Politeness is destroying stuff.

The best thing about going to a church service is that I can sit here and listen and feel convicted buy the sermon and want to change but I can walk out of the building and keep on sinning because people won’t ask me about it. It all comes back to the whole transparency thing. No one asks me to raise my hand infront of people to admit my sin, no one checks our download folder or asks us if we got angry. Because of politeness because of fear of stepping on someones toes. I have to say I don’t agree with the kind of social grace that causes separation and isolation.

Bo Ho THey don’t play my favorite music!

I’ve spent the last six years in a church that doesn’t cater to me.
A strange thing to say I know, because I’m totally surrounded by people who love me like family, my pastor is one of the greatest men I have ever met, all my friends are creative and strong, these amongst other things are what I really have been searching for all my life.
Coming from a family that are nice people but disfunctional, I chased many things to fill the void and along the way God has been slowly revolutionizing my thinking about family and people and the meaning of life.
The answer to life the universe be everything! Not 42. Is relationship.
I don’t like the music, we meet in a gym, most people aren’t like me, we only have a morning service (I hate getting up in the morning), the sound gear is terrible, there’s not a home group for creative, Da Vinci type thinkers who like nirvana and nine inch nails, and drink green tea while smoking a pipe. But who cares!

Glass houses and plastic surgery.

We the Church have some universal prejudices. One in my culture is plastic surgery.
How different is covering up the truth about our skin from the covering up of our sin or even just the truth about who I really am?
It’s totally crazy to me that the only group of people that I should be able to be honest with are it seems the best at being dishonest! Why aren’t we as disgusted by our lack of transparency as we are at the vanity of plastic skin, to be honest it doesn’t compute for me, the ones and Zeros on my brain do not have a pattern for this kind of thinking. It’s totally bizarre!
The very key to a fulfilled life is connection to other people, how can I have that when nobody knows the truth about me? How can people trust you when you hold all the ammunition which is what happens when you know all about someone else and they know nothing of the truth about you? Or even worse we are all just hiding behind storefronts that say “Lovely biscuits” on the outside but on the inside there are some sweet things but all kinds of other stuff not so nice, no one really ever knows the truth.
I’ve come to a point in life where I realize that the best way to see yourself is reflected in Jesus and His people, like it says in the bible “iron sharpens iron”.
So what I’m saying is expose the metal so we can all sharpen each other.

corey

hotrod strait to ………

I usually write when there is something tugging at my emotions, it usually feels like a giant clubbing my chest, threatening to bludgeon the life out of me.
But today i feel i have nothing to say! Something is pounding on my chest though, but i cant quite grasp what it is.
Every day i live like I’m on the brink of midlife crisis or as I always love to put it my, “every day mid life crisis” where yesterday was the first day of my life and today is the last. I remember thinking this as far back as my teens. Living like that as you could imagine is fairly strenuous emotionally and practically. Emotionally Im questioning everything even down to the simplest things like what to eat, its a great pressure bearing down on me like extreme gravity. Practically its difficult because I’m always wondering if what I’m doing is the most important thing i could be doing which makes having a nine to five job hard. Im not motivated by money or by status or love most of the time, i cant even think what it is that really motivates me but the general feeling is that every thing that i choose for myself out of my greatest of epiphanies is a waste of time. Not linear time but eternal.
Eternal, eternity, forever, are words that worry me the most. I cant presume that anything that i ever do or think is great enough to matter in those terms because I’m not really that great. But the truth is that in my weakest most useless state who i am and what i do is critically connected to eternity. Which makes me feel like every decision, about things like who to include on my birthday party list or who i forget to say hi to at the church service on sunday is life or death. Its like driving down the road and seeing all the bits of paper on the sides of the road or peoples faces as i speed past them all the time while checking the speedometer every five seconds, my mirrors, listening to the motor for changes in tone for any signs of a breakdown, making sure I’m in the right gear and that my hands are in the correct position to make a last minute swerve just incase i hit that pothole that i didn’t notice till the last second so i don’t damage the suspension which would cost more than i can afford to fix which would make me have to rely on public transport till i can scrape the money to fix the car………………aaahhhh.
People tell me I’m a passionate person, this is the cost! Unending vigilance! Because all we have to invest in i believe, is our own and each others Eternity.
Immortals! Two kinds, ones headed strait down route 66 in a hotrod strait to hell and the others the great mountain road shifting gears in a sharp handling european super-car bound for heaven. (What can i say i love driving.) Either way, we all have an eternal future and thats what’s ultimately important.
Frame of reference  is a funny thing. When i came back from Thailand where i spent time in orphanages, it was hard to even have a hot shower knowing that the four hundred kids back in Thailand where id been had never had one ever. So what I’m saying is if i look at heaven then look around down hear i have a different perspective, but if all i do is spend my time noticing all the things going on down here thats the only thing i have to compare things to.
Keep looking up!

corey e sleap

Why don’t we just go out and get a 9mm pistol.

