Corey Blankenship's Blog

I have another blog started (yes, now a blog here, a blog on Goodreads, and a blog on Wordpress, oh my!). This one will be focused on my ministry as a missionary and a writer, specifically for my time at City Mission. I have no idea what to fathom for the future, except that I'm thankful and content to serve here with these wonderful people, even when I tempted to pull up stakes and run for cover...an imaginary escape I'm coming to discover.
Here is my latest post on my new site called "Mission Writer," as I'm seeking to weave the beautiful combination of mission and writing together for the glory of God, who has been gracious to move and mold me into a man who loves, learns, and leads with his words and (more convincingly) with his actions. I love how He completes me.

Take the time to ask yourself, "How Do Writing and Mission Mix?" I'm sure there are plenty of you out there wondering how do they coincide, and do they coincide more than just writing books and articles about mission? Ministry, serving others, needs to overflow beyond the space of Christian fiction, literature, and history. Let me know what you come up with!

For the crickets and angels out there reading this blog, I have been pulling a Brannon Hollingsworth and stacking on irons in the fire like a smelting factory in old Birmingham...I'm currently boiling down my agenda to: survive and thrive. Here's a bullet point list of what's coming down the pipe:

Writing a Novel for Amazon's competition (a book in a week...if this comes true, I'll be more excited about the accomplishment than them publishing it. *says I now. lol*)

Published my missionary support page for those interested in donating and praying for me and the ministry in Kaiserslautern, Germany. Check it out here: http://writemission.wordpress.com/

Working my low-income budget (for which I'm thankful) with this handy converter from the Australian government. Thanks, Aussies! We math-uninclined souls appreciate it. https://www.moneysmart.gov.au/tools-a...

I'm building my resume, hoping to get a better job to take care of the Euro-US conversion and hold down a house, which leads me to...

I'm looking for my own place to live. At the moment, things are changing rapidly here in City Mission, requiring the Sons of Thunder to disband from their home at the church and find their own residences. I'm looking forward to my own place, but this is a lot shorter window than I anticipated.

So, please be in prayer for all of these, because I believe when the dust settles on this next month, a whole 'notha Corey will be standing there, looking at the reality of God's provision, kindness, patience, and mercy. He really loves us, guys! I pray we love Him, too.

Goodnight und aufwiedersehen!

Sigh...I'm thoroughly chastened. God is bringing to light my "first love." My first calling. And how far I have fallen. The beautiful imagery of service and grace to others strikes again. Jesus' love and humble servanthood crushes any significance a "rights" or "privileged" view of relationships brings to ministry and the future. It crucifies my foolishness and pride, calling me to prefer and exalt the ladies around me. "Seeking the Face of God." Seeking beautiful Jesus. Loving Jesus. And that requires me to honor those whom He honors, whom He loves, whom He cherishes.
I find myself a failure at honoring others over myself, and am thankful to Jesus for the overruling call of Christ to return.
Thanks, Jesus, for visions and messages like these, who bring me again to the threshold of who I am in You and who You call out to me to be. I am to be truly apostolic by not honoring me, but my forgetting me and all that falls behind, take up the self-sacrificing cross, and count it victory to be defeated for His name to be great.
Increase, Lord! Diminish me in the expansion of Your Kingdom! Amen!

Give me birdsong in winterA chipper song of spring,Give me roses in the valley,Another reminder of the king.
Send down a stream on a hill,Where I can taste clarity,A babbling brooke by the sea,Refreshment is such a rarity.
Let the highways be wide and flatEver winding along greenway.Bring joyful children singingThe brightness o' summer's day.
Over mountain and over sea,Over hill and through dale,Bring me closer to your tunes,Closer to your e'erlasting tale.
I want to ride, face in a lion's mane,Wrapped in fleece as white as snow.Take me beyond the shadow by the seaInto fields of wheat all aglow.
Take me to your home, that's where I want to go.

