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What Are You Going Back To?

09.05.2017 by Tracy Stella //

This month FACETS of Faith explores the question, what are you going back to? The topic stumped me (Tracy).  I’ve been praying. And praying. And praying.

My fingers pecked across the keyboard. “I’m not even sure what You want me to write about this month, Lord…” Prattle to hopefully jump start my creative engine. It didn’t work.  Battery dead. No Power. (And without His Power, my words WOULD be just mindless prattle.)

So I stopped, closed up shop, and did something else. No sense typing a bunch of nonsense, even if I was getting a little angsty with a deadline looming.  You see, it’s really important to me I don’t just write what I want.  I want to write what God is calling me to write, relevant and in season.

Finally, fresh revelation. The rescue made me as happy as seeing roadside assistance when you’re broken down on a dead-end street.  A trinity AAA rescue!

What are you going back to?  First and foremost, I’m going back to seeking the Lord. When I don’t know what to do, in situations big and small, I must continue to seek the Lord.  I feel this is my first response most of the time (these days).  But this is a good reminder to us all ─ God cares about it all. He cares about injustice across the globe, poverty and provision for people’s needs, how and whom we serve, what we do in our free time, and even what I write about.

Don’t think you aren’t important to Him. Don’t think your cares and concerns aren’t significant enough to put before God. They are, because you are!  God wants us all to know how deep and wide His love is for us.  It’s often through His response in small circumstances where He shows us how BIG we are loved.

Rejoice always and delight in your faith; be unceasing and persistent in prayer; in every situation [no matter what the circumstances] be thankful and continually give thanks to God; for this is the will of God for you in Christ Jesus.─1 Thessalonians 5:16-18 AMP

Prayer without ceasing is only possible if we include God in everything. So let’s involve Him in every little detail. When He shows us the way and what’s needed, lift up a shout of praise and rejoice!

What are you going back to? I’m also reminded to wait on Him and His timing.  There’s no sense trying to birth something before He’s darn good and ready to do so!  It’s futile, so why not just give in to His holy calendar? Sometimes the closer we are to our due date, the less patient we are to abide in God’s timing. But that’s where peace presides. Imagine pushing and pushing in month 6 of your pregnancy. You have 3 more months, so what’s your hurry? Sure. You want your body back. Sure. You’re anxious to see your new little one. Sure. You’re ready to wear a belt again and perhaps sleep without having to get up and go potty every 30 minutes. But you’ve got 3 more months. No amount of your wishing, and wanting, and even push, push, pushing is going to produce what isn’t ready to be birthed.

Be still, and know that I am God.─Psalm 46:10a ESV

If I had a dollar for every time I’ve seen this verse over the last year or so I might have the beginnings of a really good vacation fund.

But as irritating (and laughable) as it sometimes is when I get a fresh dose of this scripture, it’s also liberating. It’s not up to me. I don’t have to do anything until God says, “do it”. Once He gives the green light, it’s full speed ahead.  The road is well paved, because He’s prepared the way and I’m just following all His signs.

This Way.

Now That.

U-Turn.

Revisit That.

Go A Different Way.

Say “Hi” To Her.

Buy That One Dinner.

Say No.

Say Yes.

Construction Ahead, But Keep Going.

As we listen to His voice, He keeps us on the path. His path. The one that keeps us in peace even as He stretches and grows us.

And that thought leads me to God’s answer for me (and perhaps for some of you too). What are you going back to?

His very personal answer for me… my life. He wants me to go back to my life.  He’s saying. This is the way. Walk in it. Don’t put limits on your life. If you do, you’re putting limits on Me.

Are you putting limits on God and what He can do in and through you? Read the above paragraph again. Listen to what God is saying.

What does that seemingly grandiose statement mean? I am to go back to my life.

For any of you that have been in a birthing season, you understand it is extremely busy. A new baby to care for, a new business venture, a new job, planting a church, launching a ministry, it’s all a lot of work.

For well over a year I have been involved in starting up a human trafficking residential aftercare ministry. It has been an all-consuming, sometimes exhausting, tear inducing experience even as it has been full of joy and rich rewards to see God move.  I expected spiritual resistance, and even attack, but not to the level in which I encountered it. Let’s just say I have a few battle scars. But man, I wouldn’t have missed that battle for anything! Like a lot of things in life, it has also been so full of unexpected blessing and life altering encounters. I have been given gifts I will take with me long after God calls me away from this ministry.

It has been a hard year or so. It has been humbling. It has been a year of hibernating (in a sense). I didn’t do much else besides eat, breathe, and sleep the ministry. It’s what was needed in the intense start up period.

I had to say “no” to many things I would have been interested in doing; I knew I couldn’t.

