Bringing the Bible to Life through Creativity with Shanna Noel

Foreign. Hey there. Welcome to the Collide Podcast.

This is Willow Weston, and I bet you love if you hop on here, I bet you love hearing stories of how God gets a hold of people's lives and changes them and transforms them and gives them hope and purpose. And today's guest is absolutely no different Shanna Noel, which. I love that name. Shanna Noel. My daughter's middle name's Noel, so that helps.

But Shanna is the founder of Illustrated Faith, and it's this company that she accidentally kind of started about 10 years ago.

And she shares in this interview how God met her in a really tough time of life and drew her to him in a way that then sort of turned into this movement of sorts. And she is being used to help so many people grow in their faith. And I think this story will inspire you. So check it out.

Shanna, it's so good to have you on the podcast today.

Thank you so much, Willow. I love being here and I'm so excited to talk to you today.

Me too.

Well, I loved that I got to meet you at our conference that we just had in Portland, and I was excited to spend more time with you today and see your face. Unfortunately, I can't see your face, but you can see mine, so this is like, such a funny conversation.

I know, I know, but you're so cute. And by the way, the conference was absolutely life giving. I'm so glad.

I kind of spontaneously went down after you had reached out, and I was like, she's having a conference like two hours south of me. So I was so glad to be able to pop in, and it was so beautiful. You did an amazing job.

Oh, I'm so glad you came. It was a big leap for us.

We've only done conferences in Washington, and so that was our first one in Oregon, and God showed up and did amazing things. So I'm glad you were a part of it for sure.

I've been stalking you a little bit, just reading up on your life and what you're up to, and I would love for you to kind of rewind the clock a little bit. I mean, your doing amazing things for God and all of this sounds like it was really unexpected.

Can you sort of take us back to what happened that sort of sparked this movement that you are now being used to inspire so many women to grow in their faith in such a beautiful and creative way?

Absolutely. Would love to. And I agree. It was absolutely unexpected on my half as well.

So.

So I met my husband. I'll just go right back to the beginning. I met my husband when we were both in high school and I did not go to church.

And so his little way of inviting me on a date was like, hey, do you want to go to church? And so we really. Yes, yes. Very romantic, I know, but it was very sweet.

And I became a baby Christian at 16, and Jonathan and I started dating and courting, and we got married very young.

I got to know Jesus and fell in love with him and accepted the Lord into my heart shortly thereafter after I was first introduced to him as a teenager. And then Jonathan and I got married later. And right after we got married, Jonathan felt really called into ministry.

And I was, hello, a brand new baby Christian. And my husband now was being called into, you know, go into ministry school.

And so it was a lot kind of all at once of learning about Jesus, falling in love with him, and learning how to support my husband and what he was going through.

And I just, I think, honestly, Willow, at the time, I was kind of putting on the clothes of what I thought it looked like to be a Christian and to be a Christian wife and to be someone who was going. Jonathan was going into ministry to be his wife.

And I think it was just kind of going through the motions without really understanding the beautiful relationship that we are invited to through Christ. And even though I did know Jesus, I didn't realize the extent of that invitation. And so I kind of walked the walk right like he went into ministry.

And I felt like I needed to know certain things to be a pastor's wife at that time.

And I think I really missed out on the opportunity of just falling in love in that relationship that we are able just to come as we are and show up as we are and say, I don't know the answers to all the questions and I want to learn. And so it wasn't until several years later when Jonathan, who later went on to be in the military, was deployed.

And it was the first time I had two little kids at the time. It was the first time that I was kind of needing to walk in my faith on my own. I didn't have him as that.

My husband, honestly, I would use as a crutch in my relationship with Christ because I would go to him and he would know the answers and I wouldn't have to go to Jesus in my mind. I would just go to him and he would teach me. But I needed to go to Jesus directly and ask him some of those hard questions.

And when Jonathan was deployed, it was that opportunity to do so.

