What does Tribe teach about surrender to 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 surrender starts with an ancient offering and works its way into the present. Brian Hunter spent several weeks in Leviticus 1, walking the congregation through the Olah offering, a free-will burnt offering that a worshiper brought not because a sin required it but out of gratitude, celebration, or the fulfillment of a vow. What set it apart from other offerings was that nothing came home. The entire animal, head, entrails, legs, everything, was consumed on the altar. Brian connected that picture directly to Romans 12:1 and Paul's call to present our bodies as living sacrifices. The direction of those mornings was always toward a moment of real, personal surrender, not a general agreement with the idea of it.
One detail from the text kept drawing the congregation back: the worshiper placed a hand on the animal's head before it was killed. That is not a small gesture. It is intimate, potentially frightening, and it represents a genuine transfer of will, a moment of choosing rather than a reflex. Brian also drew attention to why verse 8 puts the head on the altar first. The head is the seat of desire and will. When that goes up, he said, everything else follows more easily. The congregation also worked through the moment in John 12 where a woman's costly gift is called waste by Judas, and what that reveals about the difference between an offering that actually costs something and one that does not.
The thread underneath all of it is that surrender is not passive. It is the hardest and most deliberate act a person can bring. Brian says, "If everything is figured out, if we don't ever have to do anything hard, we don't really need the Lord." The Olah offering was free-will by definition, which means it required the worshiper to show up and mean it. That same quality is what Paul is after in Romans 12, and it is what Tribe holds up as the shape of a life given over to God.
Taught from Leviticus 1:1-9 · Romans 12:1 · John 12 · Luke 17:17-19 · 1 Samuel 1
“He held nothing back from you.”
From The Olah Offering
The passage taught · 1 Samuel 1
1 Now there was a certain man of Ramathaim Zophim, of the hill country of Ephraim, and his name was Elkanah, the son of Jeroham, the son of Elihu, the son of Tohu, the son of Zuph, an Ephraimite.
2 He had two wives. The name of one was Hannah, and the name of other Peninnah. Peninnah had children, but Hannah had no children.
3 This man went up out of his city from year to year to worship and to sacrifice to Yahweh of Armies in Shiloh. The two sons of Eli, Hophni and Phinehas, priests to Yahweh, were there.
4 When the day came that Elkanah sacrificed, he gave to Peninnah his wife, and to all her sons and her daughters, portions;
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- March 31, 2025 The Olah Offering A Wyoming church works through Leviticus, exploring what it means to hold nothing back from God and offer your whole life as a living sacrifice.
- March 30, 2025 The Ola Offering A Wyoming pastor walks through Leviticus 1 and the Olah offering, a burnt sacrifice consumed completely, and asks what it looks like to give God everything.
Mentioned along the way
- November 13, 2023 Throw Open the Gates Brian Hunter walks through Isaiah 62, exploring what it means to clear the road for God's people, replace false banners with God's love, and pray for Israel.
- February 20, 2023 Turn the Cat Around Week 1 - Turn and Live A Wyoming congregation wrestles with Ezekiel 18, the Asbury revival, and what it costs to stop asking God to change and turn your own heart around instead.