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Digger Doug’s Underground Rocks by Apologetics PressDigger Doug’s Underground Rocks by Apologetics Press Songs written and performed by Caleb Colley. Digger Doug’s Underground Rocks is not for worship/devotional use. Join Digger Doug and Iguana Don for a rockin’ treat! Digger Doug’s Underground Rocks, a new music CD from Apologetics Press, is a collection of fun songs about science for kids. Twelve original songs...

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Headed to the Office by Glenn ColleyHeaded to the Office by Glenn Colley Spend just thirteen weeks investing in future elders in the body of Christ. This study, great for guys classes or individual study, is designed to make our young men want to be church leaders and to give them practical tools to develop the characteristics of elders listed in Titus 1 and I Timothy 3. Rich in scripture, sound...

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Pure on Purpose by Cindy and Hannah ColleyPure on Purpose by Cindy and Hannah Colley Designed for girls ages 11 and over, their moms and mentors, this series, together with its study guide makes 13 very practical lessons for girls who want to do life God’s way. Topics range from purity of thought to guarding sexual purity. It’s the lessons we’ve prayed about and worked toward for several years. Recommended...

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Amazing Migrating Animals, Designed by God by Caleb ColleyAmazing Migrating Animals, Designed by God by Caleb... For ages 7-9 Parents and Grandparents, get ahead of the game! Your kids can know the answers before their faith in God is challenged. This selection from Apologetics Press' "Advanced Readers" series explains how animal migration demonstrates God's design in nature. The 32-page book includes vivid images, fun descriptions...

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Picking Melons and Mates by Cindy ColleyPicking Melons and Mates by Cindy Colley Here it is! The children's book that's for toddlers and teens about choosing wisely. It's especially about using godly wisdom when it's time to choose a mate for life. The best thing about this book is that it has a three-week Family Bible Time Guide in the back that any parent can easily follow. The first in a Family Bible...

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The Colley House Rss

Happy Valentine’s Day

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 13-02-2012

Category : Bless Your Heart

Tags: ,

Here’s a quick valentine idea for your sweetheart. My daughter did this for her husband and sneaked it into our family valentine box.

  1. Buy a deck of playing cards.
  2. Get some pretty paper.
  3. Write a list of 52 reasons you love (respect) your man.
  4. Print or write (calligraphy is nice) one reason on each of 52 rectangles of pretty paper. Make these rectangles the size to fit on the front of the cards and still have the corner numbers showing on the cards (the “reason” covers the face or the configuration on the card).
  5. Glue the paper rectangles on the cards. You can “Mod-Podge the surface if you want, but that’s optional.
  6. Decorate the front card (which would be the ad card with your photo, little jewels from the hobby store or just the title; “52 Reasons I Love You.”
  7. Punch two holes with a hole-puncher on the left side of each card and put the cards on a couple of office binder rings to make a little book.

It was fun to hear the 52 reasons including “You hold my hand during every prayer,” “You are sweet to old people and they love you,” “Your love of guns makes you wonderfully masculine,” “You are extremely protective of me,” and “You never skip our Bible time.”

It’s so much better than the Hallmark kind of card and it allows lots of room for your own creativity. (Or, I’ve heard you can cheat and find this idea on Pinterest.) Best of all, it’s a great way to show a husband some Ephesians 5 respect.

You’re Singing My Song by Glenn and Cindy Colley

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 02-01-2012

Category : Cindy Colley, Glenn Colley, Published Works

Tags: ,

Looking for a Scripture-based book to put the music back in your marriage? Your good marriage can be better! For couples who want their marriages to meet their maximum potentials for happiness, this scripture-filled practical guidebook is a must-read. Chapters address adultery prevention, finances, intimacy, respect, leadership issues, and more.

