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Faith

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Guest Writer: Hannah Colley, On the Blessing of the Church in Hard Times

Posted on July 31, 2023

Life’s a flurry right now of Polishing the Pulpit prep. (https://polishingthepulpit.com/) If you’re reading and you are a regular, I can’t wait to hug your neck. If you are a digger, I can’t wait to wrap up the amazing (amazing, because it’s from Scripture) Comfort study and I’m way excited about kicking off our 2023-24 study from one of those large rooms at PTP on Saturday at 12:30. I mean I cannot wait! I’m working hard on the little things that make the study fun. If you have never been to PTP, remember there are a couple of “free” days when you can come try it on for size. But I can already tell you, it fits. You will never want to miss it again. It’s worth the wait, worth the money, worth the pretty big hassle of getting every child and aged person on board for as much of it as possible!

There are hugs to go around at PTP!

So today, in honor of PTP anticipation, here’s an excerpt from an upcoming lesson by Hannah Colley. It’a lesson about keeping our commitments to Jesus Christ. This part is so deeply in my heart as we finish up 2023 and, as we prayerfully move toward even more blessed times as a family, as a congregation, as a church–as we move toward heaven!

Hannah says this:

When you feel alone, remember Joseph. Remember to hold fast to what you know is true—That God is on his throne and He has a plan for your life, even if you can’t see it.

But also, find comfort in the fact that we as Christians have an incredible advantage that Joseph didn’t have, and that is His church. I mean this when I say that I truly do not know how I would have made it through the past couple of years without the encouragement and support of the Lord’s church. Many of you helped carry me through the darkest days of my life. To outsiders looking in, it is shocking to see how God’s people come together to help people that aren’t even blood relatives. But that’s because the blood of Christ has made us family. We were never meant to survive the trials of this life alone. God gave us this community, this family of disciples, to “bear one another’s burdens”—that’s how we fulfill the law of Christ.

I’m so thankful for those who “fulfill”…incredibly thankful. I cannot wait to see many of you at this grand reunion we call PTP. But, oh!… That other reunion! If you have to miss PTP it’s sad. But, if you have to miss that other reunion, it’s the ultimate eternal tragedy! Let’s help each other get there!

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Book Review: “Tackling the Taboo” by Terica Turner

Posted on July 21, 2023

I’ve known Terica for about 18 years. Through those years I have come to love her deeply.  I have hurt with her as she’s traveled some difficult paths and endured some heartbreaking losses. In the midst of loss and pain, she suffered through some manifestations of mental illness that I could neither understand nor help to alleviate. I did not know how to help, but I knew I loved her, that her potential was great and that it was also buried beneath the torture of several severe results of deep depression and anxiety. 

But Terica, as she relates in her book “Tackling the Taboo” not only successfully navigated, over a period of several years, her own mental illness to become the salt, light and leaven that God intends for his people to be, but she’s now also successfully helping others who struggle with depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses to overcome and be fruitful in the kingdom of God. 

“Tackling the Taboo” is raw, open and honest. Terica doesn’t hold back about the deep and tormented struggles of those dark days. Rather, she uses her own journey as a catalyst of hope for those who are dealing with mental illness, and maybe even more importantly, as a motivator for God’s people to educate ourselves about mental illnesses and prepare ourselves to help those who struggle. 

Using Biblical principles and examples, Terica helps us see the power that Christians can have in helping family members and those in the family of God to manage the symptoms  and even overcome the stigma that mental illness has carried through the years. Free of medical terminology that could bog us down in such a study, Terica just walks us through a subject (and life reality) that many have been hesitant to acknowledge or address. She does it from the honest perspective of someone who traveled to a very tortured spot in her life and then relied, first on God and then on the therapeutic and medical resources He has provided. It’s easy to read, but very practical for our personal lives and our sisterhood. 

This book’s an easy read. A couple of hours and you’ll be good to go…good to go with understanding and a better clarity, to help someone out of a deep depression…good to go help someone understand the value of medication in improving mental health, while working to implement a holistic plan, too…good to go find help when you potentially encounter mental illness in your own life. It’s an overview—a jumpstart motivator for anyone who needs to plunge deeper into finding help for schizophrenia, agoraphobia, paranoia or any number of mental illnesses. 

Tackling the Taboo is the story of a personal victory for eternity for Terica. I love that. I mean I love that on a very personal level. But, better yet, it’s a resource every woman living for Him will need at some point in this sojourn we are making together! I  think it can help lots of women to the throne. 