OK just in case you don’t know there are places all over the world where people are in slavery. They say that the amount of people in slavery at the moment in the world is more than in the whole three hundred years of African slave trading, twenty seven million! They say that more than half of them are children.
Just read that again please.
Many of these slave children are forced into child prostitution. Full stop.
So heres what I’m saying. Buy a ticket to any country you can think of particularly where people are poor, go down to the market, but a gun and lets start cleaning out the pimps. If you are a christian you don’t have to worry about going to hell just going to jail so be smart.
And before all of you good loving people start commenting and giving me biblical advice, i don’t care what you have to say unless you are doing something better about it. I will delete all your pointless comments and opinions, for too long the church has been in politics its time to go into battle.
corey

READ THIS WITH YOUR HANDS OVER YOUR EARS AND IMAGINE IM SCREAMING IT IN YOUR FACE.

YOU DONT WANT TO LISTEN BECAUSE IM SCREAMING BUT YOU JUST CANT STOP YOURSELF!

Stick your head in the sand, nobody acknowledge the reality, the truth, the blazing message in the sky that people are being exploited all over the world, tortured, murdered, raped.
Those words finishing the last sentence are common words! Words that we hear on the news every day or in all kinds of media. Hell iv even heard the word rape use as a word to describe how one soccer team defeated the other. Words have no meaning any more! Like many words! I’m angry! They just mean nothing, neither do the photos or the video footage on the TV showing us the millions of Africans being slaughtered by A.I.D.S, because we don’t care! Hey i don’t really care! Because if i did i would have gone back immediately and sold my WRX and put my hand to the plough never to look back at the expense of my family my livelihood my health and everything that is important to me because it tells me everywhere in the bible to freaking well do that! IN FAITH.
We don’t need faith we can do everything ourselves! Hey christians! We don’t need God to feed us we do it ourselves. Iv heard that sermon preached!
Back to the word rape! When i say that word the things that come to mind, the context that i use that word is this-

If you’ve made it this far then heres your last chance to close firefox or explorer now because heres where it gets offensive and really ugly.

Rape. A three year old girl is carried into a dirty germ infested room full of maggots, their is blood on the mattress and on the floor old dirty used condoms are strewn every where. The girl is left in the room alone for a moment while her aunt goes to find her customer.
She brings the customer into the room and leaves locking the door. The little girl is “raped”.

That happens. I’m sorry but I’m not having any kids until the last one is rescued. I’m sorry but this is not going to be a silent matter anymore. I’m sorry because every conversation i have from now on is going to lead to this discussion even if all my friends hate me i don’t care, nothing apart from loving God and enjoying Him forever is more important than this. Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.

I’M NOT SORRY!

I am so angry i want to scream and stay up for a week to punish myself for being soft and faithless.

corey

i realy am my own enemy

So in the last year iv recorded countless bands (actually i could count them but i cant be stuffed, it s a lot) iv written some songs that i like and more that i don’t. Iv been all over Australia again, doing different things like music, mixing bands, recording bands and visiting friends and family.
Iv played a show in-front of twenty or so thousand people on one night. Iv gotten into hundreds of bands, iv hated more than that many (some of them bands iv worked for).
In this year iv had millions of conversations, pissed of everyone i know, picked fights with strangers, broken things, quit one job (or… strategically fired).
Iv realized dreams, been admired, admired others, decided many things about people i don’t know, been excited about more things than i can remember.
Iv read the whole Harry Potter series, lonely planet guide to Nepal and not much of the bible.
Iv bought too much crap, eaten too much food, sworn too many times (i even said the c word).
Iv smoked my pipe too much, sung too little and driven too fast.
Iv defended myself, gotten very angry, cried, blamed other people for my shit, wished i was dead, loved to be alive and done very little exercise.
Iv been on a missions trip to Thailand, said goodnight to hundreds of kids in one night, eaten things i cant pronounce the names of and come home wising i could leave forever.
I’m sick of this list basically most of what i can remember is crap and its no ones fault but my own.

Na I don’t realty believe that.

Theres no place like home?

So heres the deal i went back to work tonight for the first time since iv been back from Thailand!  A bunch of our youth, my wife and some other young people from our church and I were there to experience the culture and help build a dormitory at an orphanage.
picture if you will 500 children all between the ages of 4 and 16 all living together, working together and playing will little supervision. you would probably conjure pictures of total chaos but that would be far from true.
Now picture me in a small pub mixing a great band making music for um drunk people.
For two weeks i felt like i was living for a real purpose and tonight i realized that iv been working for an industry that consumes people.
I don’t know what to think really but right now i wish i was back with the children in the orphanage.
corey

to die is gain? hell yes!