Price: $9.95

Twelve Months of the Gift of Romance

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 15-12-2011

Category : Bless Your Heart

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It’s definitely time to be thinking of what to get the husband for Christmas. In fact, I’ve even had a husband or two call to elicit my help in creating a really romantic gift for his wife. Spouse gifts are the scariest because, if you’re really in love with your spouse, there’s more than money invested in the present. There’s emotion in that bag or package or certificate and invested emotion can sometimes mean vulnerability. All in all, simple spousal gift giving can sometimes be anything but.
After the big day is done, the routine re-commences and sometimes the festivities leave a bland aftertaste. In marriage, if we aren’t careful, the wonderful gifts under the Christmas tree can make the other days seem a little anti-climactic. We can even start to wonder why the spouse can’t muster the same enthusiasm for thinking of things that please on all of the “regular” days of the year.
Below is a list of romantic ideas for each month of 2012. Why not resolve this year to keep the romantic creativity alive and well all year round in your marriage? The kindness of Ephesians 4:32, the golden rule of Matthew 7:12 and the forgiving spirit of the bottom of Romans 12 will come easier in marriage if we keep the joy of Proverbs 5:18 alive.

A promise: If you do these things and your husband is a Christian (a faithful follower of the Lord), come next December, your marriage joy meter will have inched on up toward bliss.

January
Buy a box of conversation hearts. Choose appropriate ones and make a message for your husband around his dinner plate.

February
Make a little Valentine box for your kitchen table. Wrap a shoe box in red gift wrap and cut a slit in the top for cards to be placed in the box. Buy a box of kids valentines and when you think of things you appreciate about your husband, jot them on the little cards and drop them in the box. Then on Valentines day, break in over cocoa and cookies!
March
Drop a note and a Hershey’s kiss in your husband’s briefcase or lunch bag or tape it to his steering wheel.
April
Call your house or your husband’s cell phone and leave a message for your husband. Pick a time when you know that he is away from that phone and will soon return to hear the message. Just tell him you’re thinking about him and hope he’s having a good day.

May
Surprise your husband by writing a good morning note on his shaving mirror with a dry erase marker.
June
For Father’s Day, make your husband king for the day. Everyone in the house has to be at his beck and call. Start with coffee or breakfast in bed.
July
Get a sample of an expensive men’s cologne at the Parisian or Dillard’s counter and put a sentimental note along with the sample on his pillow.
August
Pick a favorite hobby. Purchase a small token that pertains to the hobby (an inexpensive fishing lure, a golf ball (signed with love), a pair of thermal socks for hunting, etc…). Place your little gift along with a note in his shoes. The note should say something like, “You are the catch of my lifetime,” or “Think of me when you tee off!” or “From your prize DEAR.” Be creative!
September
Remember the anniversary of your marriage every month. Start this month. On the day of the month that you married, send a greeting card, go out for coffee, give him a coupon for his favorite meal or dessert. Stop at Sonic and share a shake. Celebrate your marriage in some small way every month.
October
Get a copy of something he loves to read, a magazine, a religious periodical or even the TV Guide if absolutely necessary. In the margins and between the lines write little love notes on each page. For example, if the page has a picture of a very nice looking man write, “He is so wimpy compared to you!” If there is an article entitled, “How to Make the Most of your Time” write below this title, “Look Me Up, I may be Free!” Have fun with this one!
November
When you do the laundry, write a love note or poem and place it inside a folded pair of his socks.
December
On December 14th, begin the twelve days of Christmas. Each day from then through Christmas day, sing the appropriate verse of the song, and give him a small token of your affection…a candy bar, a drive out to view holiday lights, a handmade ornament or a candy cane, a warm pair of socks, a shared milkshake, a bag of pistachios, a glass of eggnog, or a sprig of mistletoe. At our house we even have motions that go with the song. It’s fun!

Spiritual Pornography?

