What does Tribe teach about building your life?
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 building your life starts with a simple but serious claim: every person is constructing something, whether they realize it or not. Brian Hunter brought 1 Corinthians 3 to the center of both messages, where Paul describes life as a building project. The foundation is already set, Jesus Christ, but the materials a person chooses for what goes on top are the whole question. Paul names two categories: gold, silver, and jewels on one side; wood, hay, and straw on the other. The difference between them is invisible during construction. It only becomes clear when fire comes through.
To make that concrete, Brian told a story about a winter morning feeding cattle with a teenager from the church called Cowboy Greg. When a metal part broke, Greg welded it back together, and the old ranch foreman took the finished piece, held it over his head, and slammed it on the ground ten times. That wasn't cruelty. It was the only honest way to know whether the weld would hold under real stress. Brian said the fire does the same thing to a life, and it is no respecter of good intentions. The test is coming regardless of how sincere the builder was.
What keeps this from being only a warning is where Brian landed both messages. The fire is also the place of encounter. Drawing on Isaiah 43 and the story of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, he pointed out that it was only inside the furnace that a fourth man appeared. Brian says, "It is in the fire of tribulation that there is an opportunity to encounter Jesus." The invitation isn't to avoid the fire but to walk through it, to build now with materials that will survive it, and to ask Jesus to examine what is being built before the final accounting comes.
Taught from 1 Corinthians 3:1-15 · Isaiah 43:1-4 · Revelation 3:15-18 · Psalm 23:4 · James 4:7
“It is in the fire of tribulation that there is an opportunity to encounter Jesus.”
From Tested by Fire
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 3:1-15
1 Brothers, I couldn’t speak to you as to spiritual, but as to fleshly, as to babies in Christ.
2 I fed you with milk, not with meat; for you weren’t yet ready. Indeed, not even now are you ready,
3 for you are still fleshly. For insofar as there is jealousy, strife, and factions among you, aren’t you fleshly, and don’t you walk in the ways of men?
4 For when one says, “I follow Paul,” and another, “I follow Apollos,” aren’t you fleshly?
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 13, 2025 Tested by Fire A sermon on walking through fire without being consumed, drawing on Isaiah 43, 1 Corinthians 3, and the California wildfires to ask what we are building our lives with.
- January 12, 2025 The Fourth Man in the Fire A Wyoming pastor and congregation explore what it means to walk through fire, drawing on Isaiah 43 and 1 Corinthians 3 to ask what we are truly building our lives out of.