After (eBook)

INTRODUCTION

After Is Not Just a Word

By itself, the word after doesn’t seem to mean much. In the Bible we don’t learn a great deal from its Greek or Hebrew translations. In writing, its use doesn’t signal any particular literary excellence. But in your life, the word after could be the difference between the old life and the new.

After is not just a two-syllable word; it is a tool to manage your future. Perhaps the course of your life has been altered with one unforeseen event or mishap. That event might have brought you to your knees, causing unbearable pressure and creating physiological, social, spiritual, and emotional trauma. Perhaps the pressures of life have led to stagnation and left you believing that restoration and victory is impossible. You’ve gone into survival mode. How do you carry on?

You, my friend, are about to discover the moment in time I call after, the critical point that determines how your life is rebuilt. Even as you survey the wreckage, you face an all-important choice: give up, or determine what is required to survive. If you embrace your after, using everything it has to offer, you will not only survive but thrive in the next chapter of your life.

In the many afters I’ve personally experienced—after deaths, failures, and disasters of all kinds—I’ve discovered a simple formula for moving ahead when you feel you have no choices:

Purpose + Patience = After

In this book, I will show you that moving through your after doesn’t have to be frightening or uncertain; in fact, you can rely on a systematic process and guide to finding value in every experience. How? By redirecting pain into passion. You can build and maintain a new desire for life. The following pages will guide you one small, manageable step at a time, until you gather the courage to refuse defeat. With direction and patience, soon you will find yourself walking forward with determination into life after.

Outlasting the Storm

Even the best-laid plans and soundest structures have fallen victim to unforeseen events. One such event—a hurricane Katrina, Harvey, or Maria, for example—can cripple a nation, leaving debris and utter darkness. Storms are not biased toward one group of people, bypassing another. These hurricanes were destructive to entire communities with no regard to status or quality of life. The poor and wealthy alike faced turbulent times, with or without insurance. In the same way, life produces disasters for everyone, no matter who you are. And when a disaster hits, it gives us a common platform of pain, sorrow, and suffering.

That is why finding an after is equally valuable to all, regardless of ethnic, social, or religious persuasion. We all must walk through similar stages before recovering.

When we observe the path and the aftermath of a natural disaster like a hurricane, we can learn much about survival after life’s storms. From a change in pressure, to the storm itself, to recovery, cleanup, and rebuilding, we can respond to our personal disasters just as deliberately as we would a natural disaster. It all starts with a shift in the weather.

The Clouds Roll In

Just days before Katrina hit in 2015, New Orleans residents were enjoying hot, sunny weather with barely a breeze. Weather forecasts on August 25 predicted a 20 percent chance of rain with balmy weekend temperatures. But winds shifted, and so did their future. Just days later, the storm would sweep destruction over the city, and residents would flee for their lives. The difference between their “before” and “after” was almost inconceivable. Everything can change in a shockingly short amount of time.

Life before your personal storm might have been ideal, marked by peace, tranquility, health, and prosperity. Like a family planning a backyard barbecue that August weekend, perhaps your circumstances gave you a sense of safety or accomplishment. But then the winds turned, and everything seemed to change in an instant. A “shift” in life is capable of rendering great leaders, communities, families, entrepreneurs, and, yes, a ministry paralyzed. After is your exit plan—your motivation to preserve your life in the face of a storm.

On the other side of the country, someone watching a hurricane report through CNN lenses is in a completely different situation than someone facing the flood. Observers can leave the flood simply by changing channels, but that option isn’t available to those facing ground-level devastation. After is not a concept for channel surfers; it is for those on the ground. If you are knee-deep in your floodwaters, this book is here to impart life-bringing information and alternatives to surrendering to the storm and being taken by the flood.

Why do you need to find your after? After redirects your life. After weighs hope against hopelessness, knowing death is no longer an option where life is available. Hope will grow from strategic decisiveness, dedicated prayer, and personal commitment. After chooses to rebuild on that hope while others offer excuses, becoming victims to storms.

Floods Rise

If your life looks as if it’s been hit with a hurricane of trouble or flooded with a swamp of stagnation, this book is your strategic recovery plan before FEMA support and following a few nights in a shelter. You will come to a transitional moment when you must learn how to react to the floodwaters. This will require a shift in your thinking.

Recovering from a flood is even more difficult when resources are scarce. In the same way, our minds often flood with thoughts of our disaster, seeking to find hope in the face of catastrophic domestic challenges, ministry failures, financial peril, or even cancer that takes the life of a loved one. We need tools—resources—to regain focus. Without these tools, we struggle to do the practical things we need to do to carry on, whether it’s reaching sales quotas or obtaining a home loan, taking care of a home or supporting children, or seeking to shift a mind or guide a ministry. As you face floods in your mind, use the tools of identifying and unmasking enemy thoughts and making decisive change. These tools are essential to identifying and neutralizing defeated dark thoughts, and finding guidance to make decisive changes. In the coming pages, we will discuss these tools for renewing your mind in depth. They will equip you to begin building again, draining away unhealthy waters, and preparing the ground for new construction.

Help and Rebuilding

At the time of this writing, humanitarian aid for recent hurricane or earthquake victims in Mexico, Florida, Puerto Rico, and Houston, Texas, remains in effect, and residents will need it for an unpredictable period of time. These perils have dampened communities. How will they rebuild their economies? Of course, help and handouts are welcomed, but finding a divine hand-up is necessary for those in search of after. We need help in times of decimation, and seeking out the right kind of help and investment makes it possible not only to build, but to build better than before.

Your hand-up comes not only in prayer and support from others, but in valuable practical advice. Your “humanitarian aid” can come in the form of wisdom in the area of wealth, prosperity, and even personal rebranding—specifically tailored to work during the earthquakes or floods of life. While there are plenty of books about these subjects on shelves across our nation, few of them specifically address how to rebrand yourself in the face of life’s disasters. But in your after, you can choose to initiate recovery on this and every level. From the business world, you can learn to implement simple recovery processes. Yes, even after shattering moments, even after years of stagnation, you can prepare to grow. Each reader must continue to pursue after, because life is much greater than a flood.

Life does offer alternatives and aid to flood victims, but intimate aid is required to assist wounded leaders or those suffering from divorce, sickness, ministry challenges, or past mistakes. Rebuilding requires removing wreckage and waste, and that takes courage and commitment. As Nehemiah removed the rubbish prior to rebuilding Jerusalem, in our minds and in our lives, debris must be moved to rebuild to be better and stronger. This labor-intensive task is unavoidable, but it creates hope, and before long a new, stable life will replace shattered memories. So it shall be in your after.

Your After Is About to Begin

After is not just a word; no, it’s your road map, regardless of your religious persuasion, race, creed, or gender. At some point, because of life’s systematic structure, both leaders and followers will need to engage an after; so will dreamers and business owners, lay members, husbands, wives, family members, and everyone who faces life’s inequities and tragedies. Each reader of this work must not cease in pursuing after, because life shall become greater than our flood. How am I so sure of this process? My many adversities—along with purpose—have created this work. It is a global tool to restore your hope, your desire for love, and your passion for life and family.

Recently I requested a time-out from life to evaluate what appeared to be an unjust flood; I had faced an extraordinary number of near-crushing challenges. After experiencing the death of loved ones,...