What does Tribe teach about identity in god?
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 identity in God starts with the conviction that God speaks to who he actually made you to be, not to who you think you are or who others say you are. Pastor Brian makes this plain in his teaching on Gideon, where a man hiding in a winepress, convinced he is the least person in the weakest clan, is addressed by God as a mighty warrior. The pattern Brian draws from the text is that God is not confused about your identity even when you are. As Brian puts it, "God will always, always, always, always speak to who he created you to be."
This teaching connects identity closely to hard seasons. In the message on Matthew 4, the sequence the speaker traces is deliberate: Jesus receives a public declaration of his identity at his baptism, goes directly into the wilderness, and comes out directly into his ministry. The wilderness does not erase or contradict what was spoken over him. It is part of how that identity gets tested and confirmed. The same logic applied to Gideon, who had to work through both bitterness and self-doubt before he could move in what God said about him.
Both messages treat confusion about identity as something God is willing to meet and work with rather than a disqualifier. Gideon argued back. He asked why questions. He pointed to his own weakness. None of that stopped the conversation. The teaching at Tribe is that God already knows where you are, including when you are threshing wheat somewhere wheat was never meant to be threshed, and he starts from who he made you, not from how you see yourself.
Taught from Judges 6:1-27 · Matthew 4:1-11 · Joshua 24:16-24 · Matthew 3, final verses · Luke 10:19
“Being uncomfortable is not the same thing as being abandoned.”
From Uncomfortable Is Not the Same as Abandoned
The passage taught · 1 Corinthians 10:13
13 No temptation has taken you except what is common to man. God is faithful, who will not allow you to be tempted above what you are able, but will with the temptation also make the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 19, 2024 Uncomfortable Is Not the Same as Abandoned Amanda Lack opens Matthew 4 with Tribe church in Jackson Hole, walking through Jesus in the wilderness and what his example means for the hard seasons we all face.
- February 27, 2023 Turn The Cat Around Week 2 Gideon hid in a winepress doing the wrong job in the wrong place. Pastor Brian Hunter looks at what happens when God calls you something you don't believe you are.