? How many would agree with that? Some of you. I've I've heard some of you, and I don't want point fingers, but some of you are here because it is small. And that's just the wrong attitude. I knew big is not, I'm not talking about a mega church. I'm talking about filling this space up at least. First of all, we took a bunch of chairs out. See where all the chairs are stacked over there? There's bunches of chairs. There's a thousand of them. We ought to have a thousand people here three times a day. We ought to have three thousand people a week, a weekend. That's minimum. Are y'all with me now? How many of you could agree that God is gonna, we're gonna, we're gonna pray, we're gonna get into the place where we're asking. You have not because you ask not. You ask and receive not because you ask amiss. I'm not asking amiss. I'm asking in line with God's word. God's word says everything living, anything that lives grows. What happens when something doesn't grow? It's dead. This church is not dead. And its ministries are not dead. But our our glorious way church is the light that shines furthest, shines brightest at home. We have to get caught up with what my God votes is doing. We've got to get, we've got to get everything in right standing. Are y'all with me then? So uh we must break through the barrier. So, like Israel, we have we can't rely on past successes and we can't look at past failures. You ever notice in your car you've got a big old windshield? And it's designed, you know, for you to look out of your windshield over your hood and look down the road. My dad taught me to not just look down the end of the hood, look way down the road. Way down the road, don't just look right in front of you, look way down the road and drive that way. And and occasionally you glance in your rear view mirror or your side view mirror. You got a glance there. But how how successful a driver would you be if you just drove down the road looking in your rear view mirror? You'd have a you'd have a crash. So look, we're going forward in this 2026. I'm not looking back. Paul says, you know, uh uh forgetting the things which are behind and pressing forward to those things which are before, I press toward the mark of the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. I'm telling you, we're going forward this year. I said, we're going forward this year. So let me relieve you three things. Now we're gonna get delve into this in more detail in the next uh several weeks. I haven't lined out my outline of what all information we're gonna have, uh, but I I I expect to spend maybe three or four Sundays on this, including today, to get you properly grounded uh over your life and also what you can come into agreement with us about this church. I just want this church on fire. I I want it growing. I want it, I want people coming that we can disciple. I want people coming that we can impart to. I want, listen, uh, we've got to get ready for this great harvest, and we don't have enough labors for that harvest. So uh for new things in 2026, let's look at Matthew chapter 7. And I'll give you three things to think about. Matthew chapter 7, the Sermon on the Mount. Jesus is sharing with the Jews things they'd never heard. He's talking about his heavenly father. They couldn't relate to him as a father, they related to him as a judge, they related to him as one that they had to be afraid of, one who was punishing them. And Jesus revealed a whole different side of God to them. And he said in chapter 7, verse 7, ask, and you shall waste your time. No, ask, and it shall be given you. Seek and you shall find. Knock, and it shall be open unto you. For everyone, everybody say that's me. That asks, receives. Everyone that seeks, finds. And to him that knocks, it shall be open. Everybody say, ask, seek, and knock. Those words mean about the same thing. Ask, seek, and knock. It doesn't mean you know it can mean beg, but really we're not begging. We're we're craving. That's another meaning of the word ask, and also the word seek. I mean seek. Man, seek means you're really on the on the trail of something. You seek doesn't just glance, oh, it's not there. Okay, I don't know where it is. No, when you're seeking something, you've got a broom and you're you're sweeping things off the floor and you're trying to get, you know, you're trying to find the corn that was lost. You're trying to find the ladies, you're trying to find the setting in your ring, the diamond fell out. And and when you find it, you say that rascal's gonna buy me a bigger diamond next time. That is too. I can't even tell that from the dust. I can't. This knock. What do you do? You you know, when you knock, I mean, you don't go in somebody's house. What do you do? You knock. They hear the knock at the door. Oh, they must want in. And you don't go there, then they knock again. Listen, we're trying to sell some mulch here, mister. Would you hurry up? They rang my doorbell three times. Now they're