A tale of two men. That's what tonight brings. A responsible man, an irresponsible man. Both came to Christ as arrogant men and became humbler men. Both remained as they were: Responsible and Irresponsible. Because of this, when both went to college, one disciplined his emotions. The other did not. One stayed away from false, empty relationships. The other played the edge of relationships. One gained a wife; the other did not.
Today the Responsible man has a family; the Irresponsible man has a rebuke.
I am not the responsible man. If there is any word I would describe my brother Joel as being responsible, disciplined is the word. He is like a discipline Rambo, taking his life by the teeth and living by the means available until he achieves his goals. Sure, there are flaws in the extremism, but Joel grows in grace because he is willing to pull himself together at the Source of life. I am more prone to wing-it and end up in disaster; I have been the receiver of exceptional grace for a long time, and even my stellar GPA proves it on transcript. I am the one who pulled classes from thin air by the grace of God, while Joel plowed through a well-planned Biblical/Theological studies degree. I love this man, what he embodies, and I plan to tell the tale of two men named Responsible.
It'll take several miracles, but it will happen. It is happening.
Today has been a demonstration as to why I need and why I am challenged to become responsible. I woke up late to the buzz of men working downstairs. It took my 12-year-old emotions an hour to recognize the call to serve, to work. Jesus met those emotions with the truth that my accomplishments are nothing compared to what He has accomplished for me. But responsibility beckons me to train at the door of interruption. The race is not won in an open field, but in the thicket of unexpected demands.
Tonight I sat through an iron-fisted, soft-hearted appeal to man up by Mark Driscoll. His sermon Christians Gone Wild: Single Like Jesus pummeled my heart with a vital and necessary reality check. For a man who wants to be married, who wants to train men to be married, this is a beautiful sermon. Like a howitzer, or a fighter jet, is beautiful. Fatal attraction, one could say. I got leveled at the gut when he said, "Men need to have confidence, courage, clarity."Confidence, Courage and Clarity. It's like he's named a black hole in the middle of my soul, from which spews cowardice, timidity, and confusion. Which explains my general incompetence. I didn't realize one girl's approach to me was asking for my plan, who I was. I bumbled a lot, throwing a lot of words with little meaning, and she sized up the fruit of my labor. Which is little. I wondered why the girls I liked never had any interest in me: It was swallowed somewhere in that swirling vortex of missing courage, confidence, and clarity.
Instead of killing me, this challenges me. I am at the point where I'm realizing how God instilled courage in me. Usually, it was at the points where I was about to die or kill myself, that "slow working courage" Tolkien talks about kicking in like a long fuse. I'd man up enough to face a task or challenge, before sniveling in self-pity. It is time to break that loop of pride, and train.
Train hard.
I'm going to need help.
That this comes at the onset of time dedicated to the Father is a good sign. He's checking my pulse so I can see how limpid, how unmanly, it is. Emasculated. Going home was a good thing. I got to love my mom, respect her, and confess and confront some sins. Buried in there, I had an emasculating home, a challenge I left unmet and into which I sinfully resigned myself. I thank Jesus for my mom. I could have learned discipline, responsibility, and family-mindedness from her; she is a miracle of blasting a statistic to the Pit. She single-handedly worked to care for two children and made them feel loved, cared for, and respected in different ways. I am learning to take up that legacy and learn. But, like unused muscles, it burns the mind and sears the heart. I discover sacrificial love is sacrificing petty emotional imagery into the machine of the mundane--To feed a family, to serve the church, requires a whole lot more than a sermon on Sunday and a martyr's death on Monday. "Seven days He gave us to work." Dear God, Holy Father, re-engineer my life to work! And work well for Your glory!
Take up and listen to Mark's sermon above when you get the chance. He is a wise counselor speaking to unwise people. Hopefully, the story changes before this year's out. Hopefully, a new man rises in Christ Jesus. He's likely to be speaking Deutsch, cooking meals for friends, and boldly declaring the truth in love. By the grace of God, let it be so! I can't keep hiding.
I wasn't named Timotheos by the Spirit of God for nothing. Let me "fear the Lord"* before myself or others. Amen.
*That's what Timotheos means, "honored of God" or "fears God." I consider the distinction and honor of being given that name to mean both.

He who lashed Himself to woodTo break our hearts of stoneCome fill my soul with loveAnd put fire in my bones...