But now, it’s a new season.

While I’m still super passionate about human trafficking and doing my part to participate in God’s mission against it, He says He has more.

None spiritual speak here … that kind of freaks me out!  More? Than this? This has been pretty monumental!

But this fight against human trafficking is not all that I am. I am much more. I am who God made me to be. I’m who He is making me to be.

The ministry is up and running and not all-consuming.  It’s busy, but not birthing kind of busy.   Now, He’s saying I can step into some new things and revisit some old endeavors I enjoyed.  Perhaps, my role will look different. Perhaps the gifts God has entrusted me to steward He’ll use in a slightly different capacity.

This morning as I was getting ready, God solidified this new season for me. I listened to Christine Caine’s teaching about stretching and growth. I knew it was for me. Here’s a woman, on fire for the Lord, doing great things for Him, not putting limits on what He can do in and through her. (Talk about a woman with some passion and zeal!)

She shared how she has been stretched by God to do more than she ever thought she could. She had her doubts. She hashed it out with God. And then she said, “Okay, let’s do this!” (so to speak)

Hearing her talk, I knew it was for me.  Perhaps it’s for you too. Do you have a lot on your plate and think to yourself, “I can’t add one thing more?” Maybe you can. But not in your own strength!  Let God do the “pushing” for you and maybe, just maybe you can.

Trust His voice because sometimes that’s not what He’s asking at all. But sometimes. Sometimes, it is!

God is releasing me to more fully explore a leadership role in a writing group I’ve been a part of for a number of years. I’m excited about what He can do in and through all the amazing women He has gathered. These ladies are awesome! All love Jesus and want to do what He wants them to. I think about the leadership development opportunities there might be (something I’m passionate about), and all that any little investment I am allowed to make might be magnified and multiplied. They have big dreams in the name of Jesus, so who wouldn’t want to surround themselves with friendships like that?

I feel released to explore some ministry opportunities at my church ─ at least released enough to have some preliminary discussions of what things could look like. Dream a little. Explore. Noodle. Create in a slightly different fashion.

And I might be able to get back to some of the life coaching I was doing, which I absolutely love.  It requires a full emotional tank, and now that I am not running on emotional empty from ministry launch, I feel more released to engage.

What are you going back to?  If you don’t know, seek God through prayer. If His answer is “delayed”, don’t push. Don’t get ahead, but don’t lag behind.  Wait on His timing to reveal His purposes for your life. Pay attention to seasons, circumstances, and what those might be saying to you about what God has for you. Abide in His presence and let His peace (even in the midst of crazy, crazy) guide your decisions.

I was asked earlier today how I felt about getting older. My honest answer, “Okay”. I feel very alive, because God is always doing something new in my life. He’s interested in my growth (and He’s faithful to grow me).  But here’s the thing …. He knows I’m “all in”. I’m not going to give up even when the going gets really hard. Believe you me, it has from time to time.  In spite of the tough seasons, I’ve got to say “yes” to God.

If we decline what God has for us, that’s when our lives spiral into decline.  If we say “no” when He wants us to say “yes”, we’re not doing what we were made for. It’s not old age or even death that steals life from us. When we stop living, that’s when life leaves us.

How can you most fully engage in the life God is calling you to live? Follow His whispers, His signs to what will make your life great, because you’re becoming more and more the very woman (or man) God designed you to be.

Join the conversation here or on our Facebook page.

Don’t forget to check back in later this month to read Kim’s and Jennifer’s perspective, as well as our first male guest contributor who will close out the month’s topic: What are you going back to?

 

Categories // Faith, Tracy Stella's Perspective Tags // 1 Thessalonians 5:16-18, Calling, Follow the Signs, God's Timing, God's Voice, Limitless, Live Your Life, Peace, prayer, Psalm 46:10, What are you going back to?

How Has God Changed Your Perspective About An Issue?

07.05.2016 by Tracy Stella //

As glorious as the sun is, its rays burn if we don’t find shade’s safe solace. We need protection from what could cause harm. As long as we take precaution, the sun is beautiful, inviting even. When we choose to go unprotected into summer’s sun without calculating the cost, the rays scorch as they move from warm to sizzle.

Something beautiful in design turns out to be quite painful to the touch. Our skin in need of healing, because we exposed ourselves to too much of summer’s tantalizing allure. We didn’t count the cost, and the decision to play in the sun made us uncomfortable in our own skin.

I (Tracy) have gotten too much exposure to sun. I’ve also gotten too much exposure to sin. Sinful decisions have scorched my skin making it painful to touch. Only when God’s soothing balm of love and forgiveness covered my former shame-scorched surfaces, did I see my need for God or His healing hand. Once I felt His soothing touch, my pain began to subside. As pain receded like an ocean tide, I began to walk in my purpose.

