What does Tribe teach about busyness and prayer?
Drawn from the message 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 busyness and prayer starts with a simple but uncomfortable observation: the reason so many people struggle to recognize or receive what the Holy Spirit is doing is that they have not spent enough time with Jesus. In the New Wineskins series, Joy Abad put it this way: "Your capacity to recognize and receive from the Holy Spirit is directly proportional to how much time you spend with Jesus." The disciples and the Pharisees both knew the Torah inside and out, but the disciples had been with Jesus day by day, eating with him, watching him, following him. That accumulated time is what gave them the capacity to sense something new was happening and trust it rather than resist it. Joy drew on her own experience of close friendship to make the point that intimacy in any relationship is simply the product of time, and that holds just as true with Jesus.
The teaching moved to 2 Chronicles 20, where Jehoshaphat faces an overwhelming enemy coalition. His first move is not a strategy session. He calls a fast, gathers everyone, and stands before God recounting what God had already done for Israel and holding him to those promises. The prayer in that passage, "We do not know what to do, but our eyes are on you," captures exactly the posture Joy was describing: not a backup plan, not logic talking you out of something unconventional, just eyes fixed on God. Joy noted that the Hebrew word shema, usually translated as listen, actually carries obedience inside it. You cannot claim to have heard if you have not acted.
What Tribe teaches, then, is that busyness is not just a scheduling problem. It is a formation problem. When life crowds out the spiritual disciplines, reading scripture, prayer, fasting, a person gradually loses the capacity to be a new wineskin. The answer is not a technique but a relationship, and relationships cost time.
Taught from 2 Chronicles 20:1-24 · Matthew 12:1-14
“Your capacity to recognize and receive from the Holy Spirit is directly proportional to how much time you spend with Jesus.”
From New Wineskins ｜ Joy Abad
The passage taught · 2 Chronicles 20:1-24
1 After this, the children of Moab, the children of Ammon, and with them some of the Ammonites, came against Jehoshaphat to battle.
2 Then some came who told Jehoshaphat, saying, “A great multitude is coming against you from beyond the sea from Syria. Behold, they are in Hazazon Tamar” (that is, En Gedi).
3 Jehoshaphat was alarmed, and set himself to seek to Yahweh. He proclaimed a fast throughout all Judah.
4 Judah gathered themselves together to seek help from Yahweh. They came out of all the cities of Judah to seek Yahweh.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 10, 2025 New Wineskins ｜ Joy Abad Joy Bhatt teaches Tribe Church on how time spent with Jesus shapes our ability to recognize and follow where God is moving, even when it looks unconventional.