What does Tribe teach about finding direction?
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 finding direction starts with a passage from Isaiah 57 where God says he will heal, guide, comfort, and bring peace to his people. What Pastor Brian drew out of that passage is that God makes those promises without saying when or how, and without attaching them to anything Israel had earned. The direction and peace God offers are rooted in who He is, not in the performance of the people receiving them.
The harder question Pastor Brian pressed into was this: do we wait to experience that direction before we praise God for it, or does something else come first? He described the common pattern, praise and trust arriving only after the answer shows up, as a starting point God wants to move us past. He brought in Habakkuk 3, where the prophet lists a complete collapse of every visible resource and then says yet he will rejoice. Brian pointed out that the Hebrew word there carries a sense of jubilant, leaping celebration, and he asked the room to sit with the image of someone jumping for joy not because the answer had arrived, but because they were confident it was coming. Job held the same posture. Facing nothing that resembled the promises of Isaiah 57, Job said he would put his hope in the Lord regardless.
When a member of the congregation named how hypocritical it can feel to praise God when your circumstances have not changed, Pastor Brian took that seriously and did not dismiss the feeling. He said, "Those are your feelings. They're real. They're true. But the greater truth is, I am going to praise the Lord even if I feel hypocritical." He used a train analogy to press the point: most people run their lives with emotions as the engine and their words following behind. The maturity these passages are pointing toward puts faith in the engine position instead, with feelings trailing rather than leading. Finding direction, in this teaching, is less about waiting for clarity to appear and more about praising God in the place where clarity has not yet come.
Taught from Isaiah 57:18-19 · Habakkuk 3:16-19 · Job 13:15 · Isaiah 49:8 · Psalm 23
“Though he slay me, yet will I praise him.”
From His Praise on Our Lips
The passage taught · Habakkuk 3:16-19
16 I heard, and my body trembled. My lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness enters into my bones, and I tremble in my place, because I must wait quietly for the day of trouble, for the coming up of the people who invade us.
17 For though the fig tree doesn’t flourish, nor fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive fails, the fields yield no food; the flocks are cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls:
18 yet I will rejoice in Yahweh. I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
19 Yahweh, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like deer’s feet, and enables me to go in high places. For the music director, on my stringed instruments.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 13, 2023 His Praise on Our Lips Brian Hunter walks through Isaiah 57 and challenges his church to let praise lead faith, not follow it, even before God's promises show up in real life.