What does Tribe teach about old habits?
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 old habits starts with a clear-eyed look at what it actually costs to let them go. Brian has walked the church through the image Jesus uses in Matthew 9 and Luke 5: a new wineskin is what God asks of a person when He is doing something new, and that wineskin is not free. The price is death, specifically the crucifixion of old mindsets, old patterns, and preconceived ways of thinking. Brian has been direct that the flesh cannot simply be tidied up or shelved. Anything that is not crucified will keep resurfacing.
The danger Brian keeps returning to is the temptation to add Jesus to an existing life rather than surrendering the old one. He walked the church through John 8 to show where that leads. The people Jesus was speaking to were not his obvious enemies. They already believed in him. But their old wineskins, built on tradition, religious pride, and a settled sense of who they already were, had no room for what He was actually saying. Brian says, "If you hold so tightly to old ways that there is no room in your heart for a new move of God in your life, you are in jeopardy of even losing the sweetness of what he did in the past." The crowd in John 8 did not simply stay stuck. They escalated from defensiveness to accusations to picking up stones, and both the wine and the skin were lost.
The encouragement Brian brings alongside that warning is equally direct. Brian says, "There is nothing nothing nothing nothing nothing that we can bring to the foot of the cross and crucify that we will not experience resurrection, abundant life on the other side." Old habits are not too heavy or too embedded to bring there. The issue is whether a person is willing to crucify them rather than manage them, and whether there is room in the heart for what God wants to do next.
Taught from Luke 5:33-39 · Matthew 9:14-17 · John 8:31-47 · 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
“If you hold so tightly to old ways that there is no room in your heart for a new move of God in your life, you are in jeopardy of even losing the sweetness of what he did in the past.”
From A Warning About New Wine
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 10:4-5
4 for the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds,
5 throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ;
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- December 9, 2024 A Warning About New Wine Brian Hunter warns that clinging to old mindsets when God pours out something new risks losing both the old and the new. A sermon on John 8 and wineskins.
- December 8, 2024 Warnings About New Wine Jesus warns that clinging to old mindsets blocks what God is doing now. This sermon explores what it costs to receive something new from him.
Mentioned along the way
- February 25, 2024 Transformation (Do You Love Me) A young man's rock-bottom moment in Texas led to a real encounter with Jesus. This sermon explores what genuine transformation looks like and what it costs.