What does Tribe teach about trusting god's timing?
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's timing starts with a simple observation from Exodus 13: when God led Israel out of Egypt, he did not take them the shortest route. He took them the long way, through the wilderness, and Pastor Brian Hunter is clear that this was not an oversight. The text names God, not Moses, not a committee, as the one doing the leading, and that word for leading shows up repeatedly in just a few verses. Brian traces three reasons for the longer road: protection, development, and giving the people time to learn what they would need for what was ahead. His honest admission is that his own first instinct when God redirects him away from where he wants to go is to throw a fit, and that learning to say thank you for the long way around is a mark of growing maturity.
The image he kept returning to was the pillar