    The more I get closer to God the more I want to be where He is. The more I learn about the kingdom of heaven the more I want to be out of this place. I want to write songs about being an alien. I don’t feel secure anymore.
I can imagine a great deal! If my imagination can only scrape the surface of the unfathomable depths of the realities of God then I will be forever discontent.
Don’t get me wrong I love my family and friends. I also have ambitions and dreams and things I want to do, but it feels like being in a waiting room twiddling my thumbs filling in time before I go in.
I don’t want to rely on anything in this world; I don’t want to let myself be lured into a false sense of the importance of my existence in this reality. Yes we have a mandate as Christians but God could do it without my help He would just use someone else. And I don’t want to get out of my responsibilities, im happy to stay here for now!

I am not a unique snowflake God didn’t just die for me but for the whole world.
I am expendable like a soldier, and more useful this way! Anything that could chain me down, stop me running, anything that would make me too afraid to jump if I was told to is a hindrance.
The chief end of man is to love God and enjoy Him forever. Even if I were in jail or in pain or dieing from cancer and He didn’t heal me.
If these were my last words I would write God I want to be with you in heaven today.
corex

The great deception (a draft for chelle)

Many perished, few survived. The statistics a terrible realisation of the truth that in the last days the desensitisation of our society had been the most successful campaign the dark lord had ever set into motion.
Rather than spending his time thinking up and implementing devious ways to make people take their own life, fade into drug oblivion, be killed through wars disasters and incurable man made viruses or any of the millions of ways we had been wiping ourselves out since the dawn of time. He sought a way of obliterating us with one last calculative move. On a warm cloudless day in spring while strolling amongst beautiful oak trees in Centennial Park it struck him.
Standing a short distance away he spied a family! A father and mother and one child, while the parents lay on the short cropped grass their child, a young girl aged three or four years old, played by herself amongst the flowers beneath the ancient trees. A short while passed, as he looked on with fascination as the parents payed no attention to the excited girl who explored just within sight of her father and mother. Repeatedly the little girl had brought various things back to her parents as they lay there reading their magazines and over and over they had disregarded her adventuring and the things she was collecting, saying things like; (put that down its dirty or go and play, your father and I are busy.)
A conniving smile broke out on his face, lips stretched taut across his sharp teeth, “that’s it” he hissed.
A moment later he appeared in his laboratory, to begin the task of convincing the whole of humanity to abandon beauty and become enamoured with the mundane.
He began by creating “the dream” that statement preceded with country of origin. People soon started to turn from dreams of grandeur and immense magnitude to dreams of owning things such as shiny new cars and larger domiciles, things that are easily broken, stolen or burnt.
Then he turned his attention to their entertainment. Swapping out things such as beautifully created stories and lovingly, painstakingly poured over pieces of art and film for what came to be known in the early days as reality television. A concoction so cunning that had all but the most devoted aficionado fighting for a warm spot in front of the families’ massive L.C.D TV to watch someone else’s family scrap for position in front of their own brand name plasma screen. And in the process numbing the minds of generations thus subduing a whole society.
The dark lord looked at what he had done and thought to himself “this is good”. He rested waiting for the inevitable outcome
All too quickly people started lining up out front of stores to buy bigger T.V sets and box set DVDs of shows with names like “That other family” and “Watch the Joneses” and in the process sales of these items went through the roof along with the average national credit card debt, which in turn drove people to work longer hours and spend more tired hours in front of their favorite shows. A circle of perpetual destruction that sent the world on a slippery ride, straight down! Into the spirit crushing jaws of indifference. Which in turn led, as many of us who survived believe, was the final scene in the fatal drama the dark lord saw played out.
The last and ultimate conclusion in this saga, “the nail in the coffin”, was the concept that the dark lord called “relative truth”. He began this lie by planting the idea in people’s heads that we should respect all nations (not in itself a wrong idea), but then twisting it to take in all religions, desires, perversions and opinions no matter how misguided. This ultimately gave people the sense that they were god like and that they could create their own truth and reality of spirituality that suited their needs and could be modified to fit their chosen way of life. This, as is very plain to most of us who survived was a very well conceived and executed trick to get people to abandon the reality of true spirituality, so plainly evident at the time in hindsight, but almost secret in the final days of this rouse. And some of us have ourselves to blame for that secrecy, as we also were deceived into believing these lies and to our shame we became silent and afraid non-confrontational squanderers of “The Gift”.
Thankfully though, the Great Spirit who is benevolently gracious, sought to rescue us in our ignorance and stupidity through His own sacrifice and at great cost to His family. For this we are most grateful! “The Gift” is His ultimate expression to us and as we live in the comfort of His halls we give thanks to Him for what He has done and for who He is.
Do we all agree?
And they all raised their voices as one and shouted, “we agree, thanks and praise be to You The Great Spirit”.

corex