Temptation #2: THE FLESH

Something is wrong inside of us. Though God desires for us to live the best kind of life full of beauty and good, our desires lead us astray. Like a starving man hungers for bread, our fallen nature hungers for sin. Even though we know it is wrong we long for the promised treasures of sin. Even though we know it will hurt us in the end, often we do not say no. Like an addict we are hooked.
It wasn’t always this way. Once the first humans walked with God and did not desire sin they way we do today. But now our very nature is against God. Our flesh want to sin, and we do not need any external pressure or demonic influence to make us do it.

Temptation2presentation

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The Greatest SNL skit of all times! ( or at least recently..)

Check it out:

Fun with ANIMOTO

I am playing around with a new video generator that so far seems to rock.

Why "Cash for Clunkers" is a stupid idea.

Recently the news has been full of jubilant reports about Cash for Clunkers. While this is certainly a welcome relief from the MJ funeral debacle, the nightly dose of communal celebration over the destruction of a perfectly good "clunker" is beginning to feel like a bad B movie. You know... the type of movie that actually makes you dumber as you watch it.

The news heralds "Cash for Clunkers" as a bold environmentally savvy way to boost the economy while producing a healthy environmental impact. They are wrong for many reasons.

1. The whole idea of stimulus is hard to swallow. Is the concept of going deeper into debt as families and as a country really they way to fix our economy? Can you spend your way out of a financial ruin? Try that in your household and I can predict what will happen. It sorta reminds me of a Miss Piggy cartoon I read when I was a kid... she used her Mastercard to pay off her Visa each month, and then reversed the order so that hypothetically she never had to pay. Problem: Everyone has a credit limit... even the richest country in the world.

2. The concept of spending billions on a non-renewable project is crazy. Invest the money in windmills or nuclear energy, or even on creating a nation wide electric car network as Shia Aggassi begs for. Why? Because investments have a yearly and ultimate return. Getting people to go further in debt, while taking to government further in debt, so that car manufactures can make some sales provides a small boost today, but Zero future dividend or payoff.

3. The environmental impact of taking "clunkers" that get less than 18 MPG off the road would make a small impact if they were all being replaced by cars that got 40 - 50 MPG or better yet, electric cars without carbon emissions. But the facts are that many of the new cars are only nominally better than the cars they were CLUNKERIZED.

I can only imagine the type of impact that several billion dollars would have made if invested in something like what Shia Aggassi proposes. Rather than putting more nominally fuel efficient oil based cars on the road, lets invest in a true solution, or at least a theory that could be a solution.

What do you think?


http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/shai_agassi_on_electric_cars.html

Steward Brand on GEO-ENGINEERING

The world is moving toward cities. According to Brand, we passed a threshold recently. Now most of the world is urban, and is rapidly becoming more so.

Watch the video. He makes some real interesting points about the one billion people living in slum cities. Rather than seeing them as hopelessly poor, Brand sees them as entrepreneurs who are fighting their way out of the extreme poverty of subsistence farming.

His short talk ties together the issues of green living and poverty in a way that is quite helpful. When resources are scarce, wars break out. For example in Darfur, much of the fighting is created by a struggle over who will control the less than adequate water supply.

Very interesting stuff.

Elmbrook Message: 10 Words for Life #5 Honor Parents

Honor your father and your mother, so that you may live long in the land the LORD your God is giving you.
Exodus 20:12

God intended for the Family to be the basic building block of civilization and the primary means of passing His story from one generation to the next.

Check out theMessage here:


Here is the slide deck if you want to follow along:

10 5 Honor

View more documents from Brandon Brown.

As we continue our series on the 10 words for life, this week we tackle perhaps the hardest of them all: Honor your father and your mother. For some, this Word comes easy. Your parents were great and you have no regrets, but for many many others family is associated with pain, shame, and anger. Their homelife looked (or looks) like a war zone, and the idea of honoring the flawed humans who caused them so much pain seems impossible. Our prayer is that we all may find hope and healing no matter what our family looked like.

Great Post on Youth Ministry Hiring

Found this on a friends site:

Click here to read the post:

Top Ten Ways to Ruin a Young Pastor (By jim Vining)
10. Promise big things in their interviews, and then pull back on those promises once the family is on site.