A friend posted this to their Facebook page, and I discovered they had suggested a list of chocolate tips and recipes. You learn things like melt chocolate in a double boiler (basically, one pot slid into a pot of boiling water) so it doesn't burn. And plenty of tasty looking recipes. Somebody remind me I have suggested this list when February comes along and I am once again eating sugary, chocolatey goodness! For now, try them out and see what you like most, and let me know. :)
Ilona's Favorite Chocolate Deserts

Tonight I am sobered...I feel the Lord is imprinting on me an eternal attribute I cannot fathom or escape. I cannot find any other words for it besides: Love, Compassion, Sympathy. Love's relationship in a torn worn is compassion, sharing another's suffering, sympathy, sharing another's feelings. I'm drawn by an unseen Hand to bring to light my heart on pain, on violence, and on peace.
It might surprise you I am no fan of war.
I once revelled in it, seeking violence after being a victim from my childhood. I found violence and battle my escape from suffering. Those who wield the weapons cannot suffer. But then I thought of family and friends, so I knew I would have to go it alone. Only a solitary soldier feels no pain, has no one to lose. And I could endure. So I thought. In the process, I lost everything valuable to me, isolated in my heart's bunker, an impenetrable blast shield against the nuclear rays of love and loss. Until I found the Master of creation could always pierce what clay hands and stone hearts had made.
It wasn't the sermons of preachers, the counsel of pastors, nor the advice of family that won me to Jesus. It was silence, beautiful, painful silence, into which God interjected His voice. It was the prayers of saints, especially of a praying grandfather who intimately knew my torment, that marked me with the precision of guided bombs. The bunker-busters of grace fell upon my soul every time I retreated into the confidence and secrecy of my own room. In my isolation chamber, where I played imaginary war games and read military history, biography, and mechanics, the God of peace came. Bearing a sword. He took what I knew and painted a tapestry of combat, immortal combat, on my mind, and I could not shrug off the effects of His images and words.
Strewn across the carnage of frenzied battle, a one-sided slaughter it seemed, all my people were routed before the Lord and His heavenly Hosts. Chariots, vehicles and horses overturned, blood everywhere. Mud and blood churned into a macabre clay. I realized a terrible truth under smoky skies and bitter loss. I was on the wrong side. My resentment and rebellion had landed me against the One who had made the world and created life. In the war of the universe, I fought as an infinitesimal speck against the very Source of existence. I was a mere grain of sand assailing the colossal wave of eternity. And so I cowered. Borne down by defeat, I conceded I would lose, on the wrong team, but I would go down on my own terms. I said I would remain where I was, lurking under wreckage, and cutting the Lord's enemies legs out from under them as they ran away. God would accept no traitors, only prisoner's of war, in this battle. I could not simply produce rogue sneak attacks that lacked repentance.
His ultimatum had been simple. Surrender or perish.
I was doomed to get myself killed if I continued to fight against God.
What does my collapse into Christianity have to do with war and peace, besides the ready imagery lodged in a child's fantasy, used to clarify the state of my soul before surrender? Because tonight I had an endearing, provoking conversation with a Mennonite friend. Mennos are peace-lovers, not quite Hippie-ish, though I could see them blending in some areas. They value the call of Christ to be peace-makers. Forgoing any route that would lead them to violence, they pursue peace with all men, personal, communal, national, global. I am blessed to know these people of the peace church. And tonight I got to interview a sister about her arrival into their fold, one of the few I know to be a convert to their form of Christianity.
And for some inspired reason I chose to watch Saints and Soldiers tonight after our talk. My favorite war movie. It is perhaps the most humanizing war movie I've ever seen. You cannot walk away feeling entirely one-sided about the second World War. They paint the tragedy of war and death in personal tones, but portray both sides as people fighting people--saints, sinners, all soldiers. I wept as my childhood favorite replayed with new depths of understanding as a man. I began to understand the torment a husband and father would have in killing others, the anguish a Christian would have in seeing men, women and children die brutal deaths. I wept, knowing I once had relished the call to battle, to fight, to kill. I was anti-Christ in my lust for the power to kill...and now I tremble at its use in the world.
I didn't feel the thirst for vengeance when the main heroes died. I felt pity, the sorrow of death. There is no revenge for the dead. A man kills millions, and those who judge him cannot inflict a million deaths upon him. Even in an age of micro-technology, you cannot kill him more gruesomely than torturing his very membranes, shredding him gene by gene. Yet, that's not justice. The torment of hell escapes our imagination, but not God's mercy. He looks on the tormentor and tormented and cries, "Father, forgive them, they know not what they do." He dies the death of dictators, mass murderers, pedophiles, and rapists--those who lay siege to bodies with sex, murder, and hate.
And because of this consuming compassion, I cannot hate, I am learning not to retaliate. It is humbling, humiliating, and pain-filled. Peace heals, but first feels the rawness of the wound. Not everyone hated like I did, nor sought violence in the same degree. Many soldiers are honest men, Cornelius' waiting to be awakened to the good news of grace. I do not equate them to twisted, little anti-Christs running around with weapons. Saints and Soldiers proves that. But I find a discomfort to give myself to war. It is a question I cannot answer well, and so I relent to say this: I changed sides in the eternal combat, I know what place I was in, and I am called to bring others like me to heaven's stronghold. I must save sinners, soldiers and saints. And if I must throw myself into the thick of combat, into the middle of a battlefield or battalion to do so, then it is my solemn duty to die in the midst of men groping in darkness for God. Cornelius, the nameless centurion, and the Thundering Legion did not break their swords in this life to enter the next. My hope is to reach more like them, so they can, at the climactic moment, profess before the Caesars of this age, "Our God, the God of heaven and earth, the God of the Christians, can bring rain, O Caesar. We will pray to Him and He will answer." Let justice roll like a river, overturning the axes of power, the dogma of might makes right, and recover lost sons and daughters to the Kingdom. Amen.
I do not love war, but I will win warriors by the grace of God to serve lovingly those they once destroyed.