You can order from kachelmanpublications.com or you can find it on Amazon.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                            

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Moriah–“Chosen of God”

Posted on June 26, 2023

Last week I heard a heartwarming story about the conversion of a young teen girl whose life had gone awry following the death of her father and a subsequent downward emotional spiral. Her heart was convicted in a dark and powerless room during a hurricane disaster relief effort by Christians from Decatur, Alabama and middle Tennessee who were ministering in emergency mode on the coast of Florida. Studying with this young woman by flashlights directed at their Bibles, these Christians changed her life for the good and they changed it for good! So there she was, last week, at Camp Moriah in Winchester, Tennessee, hundreds of miles from home. She even brought a mentor from her home church in Florida, or rather the mentor brought her. This young married mentor just may have needed the spiritual breath of fresh air more than even the camper did. 

I heard about her baptism in the midst of a power-packed week of intense study and play with a group of about 30 girls at Camp Moriah, a provision of Little Mountain Ministries (https://www.1615ministries.com/little-mountain-ministries/camp-moriah). I heard her pray following my lesson about the Lord’s Supper “God, we don’t even think like we should when we are taking communion. We don’t realize. We don’t even think about how hard it was for you to give your only son for us. Help us to do better.” I love this girl and the God she serves!

I got to know a young teen who came to the camp at the behest of her faithful parents, but against her own wishes. Returning home, she was on fire for evangelism and has already reached out to ask a friend to study. I love this girl and the God she serves!

I talked intently with another girl who just landed her first job in fast food. She wanted to ask specifics about how to maintain a positive and Christ-like attitude in an employee space filled with cursing and debauchery. She was serious about this. I love this girl and the God she serves!

I got to know an amazing teen girl who made the decision to put on Christ last Tuesday night. when I was congratulating her on the best decision of her life, I found out that her grandfather was my son’s basketball coach in Jasper, Alabama. what a small world in Christ! I love this girl and the God she serves!

I ate across the table from a sweet and beautiful girl who had just given her very first devotional at the cross in the woods behind the cabins. She talked about how we have to be like children to have our place in the kingdom. I love this girl and the God she serves!

I had a six-year-old sleeping most of the week in the floor of my room (which was the church library.) This six-year-old led a song and gave a speech for the group, too. I love this girl and the God she serves!

I watched intently as women who had given up all other activities for the week, poured themselves into young women who can make homes and enable good elderships of the future, who can make the congregations they will touch stronger for souls within and for evangelism without. I watched women spend all kinds of hours in that kitchen, preparing great (best camp food ever) meals for fifty women with camp appetites.  I got to know a group from Oklahome who came to watch this camp, so they could go home and launch their own version in their home state. I watched teachers teach hard things about modesty-with-flair and homemaking while showing them the joy in marching to the beat of a different drummer than this old world’s parade to ultimate sorrow. I watched tongues held at the right times and words seasoned with grace when needed.  I watched a panel of great elders’ wives answer questions and actually make young girls dream about being leaders’ wives in the Lord’s church. These girls left camp knowing exactly to whom the Lord’s church belongs and why we have to keep giving Him the respect and obedience that are necessary when we are a part of a theocratic monarchy, rather than a denomination. They honed their abilities to evangelize and they certainly learned how the church is distinctive in a world of relativism in religion. In short, they developed spiritual muscles. I love these women and the God they serve!

I watched girls shop thriftily, prepare meals with zeal, make amazing soap scrubs, learn calligraphy, host a tea party, memorize the Scriptures and grow watercress. And they did it all while loving the learning and laughing heartily. I really cannot recommend this week of amazing girl-growth for Him enough. Can you tell I love this camp and the God it honors?  It will begin on Father’s Day again next year. Mark that down!

 

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

The Father on this Pilgrimage

Posted on June 16, 2023

Father’s Day is Sunday. My children’s father has always exhibited the characteristics of a godly father. But I’m just going to tell you that it’s the 63-year-old father, even more than the 36-year-old one  that really shows the stuff he’s made of. “Sandwich generation” was never a more fitting description for anyone than it has been the last two years for Glenn Colley. Caring for his father till his death last fall and continuing to care for his mother as she suffers from deep and progressive dementia, of course, was/is enough—enough in every physical, spiritual, and emotional way. He cleared out a large house with 60-plus years worth of sentimental possessions, had yard sales, protected their nest egg from scammers, and moved them—three times, virtually alone.

But, on the other side of the sandwich, during those same months, this father, with the help of many of God’s people in two cities, has moved a family of four—four times! These moves have been, by far, the hardest ones, because mixed in with the physical exhaustion, has been extreme emotional pain, intense spiritual seeking and dependence, and providing the only soft space on earth for this mom and grandmother. And while he has done all of these heart-breaking (and back-breaking) things, he’s preached the Word of God upwards of 200 times, helped organize and made a trip to the Bible Lands, sat down and talked with scores of people who have sought his counsel, and helped provide accountability for several people who are breaking habits, dependencies and addictions. I know this is HOW he has done it, but he has also spent many, many hours in earnest prayer though these years. I should add that he has done all of this in the face of some pretty potent criticism from a very few people—but people for whom he deeply cares. I’ve watched him examine and re-examine his motives and actions, always striving to bring his life into conformity with Christ in every way. He would be the first to tell you that he is always in need of the mercy and grace extended in his behalf at Calvary. 