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 17-10-2011

Category : Uncategorized

Tags: , ,

It’s heartbreaking to work with couples who are dealing with the problems that pornography brings into a relationship. Lack of trust, jealousy, feelings of worthlessness,  guilt, lust, and uncertainty about the future are all a part of the grim picture that accompanies it. What is most surprising to me is that there are people, some even “experts” who would have us to believe that the use of pornography is not a bad thing…maybe it’s even a good thing, and healthy for marriages. This is preposterous and anyone who is God-centered at all in his thinking reckons the loss that  accompanies the use of pornography as being profound in its ramifications. Often, when adultery is traced back to its insidious roots, pornography was involved long before the actual adulterous encounter. Jesus, of course, called this looking and lusting adultery of the heart (Matthew 5:28).
When studying James 4 recently, I pondered the obvious truth that, as members of the bride of Christ, we can commit spiritual adultery by our entanglement with the world. Notice the first six verses of this very serious discussion:
1 What causes quarrels and what causes fights among you? Is it not this, that your passions are at war within you?
2 You desire and do not have, so you murder. You covet and cannot obtain, so you fight and quarrel. You do not have, because you do not ask.
3 You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions.
4 You adulterous people! Do you not know that friendship with the world is enmity with God? Therefore whoever wishes to be a friend of the world makes himself an enemy of God.
5 Or do you suppose it is to no purpose that the Scripture says, He yearns jealously over the spirit that he has made to dwell in us?
6 But he gives more grace. Therefore it says, God opposes the proud, but gives grace to the humble.
7 Submit yourselves therefore to God. Resist the devil, and he will flee from you.
These verses made me think about how a member of the body of Christ might make God jealous in the same way that I might provoke my husband to jealousy—the kind of jealousy that is normal in a husband. What if I were to talk negatively about Him to people outside the family? What if I were to break my appointments with Him? What if I were to make fun of Him and laugh when others made fun of Him? What if I did not want to share generously with Him of my time and money? What if I enjoyed being with others more than I enjoyed His company? What if I did not take the time to read what he wrote to me or to respond when He gave me a gift?  You can understand readily, especially if you are married, how we can begin to court the world rather than being faithful in our marriages to Christ. 
But then I thought about the sin of pornography and how that, long before a spouse forsakes his wife, he may look at other women with passionate desire. He may lust for another woman. He may be busy facilitating his adultery before he knows the woman with whom he will one day commit the sin. 
Do we sometimes do that spiritually? I mean long before a person actually leaves the Lord for the world, does she sometimes look at the world with passion and desire? Does she place the lure of the world right in front of her eyes? Does she gaze longingly long before she become a full-fledged friend of the world? I believe we often do this through our entertainment choices. Are you looking with favor on that which is enmity with God? I think when we choose to be entertained by movies, television shows and music that are filled with profanities, obscenities, lasciviousness, fornication, homosexuality, adulteries and/or uncleanness, we are allowing ourselves to gaze on that which is off-limits to the bride of Christ. The more we gaze, the more comfortable we become with these desires for the world. The more we look, the more we want to look and the more anesthetized we become to the shock factor that sin should bring. Soon, just as a pornography addict is a short step from adultery, we are a very short step from committing the overt sins of the world–spiritual adultery. That which once entertained us becomes less something we watch and more something we do. 
Being entertained and aroused by looking at pornography often leads to the commission of the overt sin of adultery. This destroys marriages and families.
Being entertained by the sinful things of the world often leads to all kinds of worldly alliances and actions. This destroys our relationship with God and our relationships within the family of Christ. Is this spiritual pornography? I think so.
Please visit Cindy’s Blog at cindycolley.blogspot.com/

Why Do I Love Sepia?

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 04-08-2011

Category : Uncategorized

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My profile picture on facebook is currently a beautiful wedding photo taken by Suzanne Gillis and enhanced digitally by our family friend, Mike Benson. What Mike added to the picture was antiquity. He made a photo that was taken a couple of weeks ago look as if it’s a hundred years old. I love that!

