What does Tribe teach about faith in hard times?
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 faith in hard times keeps returning to memory as a weapon. Brian's Pecky Day message builds on Habakkuk 3:1-2, where the prophet prays through deep need by calling to mind what God has already done. Brian's point is direct: you cannot ask God to do it again if you have not kept a record of the first time. The Pecky story, a lost tropical bird and $900 that arrived at exactly the right moment, is not just a Hunter family curiosity. It is a stake in the ground, a specific moment to point back to when the next hard season comes. As Brian puts it, "Remembering yesterday's victories arms us with strength for today's battles."
That same thread runs through Jay's message on where people actually put their trust when circumstances get hard. Starting in Numbers 14, Jay walks through why the Israelites fell apart even after seeing God work again and again. Their problem was not a lack of evidence. It was what they were looking at in the moment. Fear became contagious, and they let it make their decisions. Jay's image is a hat rack: your beliefs are the hat, and hanging it somewhere means committing to what you trust. Circumstances shift, and people fail. The teaching at Tribe is that God is the only hook that holds, and that recovering your trust there is an active choice, not something that just happens.
Brian's message on resisting the rut adds a harder edge to all of this. Hard times are not just problems to survive. They are often the exact moment God is doing something new. The burning bush and Jesus walking on the water both showed up inside disruptions the people involved would rather have avoided. Moses moved toward the strange thing. The disciples, at first, recoiled. Brian asks whether someone can be so fixed in their idea of how God behaves that they would miss a real thing he is doing right in front of them. The invitation Tribe keeps making is to stay curious in the hard moments, to turn toward rather than away.
Taught from Habakkuk 3:1-2 · Habakkuk 3:17-19 · Numbers 14:1-12 · Colossians 3:2 · Exodus 3:1-12
The passage taught · Exodus 3:1-12
1 Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to God’s mountain, to Horeb.
2 Yahweh’s angel appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
3 Moses said, “I will go now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”
4 When Yahweh saw that he came over to see, God called to him out of the middle of the bush, and said, “Moses! Moses!” He said, “Here I am.”
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 25, 2024 Resisting The Rut A pastor and congregation in Jackson Hole dig into Moses at the burning bush and Jesus walking on water to explore what we miss when we stay stuck in a rut.
- July 15, 2024 How to Hang Your Hat Jay walks Tribe through Numbers 14 to show how trusting circumstances or people instead of God leaves you chasing your hat, never finding a place to hang it.
- December 5, 2022 Pecky Day at Tribe Brian Hunter shares how a tropical bird, a reward sign, and $900 taught his family to remember God's provision, and why Tribe celebrates that story every year.