Yesterday, we went together to see someone who seems to be in the process of walking away from the Lord. I watched him balance, as on a tight wire, the tasks of taking every personal insult with grace and credibility, while not giving any space for the insults being hurled at the Word of God. Humility and confidence are not easily mixed, but I have watched the mixture of personal humility and unflinching confidence in the Will of God become a conduit for the Word to work in many lives through this man. 

Now, you are thinking, and I am knowing—I am biased. I have been the one walking beside him for 43 years! I love him and so I am bound to praise and honor him. That’s true. I am him and he is me: one flesh. As his wife, I have probably been more frustrated, angrier, more critical at times, and even more hurt by this good man than anybody on the planet…because he is a man. But every flaw, every aggravation, every mistake and every sin serves to make me love Jesus more—for his leaving heaven, living as a man, and dying on the cross, so that after waking up beside a good, but not perfect, human for this lifetime, I will one day wake up in a place where the heavenly Father has completely perfected this father of my children. And I will see him with perfected eyes. Though we will not be married, I will love him perfectly!

Praise God for the Christian father in your life. If you do not have one, praise Him for the privilege of being a child of the ultimate Father who can redeem every hurtful thing in your life. Glenn Colley is the father who has sheltered and moved us around on this pilgrimage toward heaven. But that Father has moved us from the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of His dear Son.. He shelters, loves, listens and answers our heavenward pleadings. He has a forever home waiting for Glenn and Cindy Colley. He is the Father of mercies. 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort…(2 Corinthians 1:3).

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Dear Daughters,

Posted on June 8, 2023

Dear daughters, in the flesh and in the faith, 

I am very proud to call you daughters. I am unworthy in every way to call you daughters, as every single day I learn so much from your dedication to the large tasks that lie before us and from your intense desire to place children around the throne. Still, you ask me sometimes, and you ask other older sisters, things. In the way of Titus 2, you seek simple advice, even though you often have far more “on-point” intuition than do I about many things domestic and spiritual. There are some of you who are even extremely patient about my ignorance of this culture’s nuances for millennials and those women of generation z. 

Your job is increasing in difficulty and intensity every day. It’s really sort of breathtaking— the way the devil has stepped up his game through cultural shifts even in the past decade. Drag queens are influential in community library story hours, in middle and even elementary schools. Media outlets that were historically child-friendly are now bent on anesthetizing children to any dangers of behavior that we used to call “sin.” Our United States legal system is often unfriendly to anyone who has a firm adherence to Biblical truth and morality, while accommodating those “victims” who commit crimes of negligence—even abuse— to family and to those who inflict the consequences of harmful behavior on society. Your children and my grandchildren are growing up in a world that’s very different in some key and harmful ways than was the world of our childhoods. Lots of sleepy Christians of the past half-dozen decades have paved a smooth road for the takeover of  relativism and apathy in the young adults of our churches. Sometimes, especially when I travel through our nation’s airports and metropolitan areas, the effects of the devil in this undressed, ungrateful, and uncaring world are shocking. To top it off, those talking loudest about loving Jesus, are often averse to his commandments and are mocking the New Testament church as it works in the world today.   

But yet you are still in your homes putting your arms and shields of love around the innocents. You are offering prayers multiple times a day in your homes and your children are hearing you say their names as you petition our almighty God for their spiritual safety. You are there placing limits of time and content on the media of the world, when your neighbors and, sometimes those who share your pews, are chuckling at your extremism.  You are more concerned about the spiritual feeding of your children than you are about what’s on their plates for dinner, in a culture that truly has that all backwards. You’re more careful about stopping the recycling of moral trash than you are about getting the plastic in the right bin. You are disciplining in the gentle, but firm, Biblical way that includes both corporal punishment and the withholding of instant gratification, rather than buying into the culture’s idea of “gentle parenting” that puts children in premature and dangerous positions of reign in the home. You are having daily Bible times in your homes and you’re diligent in memorization  and role-play and ethical direction and singing and having heart-to-hearts in those Bible times. You are determined to seek first the kingdom in your attendance patterns and in your entertainment choices. You are consistently showing your children the numerous opportunities to evangelize that are in their interactions with those outside of Jesus. You are teaching them boldness as you voice your concerns about the safety of the unborn in our country and, in the process, you are transferring respect for God, who breathes into every human, the breath of life and transfers His very image into men. They watch as you reach to those who are in need at every opportunity.  You dry tears that are cleansing little hearts of despair and discouragement. Your shoulder is the safe place for little people who cannot help but be afraid because the devil deals in fear and uncertainty. He wants your family to be stifled by fear. 

