What does Tribe teach about stuck in a rut?
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 being stuck in a rut starts with an honest acknowledgment that routine is not neutral. Brian Hunter preached from the story of Moses in Exodus 3 and pointed out that Moses had been a shepherd for forty years, the same work, the same pastures, the same rhythm, when the burning bush appeared right in the middle of that rut. The rut did not disqualify Moses from an encounter with God. But it could have, if Moses had kept walking. Brian says, "We all want the burning bush, but very few of us are willing to see the burning bush in the midst of what we think of as a disruption."
The two passages Brian taught from, Moses at the burning bush and the disciples watching Jesus walk on the water in Mark 6, both turn on the same small but significant move. Moses says he will turn aside and look. The disciples, as Jay in the congregation noticed, were nearly passed by because Jesus was not forcing himself on them. In both cases, the encounter happened because someone moved toward the unusual thing rather than away from it. Brian held that up as the question worth sitting with: if God regularly places encounters with himself inside exactly the disruptions we most want to avoid, what does it cost us to keep backing away?
Brian also pressed on the disciples' condition in Mark 6. They had been with Jesus through miracle after miracle, and still they nearly missed him on the water. He used that to ask whether a person can become so fixed in their expectations of how God behaves that they fail to recognize something new and real he is doing right in front of them. The rut, in that sense, is not just a pattern of activity. It can become a pattern of the heart. Brian says, "God loves to encounter us in the disruption," and the teaching at Tribe is that learning to turn toward disruption rather than away from it is one of the more concrete ways a person begins to break out of a rut.
Taught from Exodus 3:1-12 · Exodus 3:3 · Mark 6:45-52 · Exodus 3:12
“What if there is a miracle waiting for you from the Lord lurking just behind the veil of your disbelief?”
From Resisting the Rut
The passage taught · Exodus 3:1-12
1 Now Moses was keeping the flock of Jethro, his father-in-law, the priest of Midian, and he led the flock to the back of the wilderness, and came to God’s mountain, to Horeb.
2 Yahweh’s angel appeared to him in a flame of fire out of the middle of a bush. He looked, and behold, the bush burned with fire, and the bush was not consumed.
3 Moses said, “I will go now, and see this great sight, why the bush is not burned.”
4 When Yahweh saw that he came over to see, God called to him out of the middle of the bush, and said, “Moses! Moses!” He said, “Here I am.”
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 26, 2024 Resisting the Rut Brian Hunter uses Moses at the burning bush and Jesus walking on water to show how God meets us in disruption, not routine, if we turn aside to look.
- August 25, 2024 Resisting The Rut A pastor and congregation in Jackson Hole dig into Moses at the burning bush and Jesus walking on water to explore what we miss when we stay stuck in a rut.