What does Tribe teach about faith over feelings?
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 over feelings starts with a simple but uncomfortable observation: most people, including most Christians, wait to feel something before they praise God. Pastor Brian described this as the immature pattern, not a condemnation, but a starting point God wants to move us past. The natural assumption is that healing, peace, or direction come first, and praise follows as a response. The messages here push back on that order entirely.
Pastor Brian walked through Habakkuk 3:16-19, where the prophet lists everything that has gone wrong and then says 'yet I will rejoice.' That word for rejoice, Brian noted, carries a sense of jubilant, leaping celebration in the Hebrew. The image he held up for the room was someone jumping for joy not because the answer had arrived, but because they were confident it was coming. Job carried the same posture. Seeing none of the things promised, Job still said he would put his hope in the Lord. Brian pointed to that as praise arriving before the fulfillment, not after it. When the question of feelings came up directly, whether it feels hypocritical to praise God when you simply do not feel like it, Brian used a train analogy: most people run their lives with emotions as the engine and their mouth following behind. The maturity these passages are pointing toward puts faith in front.
The gathered quotes from that morning say it plainly. When Lee raised the tension of feeling like a hypocrite, Brian answered, "Those are your feelings. They're real. They're true. But the greater truth is, I am going to praise the Lord even if I feel hypocritical." And underneath all of it sits the conviction that God's promises in Isaiah 57 are covenant promises rooted in who God is, not in what his people have done to deserve them. The 'I will' of those verses carries no deadline. Brian captured the posture that lives inside that uncertainty with a phrase from the congregation that morning: "He ain't done it yet, but he gonna."
Taught from Habakkuk 3:16-19 · Isaiah 57:18-19 · Job 13:15 · Philippians 4:4 · Psalm 23
“Though he slay me, yet will I praise him.”
From His Praise on Our Lips
The passage taught · Habakkuk 3:16-19
16 I heard, and my body trembled. My lips quivered at the voice. Rottenness enters into my bones, and I tremble in my place, because I must wait quietly for the day of trouble, for the coming up of the people who invade us.
17 For though the fig tree doesn’t flourish, nor fruit be in the vines; the labor of the olive fails, the fields yield no food; the flocks are cut off from the fold, and there is no herd in the stalls:
18 yet I will rejoice in Yahweh. I will be joyful in the God of my salvation!
19 Yahweh, the Lord, is my strength. He makes my feet like deer’s feet, and enables me to go in high places. For the music director, on my stringed instruments.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- February 13, 2023 His Praise on Our Lips Brian Hunter walks through Isaiah 57 and challenges his church to let praise lead faith, not follow it, even before God's promises show up in real life.