And I cannot tell you how precious you are to this grandmother’s psyche. I am, in short, surviving right now on your spiritual fumes. You emit courage, determination and the love of the cross through your daily grinds. What seems so hard every day is actually a testimony to your faith. When you’re so very tired and, really, wondering if you can put one foot in front of the other, remember the value of just one of the souls living in your house. Your job is one that culminates in the retention of value that’s larger than any other pursuit in this world. You are the vehicle of saving grace to your children. That value makes you willing to make any sacrifice to see those souls safely to the eternal arms of Jesus. Some of you are giving one hundred percent to three or four or five or more souls that are depending on your fortitude. Some of you are doing all of this without the help of a faithful spouse and a few of you are doing it in spite of the oppositional work of husbands who once were committed to heaven for your children. You are the bravest of all,  and you do not even know what your example may mean to someone in your circle who is complacent or fearful. Someone who is tired and is on the verge of throwing in the towel may glance over at you and think “If she can do it, with all of the obstacles she faces,  surely I can persevere a while longer.” Sometimes that tired person is me. 

May God render His mercies that are new with each sunrise, His providence that is just for His children, and His promise of your ultimate good through the seeking first of His kingdom. I’m in His debt for your presence through days that are long. You fill those days with hope!

Bless Your Heart by Cindy Colley

Faithful Diggers in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

Posted on June 1, 2023

Shout-out today to the wonderful folks over at the Riverview church in Moncton, New Brunswick. This small group is eclectic in race, ethnicity and background, but they are one in Jesus! Tony and LaBeth Brewer are working with the church in this beautiful spot. and this church is blessed in a big way to have them there. We got to hear one of the good brethren there deliver a great message about wisdom. Then Tony taught us about the way that Jesus is here with us today and about the dangers of removing bits of scripture from their original context. He gave us a good lesson on how to exegete a text and then, in the afternoon Bible class, we were fed from Exodus 3 and warned about the excuses Moses made before God at the burning bush. It was a rich and blessed way to start the week. 

And about feeding…I guess it was the fifth Sunday fellowship meal, but it was a culinary potpourri that we will not forget. Steak and veggies on rice with a Cameroon kick that had us all going back for seconds, a shoulder roast that had been preacher-smoked (Glenn Colley-southern style, only Tony Brewer has got this thing down!), Canadian chili, several different yummy cabbage slaws, a pasta salad and ginger punch and more, more, more!  We were fed—the Word and the pig, the hospitality and the hugs. It was a wonderful part of my family that I was so happy to get to meet and know. 

 

The diggers in Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

And, there were diggers there! In fact, they are over there having a Digging Deep class even as I write. I am humbled and amazed at the way the Digging Deep group gives us so very much in common even after we have the most important thing in common. It was the best kind of conversation, discussing the aspects of comfort that we share in Him. Assembling is truly one of the very best parts of God’s designs for the kingdom.

Speaking of assembling, these folks had almost every single one of their members from Sunday back on Wednesday. That’s a feat. They are bursting out of their little building and two more  Christian families are on the way over  from other continents to immediately place their membership here! This group is also busy planning for and intentionally working for their upcoming Friends and Family Day near the end of June. They have got to get into a bigger facility. Praise God! If you’re one of those people who has recently contacted Glenn or me looking for a place to safely put your congregation’s foreign mission money, here you go! Message me and I can help you! (It would be so fun to take a group of folks up there to help them build that building!)

Also, I love it when I hear “Our firm plan is to be self-sufficient in a short period of time. We want to invest our own money and not have a pipeline to the U.S.” That’s the loud and clear message from this church. especially its preacher. This family is living sacrificially for the end=game of self-sufficiency.

 

Sisters at Moncton, here’s that recipe you were wanting for the blueberry cobbler we brought over from the island. Don’t make it too often, or you will have to put some first-class seating in that auditorium!

Ingredients:

2 cans of crescent rolls (unbaked)

2 cups of blueberries

3/4 cup sugar

1 cup powdered sugar

8 ounces cream cheese

Unroll one package of crescent rolls and line the bottom of a greased  9 X13 casserole dish. Mix the blueberries with the granulated sugar and layer this mixture on top of the crescent rolls. Mix the powdered sugar with the cream cheese using a mixer. Then spread this mixture on top of the berries, Then unroll the other package of crescent rolls and place on top of all. Cut up one stick of butter and place butter slices all over the top. Bake at 350 degrees for about 35 minutes or till brown on top. Then dig deep into this dessert. It is a real comfort food. =)

P.S. We traveled back over on Wednesday night for a Bible study together. They invited us for seafood at their favorite local eatery. Our schedule for the day was inflexible, so we couldn’t make it for supper. (We had to eat in the car.) The kindness of Christians anywhere on the planet is not surprising. But it is very comforting.