knocking on the door. They they're demanding that I give them an answer, which I do. I give them an answer. No, I don't. Bye. From people that are knocking on my door. Anyway. So what are we asking, seeking, and knocking about? All right, so in Revelation 21, 5, let's run back there real quick on this first one. He said, Behold, my dad would say, Look here now. Behold doesn't mean no, behold really means pay attention. Behold, I make all things new. I make the word make. And of course, it means what about what we think it means. It means to create, it means to to uh cause someone to have, it means to order. And when you, you know, the as I've said many times, the Greek language is so much more complex than English. The Greek word there that's translated make, it means a lot of different things. And one of the things it means is lighten the ship. In Acts 27, you know, Paul said, Look, I perceive that this voyage is going to be with much hurt, both of the lading of the ship and of our lives, and I advise you not to sail right now. They ignored him. They went out there and they ran into a Euroclodon, this huge storm. Must have been like a hurricane. And uh the ship is just tossed to and fro, and they're and they're so afraid that they start uh throwing the cargo overboard. Now, car now think about this. Now, this ship has got 280 some odd people on it. A lot of them are prisoners, some of them are Roman guards, and then they've got cargo. So this ship owner is doing business with the Roman Empire, and he is carrying their cargo, their stuff. Maybe it's weapons, maybe it's food, maybe it's supplies, who knows what it's in the ship. But he's getting paid to carry that cargo to someplace and at the same time to transport these prisoners. And so this is his ship. So he's dependent on this payment from the Roman Empire to be in business. And now, I mean, they're they're more worried about surviving than they are the cargo, so they throw the cargo overboard. Why would they do that? Because they're taking on water and they're too low in the heavy seas, the boat is too low, the ship, the waves are breaking over, they're taking on too much water, they've got to lighten the ship, they've got to get rid of the heat the heaviness so that they don't sink. Then later on, they they took the tackling of the ship and threw it overboard. I looked up the word tackling, it said furniture and equipment. Well, I don't know what all it means. Does it mean sails? Because they didn't need any sails. I mean, that wind is blowing them, man. They can't put sails up. Did they throw the ropes overboard? I mean, you know, what did they throw overboard? I don't know. They were trying to what? Lighten the ship. And so, you know, number one when we're praying, and it's all about prayer right now. I'm talking about ask, seek, and knock is praying. I said, praying. We're gonna have to maybe this year, let's let's devote the first part of this year to more praying and reading our Bible than normal, especially praying in the Holy Ghost. I said, especially praying in tongues.

unknown: 56:23

Amen.

SPEAKER_00: 56:25

What are you doing? You're asking, you're seeking, and knocking. What do I get rid of? What activities am I involved with? What am I doing that needs to go away? I want to prioritize everything I'm doing for the kingdom of God. What can I move off of my plate? You know, some of us have just taken up obligations, they're family obligations that really belong to somebody else. You know, a lot of times we just volunteer for things and we just we've got a good heart. Well, how about the Holy Ghost regulating what you do? Is He Lord or not? And I don't care who you are, over a period of time, it's easy just to drift over and to doing anything and everything that people think is a good idea, and it's a good idea for them. So therefore, it's a good idea for you. So, honey, come along with me and we'll do this together. Okay, well, let's do that. Yeah, okay. Well, you know what? It might not be God. Let's find out. Good's the enemy of best. Good's the enemy of great. I mean, it can put a lid on you. I've challenged our staff. I said, just because we did something in church last year doesn't mean we're going to do it this year. We've got everything under review. We don't need just there's no annual anything. I mean, we don't have to have all these events all the time. We can we can switch around. We can do they're all good, they're good to have, but they do what happens in church is it something's a good idea and suddenly it becomes a it becomes uh something you can't cut off. I learned from Brother Ostein, he cut stuff off. Jesus said in John 15, every tree in me that beareth fruit, I purgeth or I prune. So that it will bear forth more fruit. Sometimes we just got to go snip. And I don't say that you do that in your brain tissue. I say let's ask and keep on asking, seek, keep on seeking, knock, keep on knocking until we know down in our knower what