And during that time is when I really started to fall in love with this idea of documenting that journey and documenting my faith and writing these questions I'm having out and journaling in the margins of my Bible as I was learning.

And so through that process, I started to share, because I was in kind of like an online community where we did scrapbooking and would share those things online. And I was kind of taking that same art, but using it in a different way of documenting what I was learning through Jesus.

And as I began to share that, it just lit something in other people's hearts as well. And they were like, wait a minute, are we doing this? Like, are we gonna doodle in the margins of our Bible and document our faith in this way?

It kind of just lit something, I think, in some people's hearts that were around me or online at that time. And from there, we just began to do that. We stepped one step in front of the other.

And I was really excited to see what God had invited me into through this creative pursuit, because I had always really struggled to read the Bible and understand it. And I think I'm just someone who's kind of a visual learner, which can be tricky with the Bible. Right.

And so this was just a beautiful tool that I was able to use and drawing closer to Jesus and sharing that with others.

For people listening, they don't maybe realize you're the founder of Illustrated Faith, and, you know, you're talking about sort of doodling and scrapbooking and stuff and working out your faith, doing that. I don't know if listeners really understand the scope of what you've begun to create. So can you let us in a little bit on that?

Yeah. At the time when we started doing this over Illustrate Faith as A company is 10 years old, but I was doing this for a couple years before that.

There just wasn't a lot of people sharing their faith in this creative way at the time. And even I'm sure there are plenty of people doodling in the margins of their Bible, but it wasn't something that a lot of people were talking about.

And we didn't have illustrated Bibles like we do now. We didn't have Bibles specifically set up for this. So what I used was a Bible that had margins.

That was, for a lot of times, pastors or speakers to write their notes in the margins of their Bibles. And I remember on Pinterest one day, I saw this very old Bible, and it just was highlighted and had prayers tucked in the pages.

And honestly, it was Falling apart. It was, you know, just. You could tell this Bible had been dearly loved. And it said, a Bible that is falling apart belongs to someone who isn't.

And I just loved that. And something in that was like, I am falling apart. I want my Bible that had before kind of just sat there on my nightstand.

And maybe I would bring it to church on Sundays and flip through it sometimes.

I want it to be something that was an everyday resource, a place that I went to in my deepest sorrows and my greatest joys, and that's what it became through this.

And so at the time, I think that just by sharing that, it just lit something in people, because, again, there wasn't a lot of people sharing this idea of illustrating your faith or documenting your faith in that way. And I know that now it kind of is more common, especially amongst Christians.

But honestly, Willow, at the time, some people got a little upset with me for doing that, and so it was an interesting journey as well. Yeah, yeah. They were like, you're really not supposed to do that to your Bible, just so you know, Shanna.

So you really have this gift of creating a space where people can illustrate their faith who might not have that same gift.

Like, I might enjoy coloring in the lines of something you give me, but I don't necessarily feel like I can open up my Bible and start doodling pretty things. So how cool has that been for you to create things that other people maybe don't feel so creative, but they enjoy the creativity.

They enjoy how it brings the Word to life. What's that been like for you to see how it's helping women?

Oh, it's so much fun. Honestly, Willow, since day one, God was like, this is not just for you.

This is for you to bring women alongside you to tell their story, to help, you know, to partner with them. And so if you look at my Bible, it's not me doodling. It's not me drawing or illustrating. I'm not like an illustrator.

We create tools to help women document their faith.

Even if they can't draw a lion in the margins of their Bible, they can use the tools that we give them, which we have created devotionals every month, and then we give them products like stickers and stamps and things like that just to help them kind of illustrate their prayers and their lessons and the things that God's teaching them right there on the pages of their Bible or a workbook or a journal. It doesn't. Bible journaling, to me, doesn't need to take place in a Bible. It can take place anywhere. Anywhere.

And so we just create tools to help them do that. I know there's plenty of, you know, coloring books or coloring Bibles where you can color things in the margins. And I think that is beautiful, too.

