What does Tribe teach about intimacy with god?
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 intimacy with God starts with a distinction that Pastor Brian returns to repeatedly: proximity is not the same thing as intimacy. Working through two Gospel scenes where a woman with an alabaster flask pushes past a room full of religious insiders to get to Jesus, Brian points out that the disciples were physically beside Jesus and still missed what was happening, while she and Jesus were the only two people in the room with clarity. Brian says, "Proximity does not necessarily equal intimacy." The lesson the congregation sat with is that closeness in a physical or even religious sense does not automatically produce the kind of knowing that changes a person.
The series also pressed into what intimacy actually costs. The woman in Luke 7 did not wait for a safer setting or a more private moment. She acted in full public view, in front of people who labeled her by her reputation, with nothing to protect. Brian identified vulnerability and transparency as the qualities that made her closeness with Jesus real, and held her up alongside Simon the Pharisee as a contrast: Simon had the right dinner table and the right title and still could not read the room. She had neither, and understood everything. The congregation was invited to notice that Jesus addressed her simply as a woman and publicly honored what she had done, which says something about how God responds to that kind of unguarded approach.
Running underneath both sessions is the conviction that God never leaves hard things unaccompanied. Brian put it this way: "There will never ever ever ever be a problem that comes your way that God doesn't attach one of His beautiful transformative promises." The claim the series builds toward is that people who are genuinely close to God are positioned to see the promise attached to the complexity, while those who are only nearby in a surface sense tend to see the complexity and miss the promise entirely. Clarity, in this teaching, is not a product of information or strategy. It grows out of intimacy.
Taught from Mark 14:1-9 · Luke 7:36-50 · James 4:8
“Proximity does not necessarily equal intimacy.”
From Clarity Comes Through Intimacy
The passage taught · James 4:8
8 Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners; and purify your hearts, you double-minded.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- February 12, 2024 Clarity Comes Through Intimacy Brian Hunter explores how intimacy with Jesus brings clarity through vulnerability and transparency, drawing from two Gospel accounts of a woman anointing Jesus.
- February 11, 2024 Clarity Comes Through Intimacy A pastor and congregation in Jackson Hole explore how intimacy with Jesus, built on vulnerability and transparency, brings clarity in an increasingly complex world.
Mentioned along the way
- September 7, 2025 The Gold of Jesus A Jackson Hole pastor teaches that Christians are rewarded not for good intentions but for obedience to their specific calling, and that every moment of faithful surrender matters for eternity.
- March 3, 2025 The Sin Offering Leviticus 3 shows that God designed blood sacrifice not to satisfy his anger but to draw us into intimate relationship with him.
- March 2, 2025 The Blood Bridges the Gap Brian Hunter walks through Leviticus 3 to show that God designed blood sacrifice not to manage his anger, but to draw people into genuine closeness with him.