Life After: Moving from Pain to Promise

By Andre Butler

There is Life After what happened to you!

Difficulty, pain, and setbacks happen to all of us, but God can take what was meant for evil and turn it into good in your life. He can take what is bitter and make it sweet.

There is life after heartbreak.

There is life after addiction.

There is life after crisis.

There is life after divorce.

There is life after failure.

And it's a Great Life!

This book will fill your heart with hope—hope for a better tomorrow!

• Language: English
• Publisher: HigherLife Publishing
• Release date: Dec 15, 2021
• ISBN: 9781954533448

Andre Butler

Andre Butler, the award-winning Senior pastor of Word of Faith International Christian Center, equips others to experience the future that God has for them by helping them embrace God's desire to prosper His people as they obey God's command to win the world to Jesus.

Book preview

INTRODUCTION

Ithought I had done it right. I had served God from an early age. Sure, I had made some mistakes but not the big ones. My heart had been right. I had done my best to follow God’s direction in every area of my life. Yet, here I was. My life was in ashes. Everything that I had hoped for, everything I had longed for, seemingly ruined forever.

This is the state that I was in when God started talking to me about Life After. God found me in a pit and used His Word and the people that He had placed in my life to pull me out of it and to put me on track to a future that I thought was lost forever. Since then, I’ve seen God do miracle after miracle in my life. He’s healed my heart. He’s blessed my family. He’s increased my ministry. He’s caused things that I dreamed of to come to pass. And I know that He’s just getting started.

God had me share Life After with my church but it wasn’t too long after I finished teaching it that He made it clear to me that He wanted me to share it with you in this book. God used the revelation in this book to propel me into the future I long for in spite of the challenges of my past. I believe He will do the same for you. Get ready for Life After.

LIFE AFTER

CHAPTER ONE

YOUR LIFE ISN’T OVER

There is life after what happened to you. There is life after what you did. There’s life after abuse. There’s life after addiction. There’s life after abortion. There’s life after divorce. There’s life after failure. God has life after available to you, and it’s a good life.

Most people face potentially crippling life challenges at some time in their life. Whether abortion, abuse, addiction, the loss of a loved one, heartbreak, or failure, sometimes bad things happen that we just can’t undo or take back. It can be very difficult to heal from those things. It can be very difficult to just move on. Sometimes you feel like you’ll never again be the same. Sometimes you feel like your life is over.

But God is a God who can take what Satan meant for evil and turn it to your good. God is a God who can take your lowest moments and transform them into your highest moments, into your highest heights. That is why I am inviting you to Life After.

In John 16:33, Jesus said, I have told you all this, so that you may have peace in me. Here on earth, you will have many trials and sorrows, but take heart, because I have overcome the world (NLT). Here on earth, you will have trials, He said. Here on earth, you will have sorrows. The word tribulation is used in the King James Version of this scripture. It refers to pressure, anguish, and trouble. In this life, we’re going to face those things. The good news? Jesus has already made a way out of those things. He’s already made a way for us to have victory. We can be of good cheer, because we know what the outcome is going to be.

Isaiah 61 reads that, The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because the Lord has anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor. He has sent me to heal the brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives, the opening of prison to those who are bound, to console those who mourn in Zion (NKJV), and, notice this, To give them beauty for ashes (Isa. 61:3). Jesus is ultimately the person that this scripture is talking about. In fact, in Luke 4, when He first walked into the synagogue, after He had been baptized and anointed to carry out His ministry, He read this passage of scripture.

He was saying that His ability would help heal people. It would help set people free. Jesus was anointed to give people beauty for ashes.

That word ashes is interesting. When something horrible happened to people in Christ’s day and before, they would put ashes on their head. For example, there’s a woman in the Bible that was raped by her stepbrother, and she put ashes on her head. It was a sign of great grief. Yet Jesus was saying, I’m here to give you beauty for ashes. You may be grieving, but I actually am able to take you from a place of great grief to a place of great joy.

Additionally, when ashes appear, it’s because something has burned down. Your house has burned down. Everything that you own is now gone. Yet, Jesus was talking about the fact that He can give you beauty for ashes in that way as well. Your house could be burned down, but He’s actually able to not only replace that house with another house, but to replace that house with a model home.

Think about that. Have you ever been to a model home? When you visit a model home, it is all decked out. The tile, countertops, fixtures and more look amazing. You’re walking around thinking, Man, if this is what my house is going to look like, I’m going to love it. You sign the paper for your house to be built.

However, if you didn’t pay attention to the details in the process of having that house built, when you walk into your new house, you might be disappointed. Your response might be, Wait, wait—this house is not the same as the model! It doesn’t have the same quality of fixtures or countertops as the model home. You’re disappointed because you wanted those special touches that made the home stand out to you.

What’s funny about this word beauty is that it is all about embellishment—form, shape, or color that is aesthetically pleasing. It’s talking about something fancy, like that model home. God is telling you that your home may have burned to the ground, but He is not just going to give you another home. He is not going to give even something that’s similar to something nice. God is going to give you a fancy home. He’s saying, I’m not just going to give you your life back. I’m not just going to put you back on your feet, I’m going to take your life to a whole other level. I’m giving you beauty for ashes.

I recently read an article about wildfires in Australia. There was a photograph of the forest and how it was all in ashes. This photograph went viral because leaves, flowers, and grass were coming through the parched ground.¹

I think this is a great picture of what God does for His people! Your life may have seemingly been burned down and yet, in the middle of the ashes of what your life used to be, something new and good is sprouting up.

God is in the business of renewal. God is in the business of taking what was dead and making it alive. God is in the business of taking what was bitter and making it sweet.

In Exodus 15:22-25 it says, "So Moses brought Israel from the Red Sea; then they went out into the Wilderness of Shur. And they went three days in the wilderness and found no water. Now when they came to Marah, they could not drink the waters of Marah, for they were bitter. Therefore the name of it was called Marah. And the people complained against Moses, saying, ‘What shall we drink?’ So he cried out to the Lord, and the Lord showed him a tree. When he cast it into the waters, the waters were made sweet" (NLT).

Notice what God did. He took what was bitter water and He made it sweet. That’s exactly how God works. He’s a God who will take what is bitter and make it sweet, take your winter and give you spring, take your darkness and give you light, take what Satan meant for evil and turn it to your good.

I like what one minister says, We’re not just believing to recover. We’re believing to thrive. We can do that because Jesus gives beauty for ashes, because there is life after crisis.

The genealogy of Jesus in Matthew 1 can help us see