It is a little bit different because you're not necessarily documenting your prayers and your reflections and the lessons that God's teaching you, your testimony. You're expressing your faith and your creativity in a different way, but you're coloring in the lines that were already there.

Whereas illustrated faith is kind of helping you to create the lines and tell your story, too.

I love it. You share that. You are extremely nervous to kind of share your ideas in this new form of worship with the world.

Take us back to that, because I think there's a lot of women listening to your story right now who maybe God's put an idea on their heart or given them a gift, and they're really afraid to take that leap of faith and put themselves out there in a way that feels very exposing and feels like you could fail. So what's your advice for the people listening who are in that space?

Yes, I think anything that we do on our own can be extremely scary. But when we partner with God, there is just such a relief of trust and faith that we can walk into. And that doesn't mean that we can do it.

Thinking, okay, everything's going to always work out exactly how we planned. Obviously, it's always going to be God's plan.

But there is just this expectation off your shoulders of knowing that you're walking alongside God's journey and God's path and what he's asking you to do.

If you were like, hey, Shanna, I think that you should create a business where you teach women to, like, color in the margins of their Bible and write little notes, I'd be like, okay, I'm not sure that that's going to go anywhere. And never would have dreamt what illustrated faith has become for myself.

And that is kind of the beauty of it is I know it's all God because I wouldn't have dreamt it myself. And I know that God led us here.

I went to a conference to speak on a panel about influence, as illustrated faith kind of started taking off before it was even illustrated faith. It was just this idea of Bible journaling. And I was asked to come speak about influence.

And everyone after that conference had come up to me and said, are you doing this full time? And I was like, no one is paying me to write my prayers down. No.

So the idea of it becoming a business had never even occurred to me, but God just kept leading me down that path. So I would just encourage women to absolutely walk in prayer and be obedient to the places that God is asking you to step into.

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It's so interesting to me because you earlier described yourself, I mean, you're invited.

I don't know if it was a test or what, but your, you know, boyfriend in high school invited you to church and you went with him and you end up giving your life to Christ. But you sort of describe yourself as you're putting on clothes to look a certain way to look like what you thought it looked like to be Jesus.

Then years later, you're married, he's deployed, and you said you kind of relied on him in your faith. And so here you are getting asked to speak at conferences as a woman who's having influence.

I mean, you just described yourself as someone who doubted that your faith even stood on its own almost.

So what's it like for you to see your own personal transformation go from a place of I rely too much on someone else or my faith to like, now I'm a woman who influences other people in their faith.

Unbelievable. And again, it just goes back to the moment that I really started connecting with Jesus.

I remember that fire that was lit in me and the new life that he had given me and the passion and the heart that he had given me. I did not have a desire to lead women or to share with women what I was doing. But it's all God. And that's what happens when we rely on God.

And what happens when we listen to his direction is he will give us gifts and tools to lead us into places that we never dreamt for ourselves. And so yeah, I never could have gotten where I am today if I was still in that place of the clothes that I thought I was supposed to wear.

I needed to shed those clothes.

I needed to go back to the original design of who God created me to be, who I did not even know yet or could not believe for myself and walk in those steps.

And it wasn't until I was willing to do so that I would be able to live fully into this, which every day I'm still like, I'm sure a lot like you will, like, how do I get to do this? This is so fun.

Totally. So talk to us a bit about that.

Obviously, at collide, we're always talking about, like, the more you collide with Jesus, the more you experience his healing and his hope and his transformation and his purpose. But here your husband's deployed, so this person that you relied on in your faith, he's gone. You're holding down the fort. You're a parent.

What do you think it was that made you really grow in your faith and collide with Jesus? Do you think it was loneliness? Do you think it was a hunger?

What was happening in you that was making you really, like, turn to God and have it no longer be about the image you were putting on, but more about truly connecting with Him?

I definitely think it was a hunger. And also, I think as a creative, I am someone who really desires to be authentic.

So the fact that I was kind of living in that authentic way, inauthentic place of not truly connecting with Jesus in the way that I did desire to, I think it was just that hunger. And also I had these two little girls at the time that were looking to me, and now they're asking me the questions that they used to ask their dad.

