The Lost Non-Church Notes Church Drawings of 2011

More Church related doodles.

Basically anything that I drew at Church or at something Church related that are not Church Notes.

Enjoy! :D

This one may look like church notes but do not be dismayed they are notes to took during CIRCLES, a discipleship program my Church has. This drawing pretty much sums up 2011. :/

More CIRCLES notes. But I drew my a fellow slice Amanda.

Thats me realizing that I was not trusting the Lord with my heart.

( you might notice a theme with the drawing of my self in the second half of 2011 :/)

This is my dear friend Melanie. She helped open my eyes to hope powerful the Holy Spirt truly is!

And for that I will be forever grateful, and I am pretty sure she will see some extra jewels in Heaven for it ;).

Oh and I still need to color this :/

This is of two worship leaders at my Church.

Their friendship reminds me of one I once had.

I drew this during a response time at the end of service at church.

These two I drew just last week. I went to a house of 24-7 prayer and worship with some of the new 2.0 Slices (CIRCLES Reference). And I drew two of them.

I just laid down what the Lord put on my heart.

I was so blessed that it blessed them.

Its pretty amazing how echo-system of spiritual gifting works.

I get blessed b/c they were blessed. :)

Church Notes | Faithful

When the study started, I prayed that I would be inspired to draw something, or be given an image. I sat and waited for a little while. Darin said something about justice and I got an image of a man holding scales. As I drew it it became more clear, it turned out to be my friend Zach. He was holding scales, in the scales was a heart of flesh that was being out weighted by fruit. After the study I had an opportunity to share the drawing and what the Lord put on my heart about it with Zach. with him. I always get nervous about sharing that stuff with people because I don't want to come off as, "THUS SAITH THEELORD!!" That knee-jerk response is out of fear, not decrement. And fear is never to be reacted out of, so I did my best to die to myself and be bold. And I know and trust Zach, even if I was way off he wouldn't kill me. Long story short we had a great conversation about the drawing. Basically it was an encouragement to Zach that the fruit of the Spirit is abundant in his life right now. At the end of the night he came back up to me and handed me a letter. When I got home to read it I was so blessed. The Lord answered some prayers and questions I had through Zach's letter.

Church Notes | Gathering

This weeks study was titled, "Why we gather..." It was a study on Community and the importance of being in fellowship with one another. The pastor presented a really interesting point. Today we can be fed the Word of God in many different venues, all of which are isolated affairs. Books, PodCasts, and a myriad of different options that the internet can provide. There is even a MMO that provides virtual churches to go to, I think that game is still around. There is nothing wrong with these convenience in and of themselves. These convinces become dangerous when we allow them to take a higher seat in our hearts than they were designed for. What I mean to say is that when we allow a PodCast to replace church, or allow a book to replace The Book. When we allow them to stop being supplement that they should be and become the soul source of our Spiritual food. Much like fast food, it should be a treat or occasional indulgence but like for many people when it becomes the soul source of our food our health reflects that. One of the biggest dangers of not gathering together in fellowship with the intent on seeking God, is missing out on each-other. We can not allow a tool for communication to become a weapon of isolation. We can operate under the lie that each week at church is the same as the previous week. We must remember that each gathering is unique and different. It's alive! We are all gifted differently! We all need to guard our hearts and not allow the enemy to take something good out of context and pervert it into a distraction. He tends to use these little lies twisted with a half-truth the most.

The Joy Bringers

Okay, as I stand on a third floor balcony overlooking the beautiful grounds of the studio that I am blessed to work at I am about to out myself. I hope you orbiters, slices, circlers, etc appreciate this...



I know I mentioned in a previous blog that I love cats, and well its super true (not that there are degrees to truth, I am just being dramatic with a bit of whimsy for effect). This week I wasn't sure what to blog about. I even had another life drawing session at work and thought, "Maybe the Lord shall speaketh again!" No dice. Then my mind wondered back this video, my good friend Nick posted this on my Facebook wall earlier in the week. It made a good day even better! I don't know what it is about cats that bring me such unbridled joy, but they do. I am sure it's joy, not just happiness. Even on a bad day cats can claw their way right through that negative circumstance and bad mood and bring me a smile. Nothing changed other than the fact that I had a smile.

I could make some lame attempt to make this video more relevant by saying that I posted this as an illustration on how we need to slowdown and really look at things. While that is true, that isn't the reason this kitten is on my blog this week. I posted it b/c for some reason the Lord has put a deep appreciation for cats in me. Why? I don't know, and I am not even sure I care to know. But what I do know is that this is a path the Lord has used in the past to get me to smile when I didn't want to, and comfort when I didn't have any peace.

Long story short Cat's are one of my Joy Bringers. What is your Joy Bringer?

Chasing Cars

The other night at work they offered a life painting session form 6:00pm-9:00pm. Since I usually linger in Glendale anyways to miss traffic on my 47 mile commute I was all in! I was excited and nervous, I hadn't done thins kind of painting in ages! I was also excited for the quiet time this would provide. In a room filled with other people painting it is you are all alone together.

As I was painting I was praying that the Lord would speak to me. An hour or so goes by and nothing, so I rummage through my bag and get out my ear buds and plug them into my iPhone. I didn't know what to listen to, so I go to a playlist I made in the summer of 2009 called, "Songs I Like Right Now". Now for some back story on this particular playlist, this playlist in it's day was the "ish"! I was on tour that summer and had a LOT of down time driving from state to state to work on this sucker. All that to say that these were not just random songs. Back to painting! So I hit shuffle on that play list, "Chasing Cars" by Snow Patrol comes on. While listening to this I realized I liked this song a lot more back then. It was actually kind of annoying. I ask myself and God why is that? I used to love this song! Then the Lord spoke to me, He said, "You used to like this song because you had a similar wound as the men and women who created it. It spoke to you on an intimate level. Between now and then you have trusted me with that wound and I have healed it. Our intimacy eclipses shallow nature of what that song meant to you."

I was blessed and humbled by this revelation. Humbled in the since that I can now choose to be a little more patient when people tend to like songs, books, or movies that I find stupid.

I hope that made sense.

Ramandu

I am sitting here at corner bakery trying to read, but I cant. So I guess I'll blog. As I said in my last blog I love listening to books on tape, or I guess they are called audio books now. Last month the Narnia series was on sale on iTunes for only $9.99! All 7 books unabridged!! I am sad to say that I haven't ever read the entire series. A few years ago I read, "Magicians Nephew"and "The Lion The Witch and The Wardrobe". I have been meaning to read the rest but haven't made the time for it. So now I am listening to the Chronicles of Narnia on my iPhone while I drive. I am up to, “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”, and after leaving circles yesterday I was driving out to the Long Beach area to meet some friends for dinner. I got to the part in the story where they meet Ramandu, the fallen star, and his daughter. When Ramandu tells them that he is a star Eustace says that in his world starts are balls of burning gas. The star responds to this by saying...

“that is what they are made of, not what they are.”

-C. S. Lewis “The Voyage of the Dawn Treader”

I don't know why that struck such a deep cord with me but it did! It stirs something very deep in my heart and mind.It's both thought provoking and beautiful. I guess it made me think of God's intent and purpose for things. How His intentional He is. I suppose that this is the best type of beauty, something that isn't just nice to look at. Something that needs you to dwell on it, something that stirs and challenges you. So I guess you could say that that is the prettiest pretty there is.