What does Tribe teach about trusting god hard times?
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 trusting God in hard times is grounded in the story of Joseph, and it centers on a single word: meanwhile. Brian walked through Genesis 37 and showed how the same set of circumstances looked completely different depending on whose eyes were seeing it. The brothers thought they had solved their problem. Jacob was certain his son was dead. And Joseph was being carried off to Egypt with no say in any of it. But while all of that was happening at the human level, God was already moving the story forward in a reality none of them could see.
The phrase Brian kept returning to comes straight out of Genesis 39. While Jacob mourned and the brothers covered their tracks, God was quietly positioning Joseph for everything that would come next. Pastor Brian read from Psalm 139 in the Passion Translation to describe what that kind of God looks like: one who goes into the future to prepare the way and follows behind to spare us from the harm of the past. That is the God of the meanwhile, always at work behind circumstances that look, from the ground level, like they are falling apart. Brian says, "Meanwhile, God was up to something."
The harder edge of the teaching is that this kind of trust is not easy or comfortable. Brian acknowledged that most people would prefer to see God at work in more obvious places, and he did not soften that. As he put it, "Few of us are willing to endure the pit or the prison where it is most magnified." But the consistent thread across both messages is that God's activity in a person's life is not suspended when things look like disaster. The invitation is to hold on to what Brian put plainly: "We can assume the best about God. There's no one else we can really do that with, even our family."
Taught from Genesis 37 · Genesis 39:21 · Psalms 139:5-6 · James (unspecified verse)
“Meanwhile, God was up to something.”
From God of the Meanwhile
The passage taught · Genesis 37
1 Jacob lived in the land of his father’s travels, in the land of Canaan.
2 This is the history of the generations of Jacob. Joseph, being seventeen years old, was feeding the flock with his brothers. He was a boy with the sons of Bilhah and Zilpah, his father’s wives. Joseph brought an evil report of them to their father.
3 Now Israel loved Joseph more than all his children, because he was the son of his old age, and he made him a coat of many colors.
4 His brothers saw that their father loved him more than all his brothers, and they hated him, and couldn’t speak peaceably to him.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- September 9, 2024 God of the Meanwhile Brian Hunter walks through Genesis 37 to show how God is quietly at work behind every painful, confusing circumstance, even when the evidence seems to say otherwise.
- September 8, 2024 God of the Meanwhile A pastor and congregation in Jackson Hole work through the story of Joseph to explore how God is quietly at work even when circumstances look hopeless.