What does Tribe teach about faith and action?
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 faith and action starts with a simple but serious claim: God's promises are always guaranteed, but they are not always automatic. Brian Lipp brought this to the congregation from Psalm 37:34, a verse he said the Lord placed on his heart in December as a word for Tribe heading into 2023. The core idea is that God never forgets his promises, but we can, and that forgetting often looks like quietly giving up the way Zechariah had while waiting for a child. The angel had to remind Zechariah of what God had already said. Brian says, "God's promises are always guaranteed, but they are not always automatic."
Brian pressed this further through Hebrews 11, walking the congregation through the action words in the passage and then pausing on one that surprised people: received. His point was that receiving is not passive. He used Sarah and Abram as the clearest example. God promised them a child and gave Abram the ability to father one, but had Abram not acted, the child of promise would not have come. God always invites us into the fulfillment of his promises, and that invitation asks something of us. Someone in the congregation added that you also have to know what the promise is before you can act on it, because action without first hearing what God has said is just manufacturing something on your own. Brian called that an accurate return to the text.
On the question of timing, Brian drew on a quote from Bill Johnson of Bethel Church in Redding, California: "Sometimes it takes the Lord a long time to act suddenly." The Hebrew behind Psalm 37:34 pictures putting your hope the way you twist strands of rope together, with faith and action and God's enabling woven into one thing. That image of partnership, waiting without giving up, and then moving when God moves, is where this teaching lands.
Taught from Psalm 37:34 · Hebrews 11:32-34 · Hebrews 12:1-2 · Hebrews 11:11 · Matthew 7:13-14
“God's promises are always guaranteed, but they are not always automatic.”
From Travel Steady Along His Path
The passage taught · Hebrews 11:11
11 By faith, even Sarah herself received power to conceive, and she bore a child when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 16, 2023 Travel Steady Along His Path Brian Hunter walks Tribe through Psalm 37:34, exploring how God's promises are guaranteed but never automatic, and what it looks like to actively wait on the Lord.