After This with Pastor Tex Sawyers

After This: How to Release the Past and Embrace God's Future

There is a phrase tucked inside the ordinary rhythm of life that carries extraordinary power: "after this." Two simple words. But for anyone who has walked through grief, disappointment, failure, or loss, those two words can feel like the difference between despair and hope. They point to something beyond the present pain. They whisper that the current chapter is not the final one.

What does it look like to truly believe that God has something waiting for you on the other side of your hardest season? And more importantly, what does it take to get there?

The Danger of Getting Comfortable in Bondage

Centuries ago, the people of Israel found themselves carried off to Babylon. They did not choose to go. Nebuchadnezzar took them by force. Yet through the prophet Jeremiah, God gave them a remarkable instruction: build houses, plant gardens, raise families, and pray for the peace of the city where you find yourselves. In other words, live faithfully where you are, because I have not forgotten you.

Eventually, through a new king named Cyrus, God opened the door for the Israelites to return home to Jerusalem. He even stirred the hearts of their neighbors to give them silver, gold, and everything they needed for the journey. It was a moment of stunning divine provision and restoration.

But here is the part of the story that stops you cold: only one out of six Israelites went back.
The rest stayed in Babylon.

They had gotten used to it. They had houses there. Gardens. Grandchildren. The thought of starting over in a city many of them had never even seen was simply too uncomfortable. So they stayed in the very place that had once been their captivity.

This is one of the quieter tragedies of the human heart. We can get so accustomed to our limitations, our grief, our lack, our old wounds, that we mistake them for home. The chains become familiar. The struggle becomes our identity. And when God swings the door open wide, we hesitate because at least we know what we have here.

Three Things You Cannot Afford to Skip

If you find yourself in a season of "after this," there are three things that are not optional. They are not suggestions for the spiritually advanced. They are necessities for anyone who wants to walk into what God has prepared.

First, you must release the past.

This is harder than it sounds, and anyone who tells you otherwise has probably not lost very much. The enemy of your soul is not creative. He uses the same tired playbook over and over, and one of his most effective tools is condemnation. He will take your failures, your regrets, your losses, and your mistakes and replay them on a loop, trying to convince you that they define you.

They do not.

The blood of Jesus does not simply cover sin. It erases it. God makes a remarkable promise in His Word: He does not hold your forgiven past against you. The question is whether you will hold it against yourself. Releasing the past does not mean pretending it did not happen. It means choosing, sometimes daily, to stop letting it determine your direction.
Second, you must know who you are now.

Not who you were at your peak. Not who you were in your worst moment. Who you are right now, in this season, with what you have been given.

There is a particular temptation to measure yourself against a former version of yourself or against someone else entirely, and to find yourself lacking. But God does not call you to be anyone other than who He made you to be. Your circle may be smaller than someone else's. Your platform may look different than you imagined. That does not diminish the value of what you carry or the people you are called to reach.

Be honest. Be present. Be yourself. God can work with that. He cannot work with a performance.

Third, you must trust God's plan.

Jeremiah 29:11 is one of the most quoted verses in Scripture, and for good reason. God declares that His plans for His people are plans for good, not for disaster, to give them a future and a hope. But it is worth noting the context: He said this to people sitting in exile. He said this to people who had lost everything and were living in a foreign land under foreign rule.

He was not speaking to people on the mountaintop. He was speaking to people in the valley, and He was telling them: I have not lost track of you. I have not abandoned your story. I know exactly where you are, and I know exactly where you are going.
That same promise belongs to you today.

The Harvest Is Still Coming

There is something deeply encouraging about a farmer who plants seed in hard ground and then watches and waits with expectation rather than despair. The harvest does not come all at once. It does not always come on the schedule we would choose. But seed sown in faith does not return empty.

Whatever you have been through, whatever season of loss or confusion or grief you are navigating, God is not finished. The door that Cyrus opened for the Israelites was not opened because they had earned it. It was opened because God is faithful to His word, and He is a God of restoration.

He says it plainly: I will restore your fortunes. Not some of them. Not the ones you deserve. Your fortunes.

This Is Not the End of Your Story

If you are sitting in the middle of a hard chapter right now, the message is simple and it is true: after this, there is more. After this grief, after this failure, after this loss, after this confusion, God has something prepared for you that your current circumstances cannot diminish.

Release what is behind you. Know who you are today. Trust the One who holds your future.
The door is open. It is time to walk through it.