Author: terra1719

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New design brewing

“Faith is obedience”, I made this comment and it seemed to get a lot of views in 2 days:

Now, before you stop reading – I don’t believe in works based salvation, that’s not what I was trying to say.

Now for those especially rooted in the doctrines of grace, biblical authority, and the distinction between faith and works, the statement “faith is obedience” may be a bit oversimplified. Here’s some thoughts on the topic.

True faith results in obedience:

  • Faith produces obedience, but it is not the same as obedience.
  • James 2:17 — “ Even so faith, if it hath not works, is dead, being alone.” KJV
  • John 14:15 — “If ye love me, keep my commandments.” KJV
  • Ephesians 2:8-10 — Yes, I know people like to quote verses 8 and sometimes 9, but keep going to verse 10.
    • “8 For by grace are ye saved through faith; and that not of yourselves: it is the gift of God:
    • 9 Not of works, lest any man should boast.
    • 10 For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them.” KJV
  • We are saved by grace through faith, but we are saved unto good works (we should walk in them, be doing them).

Obedience is evidence of saving faith:

  • A person who truly believes in Christ will be transformed and will walk in obedience to God’s Word.
  • Obedience follows faith as the fruit follows the root.

Faith itself is a response to God:

  • In that sense, believing God is obeying His call to trust in Christ (Romans 10:16 — “But they have not all obeyed the gospel…”).

Now, I understand, if “faith is obedience” implies that faith = doing good works or obeying commandments, that would blur the gospel and resemble legalism. I may have been hasty in posting. In Romans 4:5 — “ But to him that worketh not, but believeth on him that justifieth the ungodly, his faith is counted for righteousness.” KJV. Faith is often described as the empty hand that receives the gift of grace—not a meritorious act.

Are these some better phrases?

“True faith obeys.”
Or: “Faith is the root, obedience is the fruit.”
Or: “Obedience flows from faith, but faith is not identical to obedience.”

What I was trying to describe faith not as mere intellectual agreement, but as a trusting action—a commitment that manifests in what you actually do. And that is Biblical:

Jesus said in John 3:36 (ESV): “Whoever believes in the Son has eternal life; whoever does not obey the Son shall not see life…”

To compare, John 3:36 (KJV) “He that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life: and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life…”

Another comparison, John 3:36 from the Amplified: “ He who believes and trusts in the Son and accepts Him [as Savior] has eternal life [that is, already possesses it]; but he who does not believe the Son and chooses to reject Him, [disobeying Him and denying Him as Savior] will not see [eternal] life,”

Belief and obedience are intertwined.

Hebrews 11 shows that faith always moves people to action:

“By faith Noah… prepared an ark…”
“By faith Abraham… obeyed…”
“By faith Moses… refused to be called the son of Pharaoh’s daughter…”
Faith doesn’t sit still—it acts in obedience.

As mentioned, I want to be very cautious about collapsing faith and obedience into the same category because:

  • Faith is how we’re justified (Romans 5:1: “Being justified by faith…”).
  • Obedience is the result of justification, not the cause (Titus 3:5).

So by saying “faith is obedience”, some may think I’m implying faith = works, which I wasn’t trying to say. But, I didn’t explain any further either.

Last thoughts.

Here are some ways to preserve the original simple post I made while staying in bounds theologically:

  1. “Faith is obedient trust.”
    • This fits well with Hebrews 11.
  2. “Faith is not faith unless it obeys.”
    • This echoes James 2.
  3. “Faith and obedience are two sides of the same coin.” (I’ve heard this before, just not sure where.)
    • The trust is the obedience in that specific action, without being reducible to law-keeping.
  4. “To have faith in Christ is to obey His command to believe.”
    • See Acts 17:30 — “God commands all men everywhere to repent.”

I’ll think on the idea for a design next.

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Brother Ray Story – Part 3

At the end of part 2 we had a sharp looking shirt, but I didn’t like the overall balance. Over the next couple of days I kicked around some designs. Two things I noticed while working on the overall layout was that GODS needed to the GOD’s and the lettering was not a match for the original patch.

In the original patch, the letters in GOSPEL are larger than the other letters.

But in the last design, all the letters were the same size.

So, it took a bit (ok a lot) in Kittl to get it looking good and lined up, but eventually I got it like this, which looks much closer to the original.