And I'm needing to guide them through a lonely time of, you know, their father is gone, my husband's gone, it's just the three of us. I need to anchor myself in some truth, and I need to anchor myself in knowing who Jesus is so I can share with them who he is.

And I wasn't going to be able to do that by faking my way through it. I needed to get real with myself and get real with Jesus and connect with them in a way that I didn't know even that I had access to before.

I love that because you let your hunger lead you to go eat. Like, eat from the Lord instead of going and taking that hunger. And you could have turned to a million other places like you.

You let the loneliness drive you to Jesus rather than, like, seeking to fill it with something else. And then he met you in that in such a special way and has purposed it. Did your husband come home from deployment and say, who are you?

Where'd my wife go?

Yeah, I'm sure he did. I mean, to be honest, I was never even fully honest with him or myself in how much I was Using him as a crutch.

And so he did come back and see a new life in me, a new light in me and a new direction. And he was more just excited by, was contagious for him as well.

You know, he came back and wasn't necessarily at the highest place he had ever been in his faith and his walk.

And he needed me to come alongside and partner with him and pray with him in ways I maybe wouldn't have before because, you know, a year away from your family, that can be absolutely hard. And so he came back and needed to have a time of healing and restor himself.

And so I can't imagine if I was still at a place where I needed to rely on him so much. But I was able to partner with him not only in my own faith, but to pray with him and to help with our children and family.

And so I know that the Lord used that.

He was so purposeful in the timing of all that and was able to help our family just step one, one step closer to him each day after he had come home too.

So do you guys live this life where he is still being deployed and coming, you know, leaving and coming back and is that a regular rhythm for you guys even still?

No, he has not deployed since and so. But he, he was in ministry for a while after he came home and then now he does ministry, but he does it on his own.

He has a non profit and runs a coffee shop as well, so. But we're both very much involved in ministry in our own ways, so that's really neat.

I never thought, I kind of thought he would be the person in ministry, but it's really amazing just to see what God does when again, when we fully rely on him and just walk in that design.

Totally. I love it. You are a mom of two daughters and so I'd love for you to share.

As they're growing up and navigating the world and figuring out their own faith, how are you incorporating sort of creativity and, you know, what you've learned into the conversations you're having with your daughters about Jesus?

It's been so beautiful to watch, especially with Addison, who's 18. She's really embraced this idea of creativity.

In a similar way, our older daughter Jadyn, who's 22, is very much into theater and that sort of creativity.

But Addison has used faith and journaling and combining those two in a way that I love to get to witness because I didn't have access to that when I was her age. And just seeing how she uses it as a tool not only in her own life, but she shares it with those around her.

And getting to watch her fill our art studio with a ton of girls her age on a Friday night who are Bible journaling their faith is absolutely so much fun.

They all come in here and are so cute and are so excited to document what God is doing in their life and, and it's just almost like healing for me too, to see.

Like, this is so amazing that these, you know, 16, 17, 18 year old girls have access to this way of connecting with God that they are celebrating and that they are using to be able to tell their testimony. And I think that's such an amazing gift at their age.

Hmm, that's very cool. Can you sort of break that down a little bit because we can't be in the room with you.

I mean, is there an example of like a way that you've heard a teenager spend time with some of the stuff you've made for Illustrated Faith and how they are sharing their story? Like, can you tell us a story about a teenager and the impact this is having?

Yeah, absolutely.

So my daughter Addison had introduced one of her friends to journaling, faith journaling in this way last summer before she went on a road trip and she gave her all the supplies. And then that young lady took her journal and all these supplies on this road trip that she went on with some peers.

And during that trip, this young lady had encountered an accident where she was kind of stuck back behind from her peers and not able to join in on the adventures.