I didn’t always seek the safety of God’s shade. Now, I know the shadow of His wing is the safest place to hide as He covers me in His love, forgiveness, protection, and healing while leading and guiding my life.

In some ways I think, “Oh what I wouldn’t give to go back and do things differently.” How would my life have looked if I had known Jesus and my need for Him all along? What if I always had known how much He loved me?

But then I wouldn’t be me. I wouldn’t have learned the hard lessons I must have needed to know. Maybe my sin was the only way I could see how good and merciful God is to us—to me. I don’t know. I do know He’s helped me climb many mountains.

Perspective_Issue TracyHealing can feel arduous, but the outcome is worth all the effort we must put in to fight for it. I’m sitting on the other side of some mountain climbs thanking God and thinking, “I am so grateful You had me start in the valley as You helped me to rise higher. Higher into my healing. Ultimately, higher into my calling.”

Your righteousness is like the highest mountains, your justice like the great deep. You, LORD, preserve both people and animals. How priceless is your unfailing love, O God! People take refuge in the shadow of your wings. They feast on the abundance of your house; you give them drink from your river of delights.—Psalm 36:6-8 NIV

As I have grown to understand my need for God’s love and forgiveness, He has helped shift my perspective on many things. He has helped me (and He keeps helping me) not to become scorched by my own sin.

One place He has shown me a different perspective is in the area of intimacy.

Before I knew the truth of God’s abundant love for me, I was needy in the area of love. I’d search for it however I could get it. Sex too soon and outside of God’s design was only one way I tried to fill the void. There was also striving, performance at all costs, people pleasing, and a whole host of other ways I tried to get people to love me.

Looking for love, operating out of need, is a very dangerous endeavor. We fall victim to Satan’s lies that the allure of sin will somehow help us feel better. We are also easy targets for people who are broken and in their own sin.

God first showed me what an intimate relationship with Him looks like. He met me where I was and held me close. He rooted me in His love, taught me through His Word, and helped me see who I am and how He created me to be.

Prayer became a sweet time to pour my heart out to God as I grew to know He leans in to hear what I have to say. He also taught me how to hear His voice, my listening crucial to fulfill His divine purpose for my life.

Awareness of how deeply known and loved I am by God changed me forever.

Using God’s model of intimacy, He has shown me how to bring genuine intimacy into my marriage. The more I learn and understand of God’s design for intimacy in general, including sexual intimacy, the more I see how duped I was over my lifetime—especially in this area.

God has shown me, and continues to show me, what it looks like to let someone in—really in—to a place and space where I am truly known. It’s vulnerable and real, and that’s what makes intimacy so valuable. I’m loved for who I am, not for what my sexuality has to offer. That’s powerful!

Sex is beautiful. It’s absolutely breathtaking when it’s in the context of a safe marital relationship.

Outside of that context I had no business engaging in those activities. It’s not because God is some sort of prude He asks us to wait. It’s because God desires to protect us. He wants husband and wife to become one. God doesn’t want us letting just anyone into that sacred space. He knows the scars that will be prevented if we take precaution and calculate the cost of giving the most precious parts of ourselves to the wrong person, or even too early to the right person.

I think about all the risk I exposed myself to. I think about the fear and anxiety I had to endure, because I ventured into “off limits” territory. I think about the cost of my sin. It had great expense for me, and for others.

One very costly area I encountered as a result of my sin also became one of the biggest perspective shifts God brought.

I paid the high price of getting pregnant outside of marriage—twice. I remember being very embarrassed that I got pregnant a second time. My pride could not handle having another child without being married.

While I didn’t necessarily believe in abortion, I believed in a woman’s choice. My pride screamed it was my decision. While I chose to keep my first child, I did not choose to keep my second. My sin was multiplied, because I fell to my own fleshly desires and I believed the lies of the enemy. It wasn’t just pride. I was also afraid. I already felt “not good enough” as a mom. There was a laundry list of reasons why I thought this decision was good.

That was only on the surface. I believe deep down I knew it wasn’t right. I even tried to “punish” myself afterward by not taking any of the medications to stop the bleeding or alleviate the pain.

Decades later God showed me a different perspective about abortion. It’s not a choice. It is sin.

I was reading the Ten Commandments. As I read the “thou shalt not’s”, I remember saying in jest, “Well, at least I didn’t commit murder.”

God asked a question in one of His most effective ways, since of course He already knew the answer. “Really?”

He asked the question, and then He waited.

I was very confused at first. God brought clarity. As I dialogued with Him quietly in my head, it was then He told me my choice to have an abortion was murder.

