What does Tribe teach about election anxiety?
Drawn from the message 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 election anxiety starts not with politics but with the size of your picture of Jesus. The Sunday before the 2024 election, Brian walked the congregation through John 7 and pressed a single honest question: is the Jesus you are carrying big enough to hold everything the Bible actually says about him? His argument was that most Christians have built their whole frame around the belief moment in John 7:31, and that frame is real but too small. Verse 31, Brian said, always plays out inside grumbling, accusations, fear, angry crowds, and leaders trying to make an arrest, not apart from that noise. A congregation with eyes only for the belief moment will be blindsided and disillusioned by everything surrounding it, including a contentious election.
Brian moved to Habakkuk 3 to show that the Bible's portrait of Jesus includes things that do not fit a felt-board flannelgraph: pestilence, plagues, nations trembling, mountains leveled. His point was not to argue a particular end-times timeline but to press the wineskin question personally. If your picture of Jesus cannot stretch to hold those passages, new wine gets poured out and you cannot receive it. He says, "He is working secretly, unknown to you. You may be looking for him in the midst of whatever it is that you're going through, not being able to see him." The election, in that frame, is not the main event. God is the main event, and He is moving in ways that may not be visible on the surface.
The practical word Brian left the congregation with was direct: "Do not be distracted by superficial events and opinions, but look beneath the surface to discover what God is up to." That is not a call to disengage from what is happening in the country. It is a call to hold it inside a bigger story, one where Jesus is not surprised by the outcome, where Psalm 2 and Revelation are already written, and where the question put to every believer is whether they will expand their wineskin or keep the same comfortable routine and wonder why nothing is growing.
Taught from John 7:1-36 · Habakkuk 3:3-6 · Psalm 2 · John 7:24 · Revelation
“We all know verse 31. We've all seen it. Few of us have seen the context in which verse 31 plays out.”
From Look Beneath the Surface
The passage taught · Habakkuk 3:3-6
3 God came from Teman, the Holy One from Mount Paran. Selah. His glory covered the heavens, and his praise filled the earth.
4 His splendor is like the sunrise. Rays shine from his hand, where his power is hidden.
5 Plague went before him, and pestilence followed his feet.
6 He stood, and shook the earth. He looked, and made the nations tremble. The ancient mountains were crumbled. The age-old hills collapsed. His ways are eternal.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- November 4, 2024 Look Beneath the Surface Brian Hunter preaches on looking beneath the surface of Jesus's nature, urging believers to build a faith big enough to hold all of who he is, not just the familiar parts.