9. Do not bother mentoring them or investing in their personal or professional development.

8. Ask them to reach new people, but force them to think the same way as the existing staff.

7. Ask them to bring change, but do not allow them to do anything different.

6. Young Pastor’s Concerns = Never Valid. Member’s Concerns about Young Pastor = Always Valid.

5. Give them responsibility, but do not give them the authority to accomplish those things.

4. Give them greater workloads than other pastors, but also less respect.

3. Say one thing in private meetings, another thing in staff or elder meetings, and another thing in Sunday Worship.

2. Reject their ideas, tell them how to do it, and when it does not work … blame them.

1. Allow your personal insecurities to interpret the young pastor’s words and deeds as attempts to mock you or steal your job.

There are a few I would add or tweak... so maybe in a few years when I find time to blog again, I will generate my own list...

Flail

If you can run toward your hopes... if you can't walk toward your ambition. If you can even crawl or scoot toward the object of your greatest dreams... you can always flail for all your worth.

Laughing Baby Brown

Context: Containers for Relationships

Relationships die without context.

Take a strong friendship that "works" while two people are both part of the same context, and see what happens if that context is removed prematurely. Contexts can include clubs, sports teams, work, neighborhoods, churches, and more. Relationships developed any of these contexts can be real and substantial, yet if the context is removed (Ex. the church dissolves) then the relationships will langure in emotional purgatory for a while and eventually feel like a flat as a two liter of Mountain Dew.

Its not the friendship cannot rediscover itself in a new context, they just don't most of the time.

Context is what keeps it from provides the place to see each other and remember how much you appreciate each other.

Context is what provides the rhythm of the relationship.

Context is the fabric upon which the friendship is written.

Not all contexts are equal, and not all are easily replaced.

Cool Presentation on 21st Century Educators

Found this on slideshare and thought it was worth taking a look at.

The 21st Century Educator

View more presentations from Kim Cofino. (tags: educator k-12)

Francis Chan: Luke Warm and Loving it.

Francis Chan is cool. Randomly found this on youtube:



OH... and part of his Catalyst message from 2007

Hero Movie: Skitz's Story.

Skitz was failing as a friend. For some reason he had changed and had not bothered to give his friends the memo. They looked in at his life and wanted to be part of it, but he did not know how to invite them in. Even his best friend was starting to wonder what his deal was, how could a kid with his whole life through college scheduled in his iPhone be so unavailable.



This is a rough cut, so there is still some work to be done on it.
Make sure to click on the "Watch in High Quality" link. It is in the lower right corner of the player

Hero Movie Preview

This clip is a montage from the upcoming Hero Movie that I shot with some friends last summer. It chronicles the life of Sarah, one of the main characters. While at school she seems to be falling further and further behind, her she has a secret that will explain it all.

This is a rough cut, so there is still some work to be done on it.
Make sure to click on the "Watch in High Quality" link. It is in the lower right corner of the player

Cohen's First Three Months...

For some reason, slide share cut out the last 5 pages...

Cohen M. Brown 3 Months

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

SlideShare: Cool way to share presentation

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Creativity in the hands of a new generation of Creators.

I think that young people today have a huge advantage when it comes to creativity. They were born with a tool that makes creativity more easier to express: the personal computer.

Now, a computer is not the first thing that you think of when you think of creativity (unless you use a mac ;), but the personal computers we use today allow people to record their own movies and songs, write and publish their own books, create their own publications, businesses, websites, and more... all before they graduate high school.

It does not mean it is easier to produce good art, or to duplicate the professional quality of a CD or Hollywood movie. That level of "perfection" and production are hard to achieve, however, youtube has proven to us that most people are totally happy to watch user generated "real" content.

I don't know how old the dude in this video is, but he is a great example of using a personal computer and to create a fun and decent video which over a million people have watched on youtube.

Whats up with the Economy?

Recently i ran across some very helpful videos presenting metaphors explaining what is "wrong" with the economy right now. I thought they were very good, and found first heard about the people doing them on Presentation Zen.