But instead of watching TV or being on TikTok or anything like that, she got out her journal, she got out the supplies that Addison had given her and she had documented what God was doing in her life and shared that via her access, which was on Instagram and social media with those that were seeing that she had gone through an accident and was using that accident and this time down to spend time with God. And it was just beautiful to see because she came back with this journal full of this beautiful testimony about what God had done on this time away.

And it really touched my heart that how quickly Allison was able to kind of link her up with this tool and then how quickly God used it to, to ignite her heart for him in a way that maybe she hadn't before. And it was really beautiful.

It's so interesting because you talk about that time where your husband was deployed and how that really caused you like the pain, the hunger, the loneliness, like caused you to move toward Jesus and Now you're talking about all this work that he's helped you create that's helping kids and women, women, teens. But, you know, this example of this teenager who experienced pain and something hard, and it's helped her to move towards Jesus. I love that so much.

I think there's so many opportunities in life to get distracted, to feel angry, to doubt God's reality, to feel like, why aren't you here for me? Why didn't you answer my prayers? Just this kind of, like, moving away from the Lord, and you're talking today.

You keep bringing this idea of moving towards him, which is so cool. I love it so much.

It's really neat to see how God uses those times that we feel so lonely or we feel so much pain, and he just draws us closer. Of course, he's there all along. Right? But the way he uses those times in which our heart is hurting is really beautiful.

And the great thing about faith, journaling and illustrating your faith, is having that testimony to look back on time and time again of what God does in those moments.

Do you do that? I have to say, I hardly ever do that. Every once in a while, I'll look back at my prayer journal.

I write a lot to the Lord, my prayers, but I hardly ever look back at them. Do you go back and look at these journals that you're making, and are you reminded of what God's done in your life?

Oh, yeah. I can't help but to. To be honest. I mean, we have. I have all my Bibles and journals here, and so they're there.

And whether I'm flipping through them myself or one of my friends wants to look through them, it's a constant reminder for me. But this is something that's really important to me.

And because it's told in a visual way, I think that kind of entices me to want to go look back where I think one of the beautiful things about journaling is just all the wonderful ways that you can write out all those prayers and hopes, and it kind of allows you to have almost like a brain dump in a sense. Right. But adding that visual element just tells for me a story in a different way. And so I like to go back and look sometimes.

It's not something that I'm constantly doing, but it is certainly a tool that I use not only in my own reflection, but also just in seeing. Okay, I'm in Genesis 2 today. This is what I'm learning. This is what my pastor taught me. This is why I understood in my Bible study This morning.

Well, let me pull up my Bible from three years ago and see what I wrote in that. And so that's kind of the difference, I think, too, is that we have.

It's not a journal that you just turn the page and you never go back to because it's connected to the Bible. You're going back to those scriptures time and time again.

Yeah.

I could see where that would be more motivating to go backwards and look, because you're actually sort of walking through something that has visual images versus I would be thumbing through pages and pages of words. But you often talk about capturing the little details you want to remember in 10 years. What is that like? Why is that a thing for you?

And what do you want to remember in 10 years from right now?

That's a great question. I think that God does a lot of work in between the big events. And one of the things that we talk about at Illustrated Faith is the Art of Noticing.

It was one of our devotionals by my friend Mary this past October. And I think that we always need to have our hearts and eyes up to the details that God is working in and around our lives.

And so by taking the time to notice those small details, I believe that they're beautiful, and it's part of the testimony.

It's really easy for me to tell you about when my husband was deployed and the heartache and all the work that God did there, but having those moments in between of, you know, dropping my kids off at the bus and the conversations that God and I had in the car on the way home, those are the moments that lead up to the testimony that maybe has the flashier ending story. Right. And so having the trail to those stories, I think, is a beautiful thing as well.

And so what God is teaching me in this moment right now is to be in the wait and what he does in the wait.

I've been a mom since I was 21, and of course, we'll always be a mom, but my kids are 18 and 22, and so we are entering into a new season that we just aren't sure what it looks like right as they grow up. And Jaden lives in Seattle, so she lives out of the house. And Addison's looking at what the fall looks like for her.

