Month: April 2016

Biblically Speaking – Warning for Those Committing Abomination

Published on by Amanda Tero2 Comments
Part 21 in my study on what is abomination in the sight of God.
Recap:
Many believers have fallen into accepting that which is abomination in the sight of God. Unless we study God’s Word to learn His Mind on what is abominable, how will we know to purge ourselves from abomination? Lord willing, I will be posting the fruits of my study on the word “abomination,” but feel free to leap ahead of me and study it for yourself. What is an abomination to God?

 Warning for Those Committing Abominations
Jeremiah 7:9-11
9 Will ye steal, murder, and commit adultery, and swear falsely, and burn incense unto Baal, and walk after other gods whom ye know not;
10 And come and stand before me in this house, which is called by my name, and say, We are delivered to do all these abominations?
11 Is this house, which is called by my name, become a den of robbers in your eyes? Behold, even I have seen it, saith the Lord.
God does not take lightly to those who claim to be followers of Him living and accepting a lifestyle which He clearly defines as abominable. I am afraid that many people today have the same mindset as in Jeremiah’s day: “I am saved–I have ‘liberty in Christ’–I can do this.” God’s Word very clearly defines what is right and wrong in His eyes. He also says, “Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness; that put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter!” (Isaiah 5:20) Instead of accepting what is said to be “good” or “evil,” we need to open our hearts to God’s Word and search His Wisdom on what is truly good or evil–and live in accordance to His Word on the issue.
Jeremiah 13:27 – I have seen thine adulteries, and thy neighings, the lewdness of thy whoredom, and thine abominations on the hills in the fields. Woe unto thee, O Jerusalem! wilt thou not be made clean? when shall it once be?
Continuing the warning, God reminds us that He sees it all. We can live an outwardly upright lifestyle but if we harbor any of these abominations in our hearts (and our unrepentant attitude), God sees and He will judge, as He is pure and just.
Ezekiel 7:3-4 – Now is the end come upon thee, and I will send mine anger upon thee, and will judge thee according to thy ways, and will recompense upon thee all thine abominations.  And mine eye shall not spare thee, neither will I have pity: but I will recompense thy ways upon thee, and thine abominations shall be in the midst of thee: and ye shall know that I am the Lord.

Scripture Design from Scratch | Graphics Design

Published on by Amanda Tero3 Comments
A few weeks ago, you may have seen this Scripture graphics design.
When I did it, I decided to screenshot the process so I could share with you–and hopefully you can get some ideas to do your own Scripture designs.
The program I used was Photoshop Elements 10.
First, I create a 4×4″ blank file (resolution at 500 pixels). Then, I dragged an image I had onto it.
I like to use random images for my background–they give creative textures. For this one, I went to Filter>Gaussian Blur.
I did a serious blur on this (106.8 pixels).
Next step: I copied the verse and pasted it onto the file.
I “took apart” the verse, enlarging the key words of the verse. This gave me a lot of text layers to work with.
This next step could have been done before or after, but I did it now. I had gotten a color palette idea from Pinterest. I don’t usually do this, but I wanted something different than my “earth tones” that I default to.
With my color grabber, I selected the purple.
Copying this purple color to my working page, I then grabbed the color replacement took (right click your paintbrush).
Selecting my background layer (lower right corner where it says “Layer 1”), I colored over the background this purple color.
Going back to the color palette, I chose some colors for text. The first color: orange.
I put all of my key words in font Windsong and changed the font color of those words to orange.
Second font color: green.
As you can see, I decided to swap my font colors. 🙂 Green was a better key-word font and orange for the smaller words, in my opinion.
I didn’t want the background quite so bold, so I lowered the opacity of the background to 70% (lower left corner).
Right-clicking the fonts, I decided to add a drop shadow to make it pop from the background.
The only change I made was bringing the size up to 10 (from 5). I did this with all of the text.
Changed my reference color (whoops — forgot about that earlier).
Began tweaking the placement of all of the text.
Decided for the simple text to be in italics (Times New Roman font).
More placement tweaking.
And then I decided that the orange was a little too bright for my preference, so I dragged the color down to have a little more peachy-grey tones.
Added my blog site and voila! Here you have it.
Have you ever designed a Scripture graphics? Is it online somewhere that I can see it? If so, leave a link in the comment and I’ll check it out!
If you’ve not done one, and you have a program to DO one, here’s your assignment for next week: find a verse and create a graphics! (simple ;))

Playing the Part | Book Review

Published on by Amanda TeroLeave a comment

About the Book

Lucetta Plum is an actress on the rise in New York City, but is forced to abandon her starring role when a fan’s interest turns threatening. Lucetta’s widowed friend, Abigail Hart, is delighted at the opportunity to meddle in Lucetta’s life and promptly whisks her away to her grandson’s estate to hide out.

Bram Haverstein may appear to simply be a somewhat eccentric gentleman of means, but a mysterious career and a secret fascination with a certain actress mean there’s much more to him than society knows.

Lucetta, who has no interest in Abigail’s matchmaking machinations, has the best intentions of remaining cordial but coolly distant to Bram. But when she can’t ignore the strange and mysterious things going on in his house, it’ll take more than good intentions to keep her from trying to discover who Bram is behind the part he plays.

My Review
3.5 stars

Lucetta is a famous actress…but she is not on stage for almost the entire book as a sudden threat enters the scene in the first chapter. Abigail is certain that her grandson’s castle is the fortress to protect Lucetta, but the day she arrives, Lucetta is almost killed several times. Is the castle truly going to keep her safe?

What I liked:
The style so had me laughing! Mrs. Turano certainly has a gift when it comes to witty scenes and just making them humorous. The story kept a steady pace moving forward.

What I didn’t like:
There were a few things that could have been left out–like the description of Lucetta’s clothing when she was running from the goat. The scene would have been complete without drawing our minds to how her dress slipped when she wasn’t paying attention. Also, I can hardly consider this a Christian book, according to my standard. God was mentioned 3-4 times and then it was only in passing or a character realizing that their relationship with God wasn’t as it should be. No continuing spiritual theme could be seen in this book.

It’s not a book that I WOULDN’T recommend…it was indeed enjoyable. I just don’t wholeheartedly endorse it as a spiritually edifying book.

*I received this book from LitFuse in exchange for my honest review*

Purchase a copy: http://bit.ly/1RQM4QD

About the author:


Jen Turano, author of the Ladies of Distinction series and the A Class of Their Own series, is a graduate of the University of Akron. She is a member of ACFW and lives in a suburb of Denver, Colorado.

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