What does Tribe teach about faith in hard times?
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 faith in hard times starts with memory. In the December 2022 Pecky Day message, Brian walked the congregation through Habakkuk 3:1-2, where the prophet prays that God would help his people again as he did in years gone by. The point Brian kept returning to was simple: you cannot ask God to do it again if you have never kept a record of the first time. He gave three reasons that remembering God's past work matters. It gets your mind off the problem. It fixes your heart on the one who provided. And it builds genuine faith that he will move again. The Hunter family's own Pecky Day story, where a lost tropical bird and a $900 reward matched an $900 shortfall almost to the dollar, was the lived example behind the teaching. Lissa was careful to add that the provision did not just fall from the sky. There were steps of obedience along the way before the money ever appeared.
Jay's message on where you hang your trust pressed the same question from a different angle. Working from Numbers 14, he showed how the Israelites had already seen God work and still fell apart the moment the spies' report frightened them. Their problem was not a lack of evidence. It was where they were looking. Jay named three places people tend to park their faith in hard times: circumstances, other people, and God. Circumstances are passive, he said, and fear becomes contagious when you simply go along with the mood around you. Trusting other people involves more agency but every person will eventually fail you. Jay put it plainly: as long as your hat is somewhere else, you are playing someone else's game. "The enemy gets to us by taking our hat. That's how they steal our heart away."
Taken together, the teaching at Tribe on faith in hard times does not offer a formula for making the difficulty go away. It offers two movements: look back at what God has actually done, and make a deliberate choice about where your trust is sitting right now. As Brian framed the Habakkuk passage, "Remembering yesterday's victories arms us with strength for today's battles." The stone-pulling moment in Joshua 4, which someone from the congregation brought into the Pecky Day conversation, captures the same instinct. You mark the moment so that later, when it is hard again, there is something solid to point to.
Taught from Habakkuk 3:1-2 · Habakkuk 3:17-19 · Numbers 14:1-12 · Joshua 4:1-7 · Colossians 3:2
“The enemy gets to us by taking our hat. That's how they steal our heart away.”
From How to Hang Your Hat
The passage taught · 2 Corinthians 13:5
5 Examine your own selves, whether you are in the faith. Test your own selves. Or don’t you know as to your own selves, that Jesus Christ is in you?—unless indeed you are disqualified.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- July 15, 2024 How to Hang Your Hat Jay walks Tribe through Numbers 14 to show how trusting circumstances or people instead of God leaves you chasing your hat, never finding a place to hang it.
- December 5, 2022 Pecky Day at Tribe Brian Hunter shares how a tropical bird, a reward sign, and $900 taught his family to remember God's provision, and why Tribe celebrates that story every year.
Mentioned along the way
- August 25, 2024 Resisting The Rut A pastor and congregation in Jackson Hole dig into Moses at the burning bush and Jesus walking on water to explore what we miss when we stay stuck in a rut.