What does Tribe teach about obedience to god?

At Tribe, the teaching on obedience to God is rooted in the idea that the power in a calling comes not from self-invention but from surrender to something you did not choose for yourself. Brian has taught that when God commissions someone, as he did with Gideon in Judges 6, the direction is built into the call, and you cannot move toward it without actually moving. A congregation member named Bethany put it plainly during one of those gatherings: the power is in the obedience itself, and if we chose our own path, the power would belong to us rather than to God.

Brian has also pressed hard on what genuine obedience is not. Drawing from Romans 8 and Galatians 5, he has made the case that actions done outside of faith and the Spirit, no matter how religious they look on the surface, cannot please God. Brian says, "Dress it up however you will with religious bedazzlement. He sees right through it." The point is not to discourage effort but to locate where the effort is supposed to come from. In the framework he laid out in the "Walking in the Spirit" series, true obedience flows from the spirit in communion with God's Spirit, through the soul, and finally into action. When that order is reversed and a person acts from their own will or appetite first, even good deeds carry the wrong source.

The two themes, calling and the life of the Spirit, land in the same place for Tribe. Obedience is not rule-keeping for its own sake. It is the human being operating in the order God designed, at the timing God assigns, which is what Brian described elsewhere as stepping into God's rhythm rather than grinding away on one's own. That, he has said, is the difference between a sharp tool and a dull one.

Taught from Romans 8:1-16 · Judges 6:11-16 · Galatians 5:16-18 · 1 Corinthians 9:16 · Acts 26:16-18