What does Tribe teach about still small voice?
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 the still small voice starts with a simple observation: God does not compete with the noise around us. Pastor Brian has taught that Elijah's experience in 1 Kings 19 is the pattern, where God was not in the wind, the earthquake, or the fire, only in the quiet that followed. Brian says God's posture is not to shout over the clamor but to wait for genuine attention, and one way the congregation put it was that a good teacher goes quiet to get a class's attention rather than yelling over it. Brian's own word for this is that God "refuses to compete. What I have to say is so valuable, so life giving, I'm not going to compete with the clamor of other voices."
The teaching also makes clear why a whisper is possible at all. Brian has described it this way: God has placed the hardware for spirit-to-spirit communication inside every believer, what he once called a built-in channel that opens fully after someone comes to faith. Before that, he taught, the only signal coming through is the Spirit's call to repent. After, the channel carries everything the Spirit wants to say. The closeness that makes a whisper work is the point. As Brian put it, "Why could he hear a whisper? Because God is so close to you. He doesn't need to come in from the outside because he's there coming from the inside."
Hearing that voice, Tribe teaches, is not a gift handed to a select few but a skill every person in the room has the same capacity to grow in. Brian opened the series by asking the congregation directly, and nearly every hand went up for skill over gift. The reasoning is plain: if it were a gift, some people simply would not have it. Because it is a skill, the responsibility to develop it falls on everyone equally. That means learning to distinguish the still small voice from the competing noise of our own internal chatter, the spirit of the age, and the enemy's voice, which Brian said are the three things that crowd it out.
Taught from 1 Kings 19:11-13 · John 16:13 · Hebrews 3:15 · Jeremiah 33:3 · Hosea 2:14
“He refuses to compete. What I have to say is so valuable, so life giving, I'm not going to compete with the clamor of other voices.”
From The Revelation of His Word
The passage taught · 1 John 2:26-29
26 These things I have written to you concerning those who would lead you astray.
27 As for you, the anointing which you received from him remains in you, and you don’t need for anyone to teach you. But as his anointing teaches you concerning all things, and is true, and is no lie, and even as it taught you, you will remain in him.
28 Now, little children, remain in him, that when he appears, we may have boldness, and not be ashamed before him at his coming.
29 If you know that he is righteous, you know that everyone who practices righteousness has been born of him.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- June 26, 2023 The Revelation of His Word Brian Hunter explores how God speaks through Scripture and the Holy Spirit, drawing on 1 Kings 19 and John 16 to show why that still, small voice matters more than we realize.
- June 12, 2023 Still Small Voice Brian Hunter leads Tribe through an honest conversation about learning to hear God's voice, covering the competing voices that drown it out and how to tell them apart.