What does Tribe teach about wilderness?
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 wilderness starts with a question Amanda Lack put to the room: is the wilderness good or bad? The answers were mixed, and that was the point. Amanda drew a line between the way the world tends to read wilderness, as a place of neglect or abandonment, and the way scripture treats it, as an uncomfortable place of testing and trial where God's presence can still show up. The first thing she wanted the congregation to hold onto before anything else was this: "Being uncomfortable is not the same thing as being abandoned."
The shape of Jesus's own story in Matthew 4 is central to how Tribe thinks about this. Amanda traced the sequence carefully: Jesus was baptized, the Father declared his identity over him, the Spirit led him directly into the wilderness, and when he came through the other side he launched his ministry. That order, she said, is not coincidental. The wilderness was not an interruption between his baptism and his public work. It was the deliberate connection between them. Wilderness is preparation, not punishment, and Amanda pointed to the Israelites' forty years alongside Jesus's forty days as evidence that this pattern runs deep in scripture. Where Israel failed the test again and again, Jesus held. A thread that ran through all three of his temptations was identity. Satan's first move was "if you are the Son of God," which came immediately after the Father had publicly declared exactly that. Amanda said the enemy still works that way, attacking the last thing God spoke over you by pointing to your circumstances.
That same pattern shows up in Pastor Brian's teaching on Sukkot, where he described the wilderness years as a longer project God was running on Israel's heart. Brian says, "God got Israel out of Egypt, but the time in the wilderness was intended for Israel to get Egypt out of their hearts." The feast of Sukkot is designed to replay that formation every year, voluntarily removing comfort in order to recalibrate the heart toward God. Taken together, the teaching at Tribe holds that wilderness is one of the consistent ways God prepares, proves, and draws his people closer to dependence on him.
Taught from Matthew 4:1-11 · Deuteronomy 8:2-5 · 1 Kings 19 · Psalm 34:18 · 1 Peter 4:12
“Being uncomfortable is not the same thing as being abandoned.”
From Uncomfortable Is Not the Same as Abandoned
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 10:13
13 No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 19, 2024 Uncomfortable Is Not the Same as Abandoned Amanda Lack opens Matthew 4 with Tribe church in Jackson Hole, walking through Jesus in the wilderness and what his example means for the hard seasons we all face.
- August 18, 2024 Jesus In The Wilderness Amanda Lack walks through Jesus in the wilderness, looking at his three temptations and what they teach us about identity, trust, and how to endure hard seasons.
- September 26, 2022 Sukkot Series Week 2： Remember His Goodness Brian Hunter explores the Feast of Sukkot, showing how a week in temporary shelters strips away comfort, recalibrates the heart, and draws us back to God's faithfulness.