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Taking the blind man by the hand, he brought him out of the village. And after spitting on his eyes and laying his hands on him, he asked, "Do you see anything?"
We come to church on New Year's Eve to shout, but we've become a generation of people who shout on foolishness and sit on substance. Dessert won't make you healthy — sometimes you need a whole word that'll push you to becoming what God desires for you to be.
Jesus asked the blind man a simple but powerful question: Do you see anything? Tonight, as we exit one season and enter another, something is different in the air this year. Normally people approach the new year with trepidation because the previous year was so stressful, and they step into the new year with timidity or passivity. But not this year.
Something in our spirit is saying this is going to be the most productive, prosperous, powerful, and prayerful year we have ever experienced. I see God doing something exceeding and abundant above all we ever asked, dreamed, or imagined. I see things shifting in our favor. I see God opening doors we never even knocked on. I see God bringing back around what we missed.
In 2025, it was our year to thrive. And to thrive, by definition, means to remain focused, faithful, and fruitful.
You have yet to praise God until you had to praise God in spite of the things trying to hold you back. I heard Bishop T.D. Jakes say something this morning that had me in tears. He said, "When I was younger, I thought I was blessed because I endured in spite of. But now that I'm older, I realize it wasn't the in spite of — I'm blessed because of what God took me through."
You thought you were blessed because you made it through it. But now I realize I'm blessed because of what God took me through.
Many of us are excited to stand on the doorstep of a new year, but at the same time we're filled with frustration. Please put this in your notes:
Frustration is a sign that indicates you no longer have an appetite for the level that you're on.
The people you used to be excited to see, you now dread being around — because your appetite changed. The job you used to brag about, you no longer want to go to. You're driving through neighborhoods you can't afford, looking at cars, looking at houses on Realtor.com — knowing you don't have the money. But sometimes, before God lets you get it, He changes your appetite.
Whenever God gives you divine frustration, He's doing it because He's trying to build your appetite for elevation.
I was in a meeting in Nashville a few weeks ago, and they took me to a restaurant where the menu had no prices — just numbers. It would say "Prime rib... 76" or "Wagyu... 285." I asked the waiter, "Can I get the Wagyu, 285?" He said, "Excellent choice." I asked what the difference was between a regular steak and a wagyu, and he said, "285 is the price." I said, "Y'all got chicken fingers?"
My friend insisted, "I brought you here, it's on me — you have to taste it." I sat there mentally calculating everything else I could do with $285 — gas, Wendy's, shoes, money for my girl, money for the kids. But he kept saying, "You have to taste it." When it came, my knife just went through it. It melted in my mouth. This was different.
The next night, I took my wife to Outback and ordered a steak. It didn't taste the same. She said, "Just be grateful, baby, you got it." I said, "I'm trying to be grateful, but I can't help what God let me experience." Once you experience the next level, everything on the old level doesn't feel the same anymore.
God is getting ready to send you something — or someone — so right that the old level won't be the same. Stop apologizing because your appetite changed. Frustration reveals the need for change. If you're feeling frustration right now, that isn't just irritation — that's God saying there is something in your life that needs to change drastically.
God is not looking for modification — He's looking for something greater. Modification means minor changes: new shoes, seat covers for the car, a small streak in your hair — a small change you feel will have big impact.
God says your whole life has been nothing but small changes. That's why we're not doing New Year's resolutions this year. A resolution is made of two words: re (to do over) and solution. If the solution didn't work the first time, why are you trying to run it back?
Instead, I'm calling this a New Year's revelation: "God, reveal to me who You want me to become." I'm going to make a list — not based on what I want, but based on who God expects me to be.
Become is about the journey — from who I've been to who God always knew I could be.
This is the year potential turns into pursuit, and pursuit turns into practice. This is the year I move from just believing to becoming.
Potential is heaven's hint of what God hid in you.
Potential is the preview. Younger generations who grew up on Netflix and YouTube don't understand what a movie "preview" used to be. Older generations went to the movies, bought a ticket, got popcorn — and sat in a theater with the lights on, talking to friends, until suddenly the lights went out and you knew something was about to shift.
God will never play a movie in the wrong atmosphere. Some of you are crying right now because things are changing in your life — that's God turning the lights off because He's about to show you something. Everything was fine (lights on), and now nothing seems to be going right (lights off) — because a shift is coming.
Then the screen says: "For your enjoyment, please silence all distractions." This is not the year to have distractions keeping you from becoming who God has called you to be.
Then the preview begins: "Coming this fall... coming next summer." Notice they tell you the season, not the exact month. Something big is getting ready to happen. God is getting ready to shift things — it won't be long now.
If the preview is good enough, you tell your neighbor, "I can't wait to see that." Some of you just got a preview of what your 2026 season is about to look like. But don't wait until the battle is over to act on it.
Potential says, "I'm chosen." Pursuit says, "I'm moving."
Potential alone cannot produce fruit. The reason many of us are irritated is because we're trying to live off potential instead of pursuing what God has shown us.
