About Sam Freney

Sam is married to Kristy, and the father of Elissa. He's a Christian, and works with a local church and a certain Christian publishing house. (Sometimes the latter vocations can happen without the first.) Many people call him a nerd, which he prefers to geek. He's keen on biblical studies, languages, great technology, science fiction, coffee, photography, frisbee, family, jazz, and hats. You could call his tastes eclectic.

→ Guidelines for Reading Old Testament Narrative

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Some useful points about reading Biblical narrative from Julian Freeman:

If you’ve ever begun to read through the Old Testament and been filled with more questions than answers, you’re not alone. Many of the stories of the OT are hard to understand and hard to apply.

Here are ten hopefully helpful principles for interpreting Old Testament narrative. It’s important that we get this right, since this genre of Scripture makes up about 66% of our whole Bible.

For a more extended article on the final point he offers, Gary Millar’s article from November last year is excellent.

→ The Path of Least Resistance

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Richard Perkins on Ephesians 6.1-2 and instilling obedience in kids:

But child centred parenting is the modus operandi of most of the families I know. It’s what most of us do most of the time, isn’t it? We want a quiet life. And if little Jonny is going to be pacified then we need to surrender to his demands. And so we run up the parenting white flag, he puts down his weapons of mass destruction and we’re all better off, aren’t we? Not in the long run. Can you think of a better way to raise a self obsessed, selfish brat than to reinforce his impression that other people are there to satisfy his needs and that he can get his own way simply by being obnoxious and making a scene?!

NB – “child-centered parenting” has a different usage in some of the circles I’m in. Perks means “running family life around the the needs, desires and tantrums of our kids”. He’s also got a follow-up article on 4 reasons for kids to obey their parents (not that they’ll listen).

→ To suffer faithfully

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Nicole Starling:

We sometimes tend to focus on those aspects of the Christian life (spontaneity, starry-eyed-ness, passionate intensity…) in which the younger seem to have an advantage over the older, but there are a bunch of other aspects in which the very experiences that knock some of the shine off our youthful naivety are exactly the things that equip us to be better at enduring.

The Two-Pronged Strategy of a Master Evangelist

Everyday Ministry

It’s amazing how culture changes and we don’t notice it. The practices that one generation took for granted become unknown, and slightly shocking, to a later generation. Even for those of us who live through the change it happens too incrementally for us to observe it. It is when we revisit the old times that we detect how much we have changed—sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse, and often without any real difference. (more…)

→ Moral imperatives

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Frank Turk:

… it’s one of those stories where all manner of addled thinking comes to the surface from everyone on the spectrum of lifestyle blogging—from the secular liberals and conservatives to the panoply of Christian bloggers in the weird polygon of ideas bounded by points produced by mixing the adjectives “conservative,” “liberal,” “radical,” “progressive,” “traditional,” “biblical,” and “missional,” with the proper noun “Christian.”

[…]

Dear Son,

Since you have made your confession about your situation, let me confess mine: I have never really been a good man at all. I could make a list here of all the times I have failed you, and your mother, and your siblings, and my employer, and the elders at church, and so on — but I’ll bet you can make that list also. You may remember some things I have forgotten, and I’ll simply stipulate to the entire exercise. I want you to know that I know I am not a good man, and I come to this problem we now face as a man who, at the end of the day, can’t advise you from the moral high ground.
I can only advise you, my son, as a man who has spent his life utterly at the mercy of Jesus Christ.

Turk only really gets going in the second half of the post, so stick with it, because it’s got a twist in the end.

 

→ Notice the famine?

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Trevin Wax on how location impacts your Bible interpretation:

In other words, Americans see the famine as an insignificant detail that intensifies the prodigal’s big problem – wastefulness. Russians, on the other hand, see the prodigal’s wasteful spending as an insignificant detail that intensifies the real tragedy – the famine.

Details matter—both those in the texts and those in our lives and backgrounds.

→ In Defense of Apologetics

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Tim Keller:

Apologetics is an answer to the “why” question after you’ve already answered the “what” question. The what question, of course, is, “What is the gospel?” But when you call people to believe in the gospel and they ask, “Why should I believe that?”—then you need apologetics.

Towards the end of this short piece, Keller makes the same (excellent) point concerning the myth of human rational neutrality that Martin Ayers outlined in his previous article here, Keep the faith. Both are worth a read.

A good news story getting better

Pastoral Ministry

One of the good news stories for Christians is the ministry amongst university students, and this story is just about to get better still. For this area of effective ministry is about to see a significant increase, thanks to recent Government decisions.

Contrary to popular opinion, or that of their parents, university students are not the most important people in the world. Nor is ministry amongst them important because of some supposedly elite status—“the future leaders of industry, government and the professions”. The world may think like that, but it is not a gospel perspective. (more…)

→ God’s mercies are new every morning

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I have a rule in my Bible study: during group prayer, before anyone can pray for local concerns (Fred’s mother, Jill’s uni exams, etc.) they need to either give thanks for something or pray for something beyond our group.

Mark Altrogge has food for thought on that list of things to give thanks for:

God’s mercies are all around us. But do we notice them?

A good exercise is to write down God’s mercies.
Some folks write down something they’re thankful for every day. Before you start asking God for things, consider thanking him. Enter his gates with thanksgiving and his courts with praise.

→ New and old humility

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Mark Thompson on humility vs. ‘humility’:

Humility like Christ’s means a genuine willingness to serve no matter the cost because of the value placed on others. No opportunity for service is too demeaning. Such humility, if ever you should come across it, is immensely attractive to Christians (do you have someone in mind right now?) and even to the outsider. It commends the gospel in a way that self-regard, no matter how carefully disguised and nuanced, simply cannot. Yet sometimes what at first glance might seem to be humility turns out to be something different altogether.

→ Building a better small group

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Joanne Jung takes some advice on small groups from the Puritans:

Here are a few questions the Puritans found useful in conference, redesigned for our contemporary understanding:

  • What does God want you to know about him? About yourself?
  • For what is the soul thankful?
  • What are the words or actions that demonstrate your soul’s love for Christ?
  • What is your soul afraid of God knowing?
  • What stands now between God and your soul?

Consider asking these types of questions and, more importantly, answering them with attentiveness to your own heart and the hearts of others. In good company and conference the goodness of God and the struggles of life meet in loving acceptance, godly direction, and transforming community.

→ Breaking Hearts

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R. C. Sproul, Jr.:

I am here and not there because He has brought this to pass. I am here for Shannon’s sake, for her good. I am here for my own sake, for my good. And I am here for the sake of Darby, Campbell, Delaney, Erin Claire, Maili, Reilly and Donovan. My Father knows what each of my children need. He knows how to grow the fruit of the Spirit in each of them. He knows precisely what they each need to become more like Jesus. And He has the power to bring this to pass. What they need right now if for me to be here.

Tragic; beautiful.

Libertarian censorship

Life

Censorship was a debate most people thought was won (or lost) in the 1960’s. But it has been neither won nor lost—just changed—and that for the worse. (more…)

→ That Awkward Moment When We Speak the Gospel

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Ken Currie:

For the time being, it seems the greatest threat to gospel-telling in such a society is not that we will be hauled before the city council, beaten, and have our property taken away. What we are really dealing with is some awkwardness.

Awkwardness is perhaps the biggest threat to evangelism for far too many of us.