What does Tribe teach about who am i?
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 identity starts with a single claim Brian Hunter keeps returning to: only the creator has the authority to define his creation. Drawing from Isaiah 29:16, Brian presses the point that the clay does not get to tell the potter what it is. That means the labels the world assigns, not good enough, failure, broken, too much, stuck, do not have the final word. God's word does, and God's word to Gideon in Judges 6 was 'mighty man of valor' before Gideon had done a single thing to earn it. Both descriptions of Gideon carried some truth, but God was operating at a higher level of truth, the way the law of aerodynamics overrides gravity without canceling it.
Brian grounds this further in 1 John 3:1-3, where the Father has lavished love on us and called us his children, and that is what we actually are. He asks the congregation to sit with what that means using the image from Toy Story: Andy's name is written on the bottom of every toy that belongs to him, and God writes his name on the boot of your heart when you surrender yourself into his hands. That name is Yahweh, his proper name, not a generic title. The Holy Spirit given at belief is the seal, the name written in a way that cannot be erased. The enemy's work runs in the opposite direction, trying to paint over that name with identities that serve his own agenda.
The practical weight of all this, Brian says, is that before you can sharpen the gifts and talents God has given you, you have to know who you are. A person threshing wheat in a winepress, hiding from their enemies and convinced they are the least of the least, is a picture of a dull tool. Identity is not a side question to the work God calls us to. It is the foundation of it. As Brian puts it, 'God gives us the tool, but whose job is it to keep that tool sharp? Our job.' And you cannot sharpen what you have never rightly understood as yours to carry.
Taught from 1 John 3:1 · Judges 6:11-16 · Isaiah 29:16 · Ephesians 1:4-5 · 2 Corinthians 5:17
“Only the creator has the authority to define his creation.”
From Identity
The passage taught · 1 John 3:1
1 See how great a love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God! For this cause the world doesn’t know us, because it didn’t know him.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- May 18, 2026 Identity Brian Hunter walks through Judges 6 to show how God named Gideon a mighty warrior before he had done anything, and what that means for how we see ourselves.
- May 17, 2026 Mighty Man of Valor Brian Hunter walks through Judges 6 to show how God named Gideon a mighty warrior before he had done anything, and what that means for how we see ourselves.
- July 21, 2025 What Great Love Brian Hunter asks a simple question: if someone looked at the sole of your heart's boot, whose name would they find written there?
- July 20, 2025 His Name on Your Boot A Jackson Hole pastor walks through 1 John 3:1-3 and asks one question: whose name is written on the sole of your heart's boot?
Mentioned along the way
- July 27, 2025 His Name Your Boot: Week 2 A Jackson Hole pastor leads his congregation through Ephesians 1 to explore what it means to be sealed by the Holy Spirit and to live as God's own.