What does Tribe teach about following the holy spirit?
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 following the Holy Spirit is rooted in the pattern Brian Hunter sees running through scripture: following is something God's people have always been called to do, and the story of Ruth makes it concrete. Ruth followed Naomi. Boaz told Ruth to follow his workers through the field. Ruth told Naomi she would do everything she said. Brian set that repeated act of following next to Luke 4, where Jesus himself is led by the Spirit, to show that this is not a peripheral idea but a thread woven through the whole Bible.
One of the more personal places this teaching lands is in how the Holy Spirit addresses us. Brian pointed to the moment in Ruth when Naomi tries to rename herself Mara out of grief and failure, and noted that the narrator, writing under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, keeps calling her Naomi anyway. Brian says, "God's like, I'm only ever going to call you by the name that I have for you." Following the Spirit, in this framing, means trusting that God's read on who you are is more reliable than the one you assign yourself in a hard season.
Brian also pushed back on the idea that circumstances are a reliable guide to whether someone is walking in step with the Spirit. The teaching draws on Moses as an example: Brian says, "At 80 years old, remember, it's never too late to get synced up with the plan of the Holy Spirit." And Brian made the point plainly that "circumstances can be a very poor indicator of walking in the spirit." Following the Holy Spirit, Tribe teaches, is less about reading your situation and more about the same kind of attentive, responsive trust Ruth showed toward Naomi and toward Boaz.
Taught from Luke 4:1 · Ruth 1:1-22 · Ruth 2:8-9 · Ruth 3:5 · Deuteronomy 16:9-12
“God's like, I'm only ever going to call you by the name that I have for you.”
From Following the Holy Spirit
The passage taught · Deuteronomy 16:9-12
9 You shall count for yourselves seven weeks. From the time you begin to put the sickle to the standing grain you shall begin to count seven weeks.
10 You shall keep the feast of weeks to Yahweh your God with a tribute of a freewill offering of your hand, which you shall give, according as Yahweh your God blesses you.
11 You shall rejoice before Yahweh your God: you, your son, your daughter, your male servant, your female servant, the Levite who is within your gates, the foreigner, the fatherless, and the widow, who are among you, in the place which Yahweh your God shall choose to cause his name to dwell there.
12 You shall remember that you were a slave in Egypt. You shall observe and do these statutes.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- June 10, 2024 Following the Holy Spirit Brian Hunter closes a six-week series on walking in the Spirit, tracing the feast of Shavuot, the book of Ruth, and what it really means to follow where the Holy Spirit leads.
- June 9, 2024 The Festival of Shavuot Brian Hunter walks through Deuteronomy 16, the book of Ruth, and Acts 2 to show what it actually looks like to follow the Holy Spirit rather than your own instincts.