What does Tribe teach about building your life?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At Tribe, the teaching on building your life starts with a question Paul raises in 1 Corinthians 3: what are you actually using as your building materials? Brian Hunter walks through Paul's two categories, gold, silver, and jewels on one side, and wood, hay, and straw on the other, and points out that the difference between them is invisible in the moment of construction. You cannot tell by looking at a life being built which kind of material is going into it. The only honest test is fire.
That is where Isaiah 43 and the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego press in. The fire is not a sign that something has gone wrong. Brian says it is in the fire of tribulation that there is an opportunity to encounter Jesus. The promise in Scripture is not a fire-free life. It is company in the fire and survival through it. The word the passage uses is "when," not "if," and it says "walk," not sprint. That pace of walking, trusting rather than panicking, is itself part of what the fire is testing.
Brian told a story about a ranch foreman who took a freshly welded metal part, held it as high as he could, and slammed it on the ground ten times. That was not cruelty. It was the foreman doing the welder a favor, proving whether the work could hold up under real stress before it mattered. The teaching at Tribe is that the same thing is happening in a person's life. The fire does not lie about what was built. And because of that, Brian says a person does not have to wait for the final accounting. Jesus, whose eyes in Revelation burn like fire, can be invited to examine what is being built right now.
Taught from 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 · Isaiah 43:1-4 · Revelation 3:15-18 · Psalm 23:4 · James 4:7
“It is in the fire of tribulation that there is an opportunity to encounter Jesus.”
From Tested by Fire
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 3:1-15
1 Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ.
2 I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, not even now are you ready,
3 for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men?
4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly?
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 13, 2025 Tested by Fire A sermon on walking through fire without being consumed, drawing on Isaiah 43, 1 Corinthians 3, and the California wildfires to ask what we are building our lives with.
- January 12, 2025 The Fourth Man in the Fire A Wyoming pastor and congregation explore what it means to walk through fire, drawing on Isaiah 43 and 1 Corinthians 3 to ask what we are truly building our lives out of.