adjustments to make in the area of releasing certain things that we've been doing. Maybe sometimes doing things a long, long time. Just because we've done them a long time doesn't mean that God wants us to keep doing them. All right, and number two, everybody say I'm lightning my ship. I mean, what happens if you don't? Well, you sink. I mean, I mean, we don't want shipwreck. No, we want to keep, we want to keep sailing those seas. Number two, to reveal what things are top priority. Now, see, once you've decided that there's something that you can let go, what do I do? Now, what is top priority? There might be some things on the list that we're doing, but what things and in what priority do I place them? See, I'm, you know, one of the things you as a Christian, you're supposed to develop in faithfulness. And when you're faithful, you commit and you don't change. You commit to something, and you know, you're just gonna you're gonna show up. I'm committed to doing this, I'm gonna show up. I've committed to children's church, I committed to do this once a month or twice a month, I'm gonna show up. I don't care if it hair lips the devil, I'm gonna be there. See, that's commitment. That's faithfulness. But the devil can use our faithfulness against us because we can get so faithful doing something, have our head down, and really we hadn't checked with the Holy Ghost lately, and we can be going down this road plowing and plowing and doing all this stuff, and yet God was already through with that, and He's ready to He got a new thing for you. And we just keep plowing right by the exit. That happened to this church. That happened to me. I was plowing along at Lakewood, doing what I was doing at Lakewood. I was doing weddings and funerals. I was opening, closing services, and prayer, traveling with Brother Osteen. I was building houses. I was doing this. And it came to a time when God was finished with that and wanted me to start this church. I knew there was a break. I knew there was an interruption. And I just kept on going. I just kept my faithfulness. I plowed right past my exit. This church should be about a year and a half older than it is. Should have been 93 instead of 95. Well, should have Buddha. Well, I don't beat myself up, but I learn. You gotta learn from your mistakes. So your gift of faithfulness can be something that the devil, like judo. You know, judo, do you know judo? Judo is the art of using someone's strength against them. So if you know judo, somebody comes at you to attack you, you just take them and turn that energy and they they land on flat on their back. Just boop, like that. Faster than they can even know what happened to them. And that's what the devil can do. The devil can use our faithfulness, he can use our intensity, and he can just cause us to miss our exit. Let's pray this year. Let's get everything in order. Let's find out what God's priorities are. And then the last one let's ask, seek, and knock to reveal what to do right now. What do we do right now? There might be some things that were on the plate. There might be some things He's gonna prepare you to do, but what about right now? How many of you willing to do this? See, you've got to be willing to change. You've got to be willing to adjust, you've got to be willing to, you know, that's what happened with the children. We'll talk more about this. But when the children of Israel went through there and they got across, they got on the other side. Remember, they built a memorial, they took 12 stones and built a memorial so that everybody would know this is where we came in right here. And before they went any further, before they went any further, Joshua had all the males circumcised. They hadn't been circumcised in the wilderness. And circumcision was the shedding of blood in the male so that they would remember the covenant they had with God, the Abrahamic covenant, was a circumcision of the flesh. They marked their males with this circumcision, and it differentiated them from the world other countries and the other nations, and it reminded them that they and their seed are covenant with God. Well, what's our circumcision? It's not of the flesh. Our circumcision is of the heart. We have to cut our heart and we have to say, God, I'm an open book. I'm ready to change whatever you want to do with me. I don't own anything I'm doing. It's not my ministry, it's yours. You can do with me whatsoever you please. See, that's the circumcision of the heart. And so where's the battleground? The mind. The mind wants to hang on to what we've always done. It's successful. We know all about it. We know how to do it. When we do that, we're just really in our comfort zone. No, he wants to get us out of the comfort zone so he can bless us. He can take the limits off of us, and we can have breakthrough after breakthrough. Come on, lift your hand. Praise God. 2026, a year of new things. Hallelujah. Everybody say, I'm breaking through every barrier in Jesus' name.