What does Tribe teach about endurance?

At Tribe, the teaching on endurance starts with two cups. Brian has spent considerable time in the gospel accounts of Gethsemane and Golgotha, asking the congregation to hold three passages in mind at once: Jesus praying in the garden that the cup of suffering might pass from him, and then two accounts of the crucifixion in which soldiers offered Jesus wine mixed with myrrh, which he refused. The central question is why Jesus turned that second cup down, and what it means that he did. The first cup is the cup of suffering, which Brian describes not as punishment or the natural consequence of bad choices, but as discipline, delayed gratification, pressing into hard relationships, staying in prayer for things that have not happened yet, and trusting God's timing without knowing the next five steps. The second cup is the cup of escape, and Brian was blunt about what it actually is. Drawing on Roman historical sources, he described how latrines just outside the city gates were cleaned using sponges soaked in wine mixed with myrrh, and that what was offered to Jesus on the cross most likely came from that same practice. Brian says, "That cup of escape is really poo poo water." It looks like relief and feels like something you deserve, but it is not what it appears to be.

Brian has been equally direct about who God is in this picture. He says, "He is not sadistic. He is not cruel. He is not vindictive." God does not press to punish or satisfy his ego. The Greek word behind suffering carries the image of grapes being crushed to produce wine or olives being pressed to produce oil, and Brian pointed out that Gethsemane itself means pressing and crushing, so Jesus literally went to the garden of crushing, prayed through the weight of it, and then chose the cup anyway. The purpose of that pressing is to draw out what God already knows is inside a person. James 1:2-4 grounds this: the testing of faith produces perseverance, and perseverance produces maturity. Spiritual maturity, Brian has said more than once, is not measured by how long someone has been in church or how worn their Bible is, but by how much a person has actually drunk from this cup.

The same thread runs through Brian's earlier message on 1 Corinthians 9 and 10, where Paul counts off everything Israel had in the wilderness, all of them guided, all of them fed, all of them given the same miraculous provision, and then notes that most of them still did not finish. Getting started does not guarantee getting through. The comfort God offers, Brian said, is not a shorter distance or a closer finish line. It is strength supernaturally given to tired people so they can run one more mile, and that strength becomes available the moment someone stops running on their own and asks for it.

Taught from Matthew 26:36-39 · Mark 15:21-24 · James 1:2-4 · 1 Peter 5:10 · 1 Corinthians 9:24-27