After several options for where to place the extra words Ray asked for I send this design to Ray:

I like it, but I still felt it wasn’t as balanced as it could be. Maybe I’m not using the right word, but it still didn’t look complete yet.

I duplicated the white patch, inverted it, and placed it behind the patch. That was it. That was the missing piece!

Ray said, “I love it & think it might make U good seller.”

I said, “it’s your design, I don’t want to sell it – that wasn’t the point” It was supposed to be more like a birthday present for him.

Ray said, “I want the message being seen. SELL it!”

That’s how we now have this design for sale in 4 types of shirts.

https://patriotprayertees.com/product-tag/gospel

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Brother Ray Story Part 2

This is more of the story. I thought the next steps were to clean up the lettering, but Brother Ray had a different idea.

In reaction to the 1st design he said, “WOW! I would put the believe & receive or doubt & do without under it.”

Then we started going back and forth. I sent:

He said, “No way, is my opinion. Difficult to read at a glance. For me the clearer the better.”

Then I sent this version:

He said: “More like that.”

Then I starting thinking of how those small letters would be against different colors, so I added a white outline.

Ray said, “This is not ez at all glance.”

Then I tried:

He didn’t like that either.

So, I thought what I need to control how that text presents is a shape behind it. After some more back and forth, we came up to this design:

Now the background (shirt) color is more flexible.

Ray said, “Now we R cooking with gas.”

I also send him a mock up on red. Red might be the exception, doesn’t do well with red shirt or pink. Ray agreed.

While Ray was happy, I didn’t like the overall shape, or the balance. I’m not a graphic designer. Everything is coming from high school art class, which was before the 2000. Let’s just say that. It was a long time ago. Since, I’ve read some articles on design and art, but still drawing a lot from high school for these shirts. Anyway, the flow or balance, whatever it is called, didn’t sit well with me. So, this isn’t the end of the story or the shirt.

I’m off to a birthday party, so the rest of the story will have to wait until very late today or tomorrow.

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Brother Ray Story – Part 1

This is a story leading up to a new shirt. Brother Ray and his wife are bold and outgoing witnesses for Christ.

He texted me a clothing patch for leather jackets and vests he’s been handing out at motorcycle ministry events for may decades.

I said something like, wow that would make a nice t-shirt!

He said, “I designed that N 1991. It would make a great Tee.”

After some more back and forth, I told him I had to go to work (this was all before 8AM one day).

Later that day, I get home from work, have dinner and send him a quick mock up (I really didn’t like how the letters linked up in this version). My 1st offer to him was to send him and his wife copies of the shirt without listing them for sale.

That’s the 1st part of the story.

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Re-markable Shirt Idea

[Update: We tried it with three shirts and Chalky Crown markers and it didn’t wash out enough.]

How about a shirt that is more like a whiteboard and people write a new message after every wash? How about using the DIGISOFT®’s smooth slick surface for a large writing area. Then include a package of pens from either: Chalk Ink, Crafty Croc, and Marvy Uchida Bistro chalk markers.

Has anyone seen this done before? I hope I’m not copying from someone else, but the idea seems familiar from say the 1990s.

Here’s a mock up as it would be ordered:

Here’s a message written on the shirt, again a mock up:

Here’s one brand of the pens needed:

Open to feedback and ideas!

Thanks!

-PPTs

Update 6/6/2025

We’re going to give this a try. Here’s the shirts I made and ordered as well as ordering the markers from above. Stay tuned for the results. I plan to use put this through several uses and washes.

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Behind the Scenes

Site Updates – Progress & SEO Tweaks

Over the past two days, I’ve made some solid progress on the website:

  • About 33% of the shirt listings have been updated so far.
  • Made two design modifications to the “Is This a Table Jesus Would Flip?” shirts.
  • To ensure everything is current and set up properly for future sales, I deleted the original product listings and re-created them from scratch.

On the back end, I also focused on SEO improvements — updating keywords, meta descriptions, and more. I used ChatGPT to help review pages and generate optimized content suggestions.

More updates to come as I keep working through the catalog!

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Website Work for the Weekend

It’s only boring until something breaks—then it’s an emergency.
That’s why I try to stay ahead of the problems, even if it means spending time on the “boring” stuff. (Apologies if this kind of work isn’t boring to you.)

