What does Tribe teach about belonging to 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 belonging to God starts with a simple but disorienting question: if you looked at the sole of the boot of your heart, whose name would be written there? Brian Hunter drew that image from Toy Story, where Andy's name is written on the bottom of every toy that belongs to him. The point he made was that God does not write his name on the boot of your heart until a person surrenders themselves into his hands, and when that happens, the name written there is Yahweh, his proper name, not a generic title.
From there, Brian moved into Ephesians 1:13-14, where the Holy Spirit is described as the seal and deposit of an inheritance. The Spirit's mark is internal rather than external, more like a name tag sewn into the lining of a jacket than a brand stamped on the outside. Brian traced three things the Spirit does in a believer's life: he engraves God's name on the heart in a way that even failure and rebellion cannot finally erase, he enlightens a person's understanding of scripture and experience, and he empowers each person to walk out the specific calling God laid out for them. The contrast with the enemy's work was sharp. Where the enemy works outward through confusion, lies, and intimidation to deface the image of God in a person, the way a graffiti artist sprays over someone else's work, God works inward and in the direction of what he originally made. Brian put it plainly: "You are God's unique poem. The stated goal of the enemy is to scribble and scratch that out."
The practical weight of this teaching is that belonging to God is not a category a person grows into by effort. It is marked, settled, and hidden in the way a parent's name tag in a child's jacket is hidden: deliberate, personal, and not there to impress anyone. Brian said, "If you belong to Yahweh, the optimal expression of his life is when you allow the Holy Spirit to express his life through you." That is what the seal is pointing toward. The mark of ownership is also the beginning of a life shaped by the one who placed it there.
Taught from Ephesians 1:3-14 · 1 John 3:1-3 · Isaiah 49:16 · Zephaniah 3:17 · Habakkuk 3:3
“Anybody or any person or any force that doesn't encourage you to be you very well could be a force of the enemy.”
From Sealed and Branded
The passage taught · Ephesians 1:3-14
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has blessed us with every spiritual blessing in the heavenly places in Christ;
4 even as he chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we would be holy and without defect before him in love;
5 having predestined us for adoption as children through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his desire,
6 to the praise of the glory of his grace, by which he freely gave us favor in the Beloved,
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- July 28, 2025 Sealed and Branded Brian Hunter walks Tribe through Ephesians 1:13-14, exploring what it means to be sealed by the Holy Spirit and why that identity matters more than any label the world puts on you.
- 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.
- 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
- 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.