We're about to enter into a chapter where maybe we don't have little ones at home anymore.

And I'm just in the weight of what God is doing in that time where the areas in which he wants me to step into as a young Mom, I needed so much of the church's ministry to surround me. I needed the childcare, I needed, you know, the moment support groups.

And now, as I enter into this next chapter, is asking which areas can I serve in and how is God going to use this next chapter in my life? And so just really having my ear to him, my heart to him, about what this next season looks like is really important to me right now.

Yeah, it's crazy the amount of seasons a mom goes through over time. Right. I mean, my kids are similar ages to yours.

And I think back, back to, you know, the bringing my baby home to the hospital and you're in the, you know, no sleep, slash, breastfeeding, slash, oh, my gosh, my life is no longer my own season. But I mean, there's so many different seasons along the way. And I love that you're inviting us into the art of noticing.

You know, even when I go back and I think about being at home as a stay at home mom for eight years, and, you know, there were so many days where I think I really hoped my husband would get home. And I was tired and I needed backup and I wanted the day to hurry by so that I could have that backup.

And I wish I would have spent more time noticing, you know, really noticing with my kids the rainbow in the sky or the splash of the mud puddle when we went outside and jumped in the puddles, or how fun it is to make cookies and roll them into balls with their little hands, or, you know what I mean? Because now, and I don't know if you feel this way, it's gone by in a flash and here we are.

And a lot of what I could have noticed is, like, in the past, and I don't remember so much of it, so I wish I could capture it. So I love that you are practicing noticing on a regular basis so that you can hold on to some of that as time progresses.

And it's something that I think that your work also helps us do is pay attention to God and how he's showing up in ordinary places.

Yeah. And honestly, Willow, it sounds like you do remember so many of those beautiful things.

It's probably because you journaled many of them or, you know, you're just. You have a beautiful way of explaining, kind of sharing a lens of your life.

And I think that any way in which we can notice those sweet little details that God allows us to is just that glimpse into Eden and to the beautiful things that God puts right in front of us for us to enjoy. I Mean, how beautiful is that?

Totally.

I have one more question I want to ask you before we hop off, and that's what's next for you as far as do you have any new big dreams for Illustrated Faith that you can share, or are you right now truly in a solid waiting period, just waiting and taking notes and watching for the Lord?

I'm always excited and anticipatory about what God is doing with Illustrated Faith. And like I said, we do a monthly devotional kit. So every month is like a new little journey for us.

Right now we are talking all about friendship and what a beautiful friend Jesus is to us, but also the importance of diving into fellowship. And then we have some wonderful kits for the spring. But one of our favorite things is always camp.

And we do summer camp, actually, at Illustrated Faith, which means we, like, camp out in one topic for two months. And this year we're doing the Book of Acts. And I'm so excited to jump into that. It's gonna be so fun.

I'm just like, we as adults should have summer camp too, right?

I love it. I've always wanted a camp name.

Yeah, exactly. Yeah. That'd be perfect, actually, for you.

And so I'm excited just to continue to see, because God atone from day one, that Illustrated Faith is not just about Shanna and, you know, my ideas, and I'm so thankful for that. I love getting to partner with women and hear about what God is doing in their life, and then we get to share that with the community.

So every month we have a different devotional author that comes with what God's doing, and then we get to share that. And it's so beautiful.

I love that, that you're inviting people, other people to the table. It's very cool. Well, I know there's women listening today who wanna check out all that you're up to, all you're.

And the ways that it can help them grow in their faith. So how can they do that?

Yes, I would absolutely love for that to happen. We have a website @supportedfaith.com and then we're on Instagram a lot as a fun way to engage with such a visual topic. And you can find us there.

IllustratedFaith.com And then my personal one is Shanna Noel. shannanoel.com. I'd love to connect with you there, too.

I love it. Thank you so much for hopping on today, Shanna.

Thank you, Willow. Thank you for having me.

Yeah. Friend, our greatest hope around here is that you would keep colliding with Jesus.

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