You may have heard The After’s new song, “Say Goodbye (Say Hello).”
Josh from The Afters says “It’s a way of stepping out of the past and all the things that we want to leave there. There’s things that make us stuck. There’s things that hold us back and cycles that we can get into. There’s bad habits that we have. Those things can keep us from being all that God has for us. And so, I love the passage…
1 Corinthians 5:17, where it says, "When you belong to God, your new creation and your old life is gone and your new life has begun."
View this video with The Afters, and other interviews with JOY FM artists videos on the JOY FM YouTube Channel.
Transcription of this interview with The Afters
Justin:
This new song, “Say Goodbye, Say Hello,” which you guys are ready to play. We’re going to hear it in just a little bit live. Let’s talk about the song. It’s a fun song. I feel like we need some fun after the past two years that we’ve had. So thank you for writing fun music. Why do you guys love it so much?
Josh:
I love it because it’s a way of stepping out of the past and all the things that we want to leave there. There’s things that make us stuck.
There’s things that hold us back and cycles that we can get into. There’s bad habits that we have. Those things can keep us from being all that God has for us. And so, I love the passage 1 Corinthians 5:17, where it says, “When you belong to God, your new creation and your old life is gone and your new life has begun.”
And especially coming out of these last two years, I think that a lot of us have dealt with a lot of heavy, heavy things. And I mean, just last week I was talking to my girls because they were on social media and dealing with some comparison issues and self-esteem issues.
And I was like, “No, don’t believe any of those things that get in your head. Believe what God says about you.” So whatever that is, we all have those things that can make us stuck. And so, it’s really about leaving that in the past and stepping into all the freedom that God has for us.
Matt:
We need reminders of that every day. Every day, you’ve got to wake up and decide what kind of day is today going to be.
Am I going to be focused on Jesus? Am I going to be living for Him? Am I going to give Him everything I’ve got? Or is this just going to be a day where I just scroll through and go through the motions?
And we need reminders of that every day. That’s one of the things that I love about this song. It’s a good reminder for me. Even just in normal everyday life, I find that a song like that that will just really change my perspective going into a day.
Josh:
And it is just important to realize those things in our past that we want to leave there, they don’t define us, right? Our mistakes don’t define us. The shame that we carry, that’s not what defines us.
Our struggles right now, that doesn’t define us. We are children of God. We’re loved by God. That’s what we need to embrace. And that’s who we need to see ourselves as, as the people that God sees us.
Kim:
Kind of in the last year, I’ve tried to adopt the mantra of bless and release. Okay, I’ve acknowledged it. It is what it is. I’ve been here. I’m not that person. And it’s time to release it. Easier said than done, but it is great to have those reminders in our lives.
Josh:
And we’ve seen firsthand this transformation that God does in people’s lives, that he can restore any situation, that he can bring to life even things that felt like they were dead and gone. And I’ve seen it. My own family. I have a brother who was delivered from a 10-year drug addiction. He was on meth for 10 years.
So God turned his life around.
I have a sister who walked away from her faith when she was in college and she wanted to be Indiana Jones. So she went to study archeology and moved to Israel and studied under one of the top archeologists. And then, he was an atheist. So she started to believe all the things he was saying and left her faith. And I saw my dad in an act of faith right before he passed away in 2004. He gave my sister his Bible and he said, “I know this doesn’t mean anything to you, but I hope and pray that someday it does.”
Well, she used to put it on her bookshelf and it sat there for about a decade. And she and her husband ended up going through a really hard season. And she started having these dreams that Jesus was showing up. And she told me, “I don’t like Jesus in my dreams. This is not cool.”
And I said, “Well, maybe you should pay attention.”
And one night, it was so strong. She couldn’t go back to sleep. So she walked into her living room and she saw that Bible sitting on her bookshelf and she went and opened it up.
And there was a highlighted passage from my dad that he had highlighted and it spoke directly to what she was going through. And the next two nights, she kept coming back to that Bible, opening it up. And she actually ended up calling me and she said, “Josh, I want to give my life to Jesus.”
And I prayed with her.
Three months later, she flew out to Arizona where I live and I got to baptize my sister. And not only that, but her husband, who’s an Israeli Jew, he gave his life to Jesus and now they moved back to Israel and they have a ministry there.
They’re just on fire, but that kind of transformation can happen in anyone’s life. And I saw the old. I saw what she was like before. I saw what God made her and the change that happened. And that can happen in anybody’s life.
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