God was gentle and merciful with me, but I will never forget that day. He comforted me, sitting down in the dust of my sin as He soothed my pain from that choice.

When the reality of my decision sunk in, I sobbed. In God’s perfect timing He revealed the truth to me in love, and it was like a flood of remorse broke free. I went from joking around with God to a place of absolute repentance. God communicated in a way that convicted me without making me feel condemned; the beautiful balance only He can pull off. He needed me to walk in truth, because that’s where freedom waits.

God couldn’t heal what was left in hiding. Oh, and did I need healing! I just had never realized it.

It’s another of those big perspective shifts God brought. I needed healing from my decision to have an abortion. In God’s mercy, He brought it. I had been hiding for years from my decision, but that didn’t mean its effects hadn’t hindered me most of my adult life. It had.

Healing was hard, but the soothing aloe of Abba Father helped me through it. He allowed me to see how that decision shaped so many others. How I had bought into lie upon lie about myself. I had been buried in shame. That’s why I kept the decision so well hidden. I remember feeling unworthy of God’s goodness or His forgiveness, but I also grew to know how imperative they both were (and are) to walk in freedom from the sin that once hindered.

God in His infinite mercy gave me my child’s name, Asher. God told me Asher is happy with Him, seated at Christ’s banquet table. What more can a mama want than to know her child is safely seated with God, happy? I don’t know how all that happens, but my faith says it can. It’s one of the hopes I cling to: I will one day meet Asher and get to spend all of eternity with him. I have no right to that privilege, but that is what makes God’s mercy so powerful. We don’t deserve it, but He blesses us with mercy in spite of who we once were.

There’s a lot God can do with a repentant heart.

My decision is now part of my calling. God has placed women in my path faced with making a similar choice. I can’t make her decision for her, but I can share how that decision shaped my life. I can share how much it hurt me, and others. I can share what God shared with me in a way others wouldn’t be able to. God doesn’t let me stray too far from the emotion when I share my story. I don’t walk around “feeling it” all the time, but when I’m engaged in an important, life-saving conversation, God keeps me connected to it all. It’s important for authenticity. I have to go back and visit those feelings. It’s important, because a child’s life might be saved. That possibility is worth remaining connected to things that are hard.

The outcome is solely up to God; He only asks me to be obedient when opportunities to talk present themselves.

Besides my gratitude to God, there’s a powerful reason I want to keep myself emotionally open to engage with others about my biggest mistake. It motivates me to know my son Asher’s life mattered and still does. God brings me conversations with expectant mothers. Any child’s life saved because of a sharing of my story is part of Asher’s legacy. It’s his story too. It’s Asher’s legacy of love as I silently say, “This is for you sweet son.”

It’s also God’s way of bringing beauty from ashes. God redeems what we feel is far beyond His reach and He shows us how He works all things together for our good, even the choices we wish we would have never made. Nothing is beyond His reach. Nothing.

For this reason I kneel before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth derives its name. I pray that out of his glorious riches he may strengthen you with power through his Spirit in your inner being, so that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith. And I pray that you, being rooted and established in love, may have power, together with all the Lords holy people, to grasp how wide and long and high and deep is the love of Christ, and to know this love that surpasses knowledge—that you may be filled to the measure of all the fullness of God. Now to him who is able to do immeasurably more than all we ask or imagine, according to his power at work within us, to him be glory in the church and in Christ Jesus throughout all generations, for ever and ever! Amen.—Ephesians 3:14-21 NIV

Has God ever radically transformed your opinion about an issue? What or who did He use to shape your perspective? Join the conversation here or on our Facebook page.

Signature Block - TracyNeed help with post-abortion healing?

If you think you need help healing from a decision to abort your child, consider participation in Surrendering the Secret Bible study.  God used the teaching to heal my heart, and I highly recommend it.

Also know that you are forgiven. Scripture even goes as far as to say that if we claim to be without sin, the truth isn’t in us. He forgives us when we turn from sin to follow Him. (See 1 John 1:8-9) The truth is what sets us free. (See John 8:32)

If I could reach through this screen, I’d surely be giving you a hug right now. I’d tell you it will be okay. Trust God. Lean into Him and let Him heal your heart. Let Him love every part of you back to life. Healing, wholeness, and freedom from shame are all possible. I pray you feel God’s hand leading and guiding you every step of the way. In Jesus’ name, amen!

Categories // Life, Perspective, Tracy Stella's Perspective Tags // abortion, Asher, Calling, Ephesians 3:14-21, forgiveness, Freedom, healing, Intimacy, Legacy, Love, Mercy, murder, Perspective, Purity, Repentance, sin, Surrendering the Secret, truth

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