Finding Faith Above: She Left the Mormon Church and Traded "Works" for "Grace" (Shelby's Story)

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Shelby Hohsfield is a podcaster, artist, motivational speaker, and unstoppable enthusiast of living out God’s purpose after religion. Her faith journey has been a winding road, from praying to God as an eight year old for truth, leaving the Mormon church at 18, walking without God, getting curious, making so many mistakes, and finally finding the true love of our Amazing Creator. Shelby helps ladies who find themselves lost after leaving religion learn to pray, find truth and gain trust in the Lord.

Shelby’s story is so powerful and everything we talked about in this episode points us back to our amazing Creator and His deep love for us.

Shelby grew up in a mixed faith home where her dad attended the Mormon church and her mom did not. This caused a bit of a struggle for Shelby in terms of her knowing which direction to go. Nevertheless, she attended the church with her dad until she was 18 years old. Shelby shared about some of the traditions and expectations of being a member of the church, one of which was being baptized at the age of 8. When that time came, she had her dad rooting for her on one side and her mom rooting against it on the other. As you can imagine, that is a lot of pressure for an 8 year old! She talks about how this is when she started praying seriously to God, asking Him to reveal His truth to her about what she was supposed to do. As she shared, it was never really explained to her what being baptized truly meant, it was just the first step in the process and she was just expected to go through the motions and continue this mindset of having to earn her way and earn her worthiness.

Religion versus Relationship

We’ve talked about religion versus relationship before, and religion is a lot of just going through the motions, the traditions, and the expectations. And honestly, it’s very different than relationship with Jesus, which is how we secure our salvation, our eternal life. It’s by grace through faith that we are saved through our belief in Jesus and what He did on the cross for us and the way that He rose again, the way that He took on all of our sins so that we can be washed clean and become pure and rectified with God. I see in a lot of religions where they are baptizing babies and young kids and you know, it’s highly likely that those babies and young kids have not yet been able to make their own decision and choice to enter into a relationship with God. And that is the biggest, most important key of salvation and eternal life. So, I just want to point out again that religion and relationship are two very, very different things.

As Shelby and I talked more about the expectations of the Mormon church, she spoke about the literature they read and she shared that while they do read from the Bible, it’s actually considered to be the least trustworthy source, like it’s this text manipulated by man. Wow, right?! That teaching and mindset was so engrained in her that she took it into her adult life, even 20 years later after leaving the church. It’s something that she now works with women to change as she helps them gain trust in the Bible and learn about the history behind it that points to what we know…that the Bible is truth! It is God’s Word, it is alive and living.

I think that so much of trusting God’s Word comes through faith. I mean, the Bible says we’re saved by grace through faith, and sister friends, you have faith in some things, right? You have faith that the sun’s going to come up tomorrow. When you were little, you probably had faith that Santa was going to come on Christmas Eve. Faith is just a belief. It’s you choosing to believe, trust, and hope. And I often find that, honestly, science even proves the Bible to be true over and over and over again. When you look outside at nature, you cannot deny that there’s a creator. And I really believe that God speaks to us through nature and just through creation to knock on the door of our hearts.

Trading “Works” for “Grace”

It was during her senior year in a world history class that Shelby was really introduced for the first time to the idea that there were other ways that people saw God and that He could be different than what she had always been told. After she graduated, she left the church, partly because she knew that no one was going to be checking up on her to make sure she was attending, but also because of a feeling, or rather, a lack of feeling of God’s presence. And when she realized that all she had ever known about God may not be the truth, she completely stepped away from Him for 5 years.

When Shelby got married and was expecting her first child, it was then that she really started thinking about God again. She explained how she could feel her son’s soul within her, which meant to her that there had to be a God. This turned into a quest of really trying to figure out who He was, the truth, and where she was supposed to go from there. There were so many mindset shifts that had to happen throughout this process because she was carrying so much religious baggage. She shared about how in the Mormon church, everything is about earning your way. You’re given grace, but that grace only goes so far. And then after that, everything is based on your works and what you do in life to be able to advance that grace. Something that blew my mind is this idea that there are 3 levels of Heaven and your works determine which level you go to when you die. Wow!

Even though Shelby had left the church, those teachings were so deeply ingrained in her that she continued to carry that with her. She was always trying to be enough, trying to prove her worthiness to God and everyone around her. And she felt like because she wasn’t able to do it all, to carry it all, there must be something wrong with her. She mentioned something that is so true which is that when you give it to God, that’s when you realize your strength…because your strength comes from Him. I love Ephesians 2:8 where it says, “For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God.” Getting to heaven by your works is very different than what God says about it all and you really embrace that when you enter into a relationship with Him.

Giving It All to God

Shelby bounced around for the next 13-14 years of her life, trying to figure out where she was going, and while she talked about God in her home, her relationship with Him was never truly there. And because she never really had a great example of how to teach her children about God, she didn’t really give them a foundation for who He really is. She shared about how her daughter ended up having a really hard time as an adolescent, trying to fill a hole in her heart that was meant to be filled by God. And this is when Shelby’s relationship with Christ really began. It was an early morning, at 2:30 am, when she found herself with God and, for the first time really, was praying to Him. She thought she could fix all of the problems and do all the things but in that moment, she realized she was incapable. And she asked God for help. She gave it all to Him. And He spoke to her and told her that it was going to be okay. And that is when her life completely changed. It was then that she finally realized what true surrender was.

I still find all these years into being a Christian that when I step into those valley seasons, which you know, it’s like, man, this really stinks…but it is always when I hit my knees and I lean in and I look up, that the Lord just moves mountains in my life. I draw near to Him and He’s so close to me. And that’s really where I feel like He has the space to do mighty things.

If you’re healing from religious wounds or wanting to build a relationship with Jesus, I would encourage you to start by opening up your Bible. Pray, open your heart, and soak it all in because God is so good, and He will be there to guide you and fill you with wisdom.

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