What does Tribe teach about faith and action?
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 faith and action starts with a simple but demanding idea: God's promises are always guaranteed, but they are not always automatic. Brian brought this out of Psalm 37:34, a verse he said the Lord placed on his heart in December as a word for the congregation heading into 2023. The promise is real, but it waits for participation.
Brian spent a significant portion of the message in Hebrews 11, working through the action words the chapter uses to describe people who saw God move. He paused on one word that seemed out of place among the rest: received. His point was that receiving is not passive. He used Sarah and Abram as the example. God promised them a child and gave Abram the ability to father one, but had Abram not acted, the child of promise would not have come. God always invites us into the fulfillment of his promises, and that invitation asks something of us. Brian says, "God's promises are always guaranteed, but they are not always automatic."
The congregation also wrestled with the danger of going quiet on a promise before God does. Brian returned to the story of Zechariah, who had prayed for a child for years and had, by the evidence of the text, quietly given up. The angel had to remind him of the promise. God does not forget what he has spoken, but we can drift from it. Someone in the room pressed the point further, noting that you have to know what the promise actually is before you can act on it, because action without a word from God is just self-directed effort. Brian called that an accurate return to the text. He also noted, quoting Bill Johnson, that "sometimes it takes the Lord a long time to act suddenly," and that impatience is one of the ways people let go of promises they were meant to hold onto.
Taught from Psalm 37:34 · Hebrews 11:32-34 · Hebrews 11:11 · Hebrews 12:1-2 · Matthew 7:13-14
“God's promises are always guaranteed, but they are not always automatic.”
From Travel Steady Along His Path
The passage taught · Hebrews 11:11
11 By faith, even Sarah herself received power to conceive, and she bore a child when she was past age, since she counted him faithful who had promised.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- January 16, 2023 Travel Steady Along His Path Brian Hunter walks Tribe through Psalm 37:34, exploring how God's promises are guaranteed but never automatic, and what it looks like to actively wait on the Lord.