What does Tribe teach about finding clarity?
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 finding clarity starts with a conviction Brian has returned to repeatedly: that God never allows a complex situation to arrive without also placing clarity inside it. The image he uses is a gift bag. The tissue paper is always more visible than the present, but the present is always there. The question is whether, when complexity arrives, a person presses into it looking for what God has placed inside it, or retreats into numbness and distraction. Brian says, "there will never be a gift bag full of lots of tissue paper complexity that god does not place a beautiful present of clarity in there."
The teaching draws heavily from two biblical scenes. In John 18, Brian walked the congregation through the arrest of Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane and asked them to feel the genuine chaos of the scene before trying to apply anything to it. Soldiers, a betrayal, a fisherman swinging a sword, a cosmic moment that almost no one present understood. His point was that the lens a person uses to read a situation determines whether they can see the clarity God has placed inside it. The soldiers saw a criminal. Peter saw a threat. Jesus, John says, fully realized what was unfolding. The Exodus 3 teaching pressed this further, sitting with Moses as an eighty-year-old fugitive alone in the desert before a burning bush that might have felt like judgment finally catching up with him. Brian said, "God often places clarity right in the midst of great pain."
What runs underneath both messages is the idea that clarity is not something you find by escaping hard circumstances. It is something God hides inside them, and it tends to appear to people who are being faithful with ordinary things, who slow down enough to actually look, and who press in rather than checking out when life gets complicated.
Taught from Exodus 3:1-6 · John 18:1-14 · Deuteronomy 33:13-16 · 1 Corinthians 1:18-31 · Isaiah 43:10-13
“God often places clarity right in the midst of great pain.”
From The Burning Bush: Clarity in Complexity
The passage taught · Deuteronomy 33:13-16
13 About Joseph he said, “His land is blessed by Yahweh, for the precious things of the heavens, for the dew, for the deep that couches beneath,
14 for the precious things of the fruits of the sun, for the precious things that the moon can yield,
15 for the best things of the ancient mountains, for the precious things of the everlasting hills,
16 for the precious things of the earth and its fullness, the good will of him who lived in the bush. Let this come on the head of Joseph, on the crown of the head of him who was separated from his brothers.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- March 11, 2024 The Burning Bush: Clarity in Complexity Brian Hunter explores how God places clarity inside pain, using Moses at the burning bush and the crown of thorns to show what to look for in hard times.
- March 10, 2024 The Burning Bush A Wyoming pastor explores Moses and the burning bush, connecting ancient thorns to the crown of Christ, and asking what clarity God hides inside our pain.
- February 19, 2024 The Lens, the Light, and the Landscape Brian Hunter walks through John 18 to show how the right lens, light, and footing in Jesus bring clarity when life gets complicated and overwhelming.
- February 18, 2024 The Lens, The Light, and The Landscape Brian Hunter walks through John 18 to show how the right lens, light, and footing in Jesus can bring clarity when life gets complicated and overwhelming.