David had potential. The prophet walked up on David in his father Jesse's backyard and said, "You are the man — you are the next king," and anointed him right there. But he was anointed in the backyard — he missed the palace. People couldn't stand David because he was anointed but wasn't yet in the place he was supposed to be. They disrespected his anointing because they thought it would show up in the palace, not realizing the throne doesn't take away what God already put inside him.
David doesn't step into pursuit until he hears about Goliath. As long as you're running from your Goliath, you're just comfortable living in potential. Goliath might be starting a business from nothing. Goliath might be having the faith to start all over again. Goliath might be looking in the mirror and admitting, "I'm the problem," and working to become the best version of yourself.
Pursuit is desire in motion. Practice is discipline in motion.
I rarely say "the Lord said" — I usually say "I feel" or "I believe." But this time I will be clear: because we've been faithful, fruitful, and focused, God is going to move — even for those who weren't, through proximity. Certain doors open in your life not because of you, but because of who you're connected to.
The Lord says: don't worry about whether the door will open this year. The door is going to open. Doors are going to open in three ways:
That's why it's certain people you can't walk away from. Folk be walking out my life and I be crying and they be like, "It's going to be okay." No, I'm not crying for me. I'm crying because you don't even realize the little joy you did have. The little doors that were open wasn't because of you, but the favor on my life is so ridiculous that everything attached to me is affected too.
I never in my life been to not a acting class. I don't know how to act. But out of nowhere, I keep getting all these phone calls. "We got a part for you in this movie." I'm like, "What's the part?" "A pastor." "Oh, I can do that." And God is like, "Mike, it ain't even about what you want no more."
Pursuit is when God opens the door. Practice is how you act when you get in the room.
So the problem isn't going to be whether the door opens — it's opening this year — because God's had you at a point in your life where He wants to see if you're going to change when you get in the room. When everybody's doing this, can you still be disciplined and say, "No, I'm good, man. God bless you"? Then when everybody's miserable, do you adopt their misery?
Are you more concerned with your image or your identity?
The number one crime in America isn't murder — it's identity theft. It's people taking the essence of who you are and opening doors for themselves that were meant to be opened for you. There are people in your life who are going to have to repent, because how they took your identity is criminal. They stole your dream, stole your vision, stole your idea, walking in your likeness.
God says: I don't care how much they walk like you, talk like you, or swag like you — the door isn't going to open for them, because you've got something they can't mimic. You've got a level of anointing that you can't just fake.
Why do you think, in the Bible, when Jesus got baptized and the heavens opened and the Holy Spirit descended like a dove, God said from heaven,
The question isn't whether God is going to open the door — 2026 is going to be the year God puts the right people around you. But hear this: there are going to be some hard decisions you have to make, seasons of isolation.
One of the words the Lord gave this morning — I woke up sensitive in the sense that I so desperately want to please God that sometimes I go too far trying to fix things I didn't break. I'm 100% right, you're 100% wrong, but then I find myself saying, "You know what, I love you, man..." God said, "Michael, stop fixing what I broke. Because if you keep trying to mend what I broke, I'm going to break you."
For some of you, there's a divine separation happening. I didn't say this earlier in the message, but the best part was this: if you look at the scripture, it says Jesus took him out of the village. Why didn't Jesus touch him where he was?
It's because sometimes God can't heal you where you are — let me say it exactly like it came to me: Jesus doesn't heal him in the village because some environments can't support your evolution.
He wants you to understand that sometimes you can't become who God is calling you to be while staying in the same places that kept you who you used to be. Bethsaida was a city known for unbelief. So God says, I can't heal you in a culture that doesn't believe.
What does that show us? That in your becoming, sometimes there's a season of intentional divine separation. Sometimes God has to let you lose them so they can find themselves while you find yourself.
But there's a great reconciliation happening for sons and daughters. There's a great revival about to hit this earth. There's a great coming home about to happen. Children who told you they'd never talk to you again are about to pick up phones and say, "Mama... Dad..." Family members who fell out years ago are going to find themselves in the same room, just talking.
God says this will be a season not only of recompense, but of reconciliation of the relationships that are assigned — not the ones that are only attached. So trust God.
I want you to know that God has a plan for your life. This is between you and God — I'm going to tell you what I do, but this is between you and God. I always give an offering at the top of the new year because I want God to see that the first thing I do is put Him first. You don't have to do that, and I'm telling you, God's not going to withhold blessing from you if you don't.
I've discovered a principle: God said, "Give me the first." And so I apply that in every area of my life, and I'm radical about it. In 2019, I won my first Stella Award — I asked my pastor where it was in his house, and it was the very first one I'd won. I went to Cleveland, Ohio and said, "I'm giving you this." I said, "I want to show God that whatever touches my life, I'm willing to sow it."
I'm blessed not because I'm a good guy — I've got a lot of issues. I believe God keeps favoring me because He sees that no matter what room I'm put in, I'm going to always put Him first.
And so I speak over your life right now that the very first action you take this year will be an intentional decision to say, "God, bless my year." I pray that God gives you the faith to say, "God, I put you first in everything that I do," and I believe by faith — this is your season to become, in Jesus' name.