I think that the biggest issues creating the economic crisis are greed, foolishness, and fear. But the things that are described in these videos by Marketplace Senior Editor Paddy Hirsch do a great job of quantifying at least the greed part. They are really simple to understand and put the crisis in terms that non economically gifted people can understand.

Gritty Hope

>In an election year, it is seems easier than normal to get discouraged; To feel like life is not getting better, but worse.Perhaps it has something to do with all the “uplifting” political commercials we have been watching for the last two years. While many tudents make it through middle school with out a care in the word, we are finding that and increasing amount of students feel stressed, worried, angry and alone.

As a Middle School Pastor, I run into discouraged students often. Some face the normal struggle of growing up, but not all. Increasingly many of their life stories are so overwhelming that they hit you like a punch in the gut when you hear them. Students in the suburbs who are starving themselves, cutting themselves, hating themselves, dreading the circumstances of their life, and, even wondering if anyone cares about their suffering. Quietly they ask in the dark, “does God see me... does he care... is he even there?”

Discouragement and disillusionment seem to be everywhere, yet for the Christian, we struggle to cling to hope. Not blind optimism that ignores the true struggle of life, nor pessimism which surrenders to the darkness of despair, but gritty hope that finds a way to believe that God will not abandon us in the dark.

The bible is full of this sort of hope. The Apostle Paul describes the reality of this hope in these terms:

“We are hard pressed on every side, but not crushed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not abandoned; struck down, but not destroyed. (2 Cor. 4:8-9)“

Its hard to imagine a worse marketing tag line that that, but the Bible’s honesty rings true. Faith doesn’t promise life won’t be hard, but faith promises God is enough. God can get us through it.

The psalmist describes this faith when he states that

“even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; (Psalm 23:4).”

The valley will come, and it will be dark, but God is with us in the valley. This statement reminds of some of Jesus parting words words, when he tells us that he will be with us always (Matt 28:18). In the midst of our personal periods of darkness, Jesus is described as the light which shines into our depression, fear, abandonment, loneliness, and emptiness.

Hope of this sort can be found. Its authenticity rises above superficiality and platitudes. An authenticity born from the refusal to ignore the pain and struggle, while at the same time clinging to the belief that God hears our cries and he cares about our struggles.

This is the sort of hope so many students today need. Real hope that God’s light can reach the darkest corner of their soul, driving out their fears, and replacing them with love. A hope that God is making all things new, and that one day they will experience a city where there are no shadows of doubt no dark corners of despair. Where Jesus himself is our ever present and constant light.

The needs are great, but so are the opportunities. We have the chance to shine the light for those who need it most.

May we be the ones who carry the torch of grace and love into the darkness that so many face!

Steve Jobs Called me today...

Steve Jobs (Actually his office) called me today. A few days ago I emailed them about my ongoing struggle with MobileMe/.mac.

Over the last few years, I have had either .mac, or MobileMe delete all of my contacts, without asking, at least 5 times.

It is a chilling experience to go to email someone, only to have an empty address book staring you back in the face. Worse still, when you are on the go, with your super - iPhone, and need to make the timely important call... and every single contact you have is gone...

So... after taking it for a few years, I was done... I sent Steve the following email:

Steve,

I love your products, but am really frustrated. Today for the fifth time, my contacts were entirely erased. I went to send an email, and they were just gone. Gone on my iPhone, gone on my macbook pro, gone on Mobile me. Just gone.

I don't want to bother you, but could you please go down to the MobileMe department and look deep in their eyes and get them to make MobileMe "really great"?

I would really appreciate it.

Thinking different,
Brandon

So, my wife laughed at me when I sent my emails to steve@(mac; me; apple).com... but she just smiled when Steve Jobs himself (not really steve, but a very nice personal representative of Steve Jobs' office) in California gave me a call to let me know he (actually the representative) was concerned with my problem. Steve personally (actually his personal representative named nate) just wanted to make sure I was getting the type of care that my situation warranted.

Now... they have escalated my trouble to an engineering team..

So... His Steve-ness,
while I still want MobileMe to 'just work', thanks for the call. I suppose it makes me a rabid fanboy to be moved by your gesture, but your personal call (actually that of your rep nate) put my worries at ease. Thanks for personally (through your representative) putting apples resources to work on my little problem