In truth, there wasn't any baking, but the alliteration seemed good. I, however, did do some cooking. I decided and definitively declared on a walk with my dear brother on a crisp Georgian winter day, "I have to cook." And from that declaration, I have made several meals, and am coming to discover God has given me grace to do so with a good amount of taste. Thank You, Jesus!
While I have put together Orzo and goat cheese with Hannah and Joel's help, followed by a chili with Madre slipping in a couple extra spices ("You're the one getting fancy with the spices!"), this one was truly a bachelor's meal of choice: Grilled cheese and spruced up pinto beans. Yet, I think a tasty one. I discovered celery salt and Dash seasoning go a long way to turning bland beans with 2% packaged spice into a tasty side.
I'm going to be adding cooking to the list of blog topics. I know the religious might not see the connection: How does cooking aid the pursuit of God? Isn't it fasting, not feasting, that brings you near to His face? I only need to point to Jesus' strong reminder: "The Son of Man came eating and drinking, and they say, 'Look at him! A drunkard and glutton, a friend of tax collectors [traitors] and sinners." I think my dietary adventures might actually bring me closer to the heart of the King, as I learn to feed and sustain fellowship around me with His beloved children. In truth, I have seen some of the most humble and serving actions done by a friend who thawed a block of frozen soup over the stove for two homeless people in the dead of night last week.
Here is the simple recipe for the pinto beans:
Can of Pinto BeansPinch of Celery SaltPinch of PepperPinch of Dash Extra Spicy seasoning
Try it out and let me know what you think. I made it alongside grilled cheese, but it could go well with many other combinations. Let me know what you discover, and enjoy!

It may seem strange to review your own work, but I also co-wrote this piece with four other authors. I review this as a tribute to them, reflecting on their handiwork and the brilliance of the team to direct and collaborate one Meta-Narrative into five distinct stories, a true mosaic novel that paints one portrait. For their benefit, I reviewed the book and you can check it out below.

Skein of Shadows by Corey Blankenship

My rating: 5 of 5 stars


Creatively written from five perspectives, and I have the unique approach that I wrote one of those. However, that said, I have never read such an engaging book that seamlessly weaves five authors and five stories into one, greater drama. Prepare to be surprised, stunned, entertained, and humored by the collection of hero-tales as five strangers battle it out on the streets of Crown to save a doomed city. It is just a thrill to read and fulfilling when you finish. Grab a copy and see what you think!



View all my reviews


Let me know what you think about the book!