Mike challenged me to think about why I always go for the old look. He suggested his hypothesis, and after about two seconds to think about it, I agreed. 
It’s not just that the sepia tones appeal to the warmer side of me or that the crease down the middle gives it definition. It’s that the values that I hold dear and that we strived to put in Hannah are borrowed from an earlier time. They are, if you will, traditional values. That’s the meaning of “traditional”: borrowed from an earlier time. Glenn and I were really set in our hearts on putting traditional values deep in our kids. And the earlier time from which we borrowed those values was much, much “earlier.” It was the beginning of time. It was there, in the Garden, where God established marriage and declared a man and his wife to be one flesh, warning later that man should never part what God has joined (Gen.2: 24; Mt. 19:5,6). It was there, in fact, that His ultimate authority in marriage and in all relationships was forever established. Christ himself looked back to that time when he commented on the sanctity of marriage in Matthew 19. 
Traditional. I think that’s why I like the sepia and the creases. Somehow, in my psyche, they represent a lifetime of working against a culture to draw our family back to the standards of an earlier time, when marriage was sacred, integrity was expected and there was honor in purity.  Thanks, Mike, for making me think about why I love the antique in the photo. I know why you thought of that. It’s because you and Lanore had the same ideals for Bethany and Katie. 
Please visit Cindy’s Blog at cindycolley.blogspot.com/

Poem: From Mom on Your Wedding Night

Posted by Web Admin | Posted on 18-07-2011

Category : Bless Your Heart

Tags: , , ,

Dear Hannah, 
When you were three years old, you called me from your bed. You said, “Mommy, will you lay with me and sing me a song? Because maybe a dream will come if you sing me a song…because last night when you ‘sing-ed,’ a dream came.”
I guess someone else can sing to you now, because I did…and your dream has come. I love you. 

You caught frogs and turtles and each one had a name.
Pretend friends were enough for your imagining game.
You’d dizzy yourself with June bugs on a string.
Lightning bugs were your lantern when crickets would sing.
You saved shells and pebbles and clover-all sorts.
Old sheets and sticks were your tee-pees and forts.
Poking in morning glories grown “all by yourself.” 
You were giving directions to your personal elf. 
Gnomes lived in your sandbox. ‘Neath your bridge, there were trolls.
You sent them far away to rescue desperate souls.
But that was long ago and reflection years hence.
Reminds you that “far away” is just over the fence.
Your closet was a fairy room transported by dreams
In that tin foil wand there were magical schemes.
Appointments with fairies were important to keep 
There you’d be… in that closet, wand-in-hand, fast asleep.
A world of sweet dreams; that fun place of pretend.
But dreams didn’t really come true…before Ben.

But Father Time chased Mother Goose one sad day. 
Big shoes stepped in your closet and chased out the play,
Fairy rooms turned dressing rooms, and gnomes danced along.
More wistful their memories and fainter their song.
Little blond curls were pulled back into locks 
Heels became higher and skirts replaced frocks.
For time is unrelenting and days swiftly passed
We, reluctantly watched you, and you did it so fast. 
That transition from pigtails to “up-dos” flew by
And your questions changed from “What’s that?” to “Why?”
And somewhere in that passage you became my best friend.
I treasured each moment, for I knew you’d find… Ben.

A thousand times we’d prayed for him, A thousand for his dad
A thousand for his mother and the kind of home they had.
We prayed that you would find the one who’d keep your hand in His
We prayed for someone just like him and for a night like this.
But I wasn’t ready…really, on that crowded sidewalk when
This man beside you stuck his hand out saying, “Hey, I’m Ben.” 

So here you are, you Hannah-girl. Just look at you tonight.
You eyes are sparkling in the shades of dancing candlelight. 
You’ve brought the gift you promised would belong to Ben alone,
You kept it safe for Him and so he, too, has brought His own.
Life doesn’t get much sweeter than to marry your best friend. 
Tonight your God has smiled on us. He’s given us…your Ben.
Please visit Cindy’s Blog at cindycolley.blogspot.com/

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