Here’s what I tackled on the website this weekend:

🔒 Backed up the site (finally!)
For the first 5 weeks, there was no backup running—yikes. That’s fixed now. I installed a well-reviewed plugin and set it to store backups in a trusted, secure cloud service.
👉 It’s a static file backup (not a live mirror site), but that’s all I need right now.

📱 Updated menus for easier browsing
I reworked the product menus to reflect categories and tags more clearly. Now, when someone taps “Products” on their phone, they can jump straight to “Dandelion Faith” or “Classic Tees” without extra clicks.
This took some trial and error—and a few help docs—but it’s much more intuitive now.

🏠 Tweaked the homepage layout
I changed the order of sections on the homepage:

  1. Product categories
  2. A small quote
  3. Featured products
  4. The image with three quotes (this used to be at the top)

It looked fine on desktop, but on mobile, it just wasn’t working. After looking at how other t-shirt sites do things, I made the change—and I like it a lot more now.

🛠️ Other small fixes too, but those were the big ones.
Bit by bit, it’s coming together—and ideally, no emergencies in sight.

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Social Waters Plan

I asked some AI tools how to better schedule my social media posts—mainly so I wouldn’t come across like a spammy bot.

Here’s the plan they gave me. I probably won’t follow it to the letter, but it’s a solid guide for the types of posts I can create and when to share them. Also, when I looked at accounts on Threads that receive thousands of likes and replies to a single post, they seem to follow the below patterns as well.

🗓 7-Day Brand Voice Content Plan for PatriotPrayerTees.com

Each post has:

  • A type
  • A purpose
  • A caption you can copy/paste or tweak

Day 1: “Mission Monday”

Post Type: Brand Story / Behind-the-Scenes
Goal: Humanize your mission and connect emotionally
Caption:

I didn’t start this brand because I love t-shirts—I started it because I love freedom. I believe in honoring God, country, and those who sacrifice to protect both. This is just the beginning.

Would love to hear—what does freedom mean to you?
#PatriotPrayer #FaithAndFreedom

Day 2: “Testimony Tuesday”

Post Type: Real story (yours or someone else’s—can be brief!)
Goal: Build emotional trust and inspire
Caption:

“When I was at my lowest, I didn’t need a slogan—I needed prayer.”

That line inspired one of our designs. We’re not just printing messages—we’re wearing reminders.

🙏 Tag someone who’s held you up in prayer.
#FaithOverFear #PatriotPrayerTees

Day 3: “Wisdom Wednesday”

Post Type: Quote graphic
Goal: Share a value-rich post that can get saved/shared
Caption:

“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.” – Abraham Lincoln

#LibertyMatters #WordsThatMatter #FaithAndFreedom

Day 4: “Throwback Thursday”

Post Type: American history or founding father feature
Goal: Root the brand in deeper meaning
Caption:

1774: The First Continental Congress opened with 2 hours of prayer.

Before the battles, before the constitution—they prayed.

That’s the kind of foundation worth remembering.
#ThrowbackThursday #AmericanFaith #PatriotPrayerTees

Day 5: “Freedom Friday”

Post Type: Shirt spotlight
Goal: Direct attention to one product
Caption:

FREEDOM FRIDAY

This design’s been getting some love this week, and we get why.

🔥 Link in bio → [Insert product title]

Tell us: would you rock this in red, navy, or black?
#FreedomFriday #PatriotPrayerStyle

Day 6: “Shoutout Saturday”

Post Type: Highlight a supporter, idea from a comment, or DM
Goal: Build a sense of community
Caption:

Big shoutout to [first name] who said this about one of our tees:
“This shirt feels like what I’d wear to a family cookout and to church.”

🔥 You get it.

Got a favorite shirt idea? Drop it below—we love creating from real voices.
#PatriotPrayerCrew

Day 7: “Scripture Sunday”

Post Type: Bible verse with meaning or shirt tie-in
Goal: Ground your audience in faith and shared belief
Caption:

📖 “Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord.” – Psalm 33:12

That’s not just a verse—it’s a mission statement.

May we keep praying, keep speaking truth, and never be ashamed of either.
#ScriptureSunday #FaithAndCountry #PatriotPrayerTees