What does Tribe teach about discerning god's voice?
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 discerning God's voice starts with a simple but important distinction: hearing God is a skill to develop, not a gift handed to a select few. Pastor Brian opened from his own experience as a youth pastor in Tulsa, walking a property and begging for an audible word or a visible sign, and getting neither. What came instead was a quiet interior question reminding him that God is a spirit who communicates spirit to spirit. That moment, he said, settled something in him, and the conviction he brought into the room was that every person there has the same capacity to grow in this, and the same responsibility to do so.
Before getting to how God speaks, Brian named the three voices that crowd his out. The first is our own internal noise, including the conscience God has wired into every person as a kind of compass bearing toward him, one that can be dulled over years of being ignored. The second is the voice of the world, what the New Testament calls the spirit of the age, which can sound reasonable and even caring but cannot be followed alongside the clear principles of scripture. The third is the enemy's voice, which Brian placed largely inside the same circle as the world's voice, with deception as its native language. He was direct that individual Bible verses can be lifted out of context to say almost anything, which is exactly why wise counsel from people who know the whole of scripture matters so much.
The frame for all of it was a real decision the congregation was making in real time, whether the Virginian was the right long-term home for Tribe. That combination of teaching and lived discernment was not incidental. It was the point. Brian says God told him, "I've given you a built in walkie talkie," meaning the capacity to hear is already there. The work is learning to tune in, filter out the competing noise, and trust that God speaks to ordinary people who are paying attention.
Taught from 1 Kings 19:11-13 · Hebrews 3:15 · Hosea 2:14 · Jeremiah 33:3 · Philippians 4:6-7
“Sin takes you further than you wanna go, costs you more than you wanna spend, and keeps you longer than you wanna stay.”
From Still Small Voice
The passage taught · 1 Kings 19:11-13
11 He said, “Go out, and stand on the mountain before Yahweh.” Behold, Yahweh passed by, and a great and strong wind tore the mountains, and broke in pieces the rocks before Yahweh; but Yahweh was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake; but Yahweh was not in the earthquake.
12 After the earthquake a fire passed; but Yahweh was not in the fire. After the fire, there was a still small voice.
13 When Elijah heard it, he wrapped his face in his mantle, went out, and stood in the entrance of the cave. Behold, a voice came to him, and said, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- June 12, 2023 Still Small Voice Brian Hunter leads Tribe through an honest conversation about learning to hear God's voice, covering the competing voices that drown it out and how to tell them apart.