{"id":2758,"date":"2013-08-22T18:54:16","date_gmt":"2013-08-22T23:54:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/?p=2758"},"modified":"2013-08-22T19:19:20","modified_gmt":"2013-08-23T00:19:20","slug":"david-murray-living-positively-cultivating-faith-in-a-negative-culture","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/david-murray-living-positively-cultivating-faith-in-a-negative-culture","title":{"rendered":"David Murray: Living Positively: Cultivating Faith in a Negative Culture"},"content":{"rendered":"

Puritan Reformed Conference<\/a><\/strong> – Thursday, August 22, 2013
\nGrand Rapids, Michigan<\/p>\n

\"IMG_3964<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

David P. Murray<\/strong>\u00a0is Professor of Old Testament and Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He studied for the ministry at Glasgow University and the Free Church of Scotland College (Edinburgh). He was a pastor for 12 years, first at Lochcarron Free Church of Scotland and then at Stornoway Free Church of Scotland (Continuing). From 2002 to 2007, he was Lecturer in Hebrew and Old Testament at the Free Church Seminary in Inverness. He has a Doctor of Ministry degree from Reformation International Theological Seminary for his work relating Old Testament Introduction studies to the pastoral ministry. Dr. Murray joined the faculty of Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in 2007. He is the author of\u00a0Christians Get Depressed Too<\/em>\u00a0and the producer of\u00a0God\u2019s Technology: Training Our Children To Use Technology To God\u2019s Glory<\/em>. He also blogs at\u00a0Head Heart Hand<\/em>. David and his wife, Shona, have four children.<\/p>\n

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Philippians 4:1-9<\/h2>\n

We live in an increasingly negative culture – it’s difficult not to be dragged down as our minds and our hearts are overwhelmed.<\/p>\n

Economic<\/p>\n

The Church is increasingly marginalized, increasingly on the wrong side of the culture wars. Gradually pulls us down emotionally and spiritually.”<\/p>\n

Relationships<\/p>\n

As Christians we need to consciously change our “brain diet” – Phil 4:8<\/p>\n

Not a call to live in an unrealistic way, in isolation.<\/p>\n

Tilt the balance of what we feed our minds towards the positive things that are given to us in this verse.<\/p>\n

The Philippians clearly had been dieting on the wrong intellectual food and the wrong spiritual food and as a result had become incredibly anxious.<\/p>\n

We are inviting anxiety and discouragement to occupy the castle of our minds.<\/p>\n

Verse 8 is bookended by two verses regarding peace – vv. 7 and 9<\/p>\n

“keeping” in verse 7 is “garrison” building a fortress of peace, contentment, and joy.<\/p>\n

“think” is a word that indicates incredible rigour, discipline, determination and force. This requires initiative, and discipline, and planning.<\/p>\n

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Our Media Diet<\/h2>\n

We are not just consumers. We are all media. We all decide what kind of information we will gather and pass on. We are responsible not only for what we take in but also for what we communicate.<\/p>\n

1. True. We are to meditate upon what is true rather than what is false. There is so much misrepresentation in the media, both on the left and right. The media is a world of lies. We have to very deliberately choose not to be consumers of this kind of imbalance and misrepresentation. If we feast on falsehood we will become cynical and suspicious. We will have no good faith in anyone.<\/p>\n

2. Honest – Noble. Majestic. Awe-inspiring. We are to mediate upon that which is noble and not base. Television is usually far from noble in its content, rather focused on the base and the seedy, splashing about in the cesspools of society, focusing n the corrupt and the dysfunctional. We must deliberately seek out and feast upon that which is noble. It will take Research, discipline and self-denial.<\/p>\n

3. Just. We are to mediate upon that which conforms to God’s standards. These things are not harmless if they are not in accord with God’s standards. Think of not only what we are consuming but what we are also creating based in what we have heard and seen, what we pass on through what we speak about and what we share. Think of the impact you may be having on other people’s psychology, their souls.<\/p>\n

4. Pure – Chastity, Modesty. When sit about the table what do we talk about – impure things or pure things? Marriages that are dysfunctional, children dressing immodestly.<\/p>\n

5. Beautiful – “towards love”: whatever produces or creates love, draws out affection or admiration. Things that create, motivate and inspire love.<\/p>\n

6. Praise not Complaint: Praiseworthy. Whatsoever things are of good report.<\/p>\n

We have the opportunity to live differently from the world, to demonstrate the power of the gospel.<\/p>\n

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Our Media Ministry<\/h2>\n

We are all ministers in the sense that we are ministering the word to others: mothers to daughters, fathers to son. How does this then impact the content of our ministry.<\/p>\n

1. More salvation than sin. We go to Sinai and tremble and weep at our sin, but we don’t stay there. We stay there as long as need be to drive us to our Savior. Do we focus on sin to the exclusion or the minimizing of our salvation?<\/p>\n

2. Truth more than falsehood. Even in the church we tend to get focused on what’s wrong, exposing false doctrine. But if that’s all we do we will not produce peace and joy in our hearers. Our people would be better equipped to be apologusts and defenders of the faith if their focus was on what’s true rather than on what’s false.<\/p>\n

3. More wooing than warning. Of course we must warn of hell, judgment, the devil. The balance of Scripture contains more wooing – holding up the beauty of holiness than the ugliness of sin, the beauty of heaven than the fearfulness of hell. Holding up the beauty of Christ and his willingness and delight to save sinners.<\/p>\n

4. More victory than struggle. We believe in struggle, but we also find victory, growth, progress, fruit, usefulness. We are 100% in Romans 7 and the struggle with indwelling sin, but we also want to be 100% in Romans 8 where we live in the power of the Spirit.<\/p>\n

5. Celebration more than Lamentation. Even secular people are recognizing a need for a balance. Ralph Dobelli – The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n

Bradley Wright:<\/a>\u00a0“Two thousand years ago, a book whose core was\u00a0euaggelion<\/em>\u2014good news\u2014began to be widely read. We of all people should be able to recognize and celebrate and express gratitude wherever we find it. For all good news is God\u2019s good news, and to ignore it, hide it, minimize it, or distort it is neither mentally healthy nor spiritually sound.”<\/p>\n

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Puritan Reformed Conference – Thursday, August 22, 2013 Grand Rapids, Michigan David P. Murray\u00a0is Professor of Old Testament and Practical Theology at Puritan Reformed Theological Seminary in Grand Rapids, Michigan. He studied for the ministry at Glasgow University and the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[557],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-featured"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2758"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2769,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2758\/revisions\/2769"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.godandculture.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}