What does Tribe teach about feeling forsaken?
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 feeling forsaken starts not by dismissing the feeling but by holding it alongside a second, equally real truth. Pastor Brian Simmons built his message around Isaiah 62, verses three and four, where the same city is described as both forsaken and the Lord's delight, not one after the other, but at the same time. The point was that those two realities genuinely coexist, and the question he put to the room was which one a person chooses to live inside.
To show why the delight side of that equation holds even when a person feels their own failure most clearly, Brian turned to Zechariah 3, where the high priest Jeshua stands before God in filthy clothes while an accuser brings charges. The filth is not denied or minimized. What changes is the verdict. Brian used a story from his family's time in Mongolia, fifty-four days without a shower, walking into a clean hotel and suddenly understanding what the right standard of comparison does to your self-assessment. The accusation against Jeshua is real, but so is the One standing in his defense. From Romans 8, the teaching drove that home: God is the one who justifies, and no charge brought against his people will stand.
What makes that freedom available is not improved behavior. Brian said plainly, "My sin doesn't change my righteous nature anymore than my goodness changed my sin nature." The identity God has given is not something a person earns or loses by performance. And when someone in that position opens their mouth to worship, even imperfectly, Brian described it this way: God "takes that and he puts it right up on his refrigerator." Feeling forsaken, in this teaching, is a real experience, but it is not the final word, and it is not a measure of where a person actually stands with God.
Taught from Isaiah 62 · Zechariah 3:1-6 · Romans 8:33-34 · Isaiah 50:8-9 · Psalm 150
“My sin doesn't change my righteous nature anymore than my goodness changed my sin nature.”
From Choose Your Own Reality
The passage taught · Deuteronomy 9:4-6
4 Don’t say in your heart, after Yahweh your God has thrust them out from before you, saying, “For my righteousness Yahweh has brought me in to possess this land”; because Yahweh drives them out before you because of the wickedness of these nations.
5 Not for your righteousness, or for the uprightness of your heart, do you go in to possess their land; but for the wickedness of these nations Yahweh your God does drive them out from before you, and that he may establish the word which Yahweh swore to your fathers, to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.
6 Know therefore, that Yahweh your God doesn’t give you this good land to possess for your righteousness; for you are a stiff-necked people.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- November 6, 2023 Choose Your Own Reality Brian Hunter walks Tribe through Isaiah 62, showing two parallel realities we live in: God's delight in us versus the enemy's accusations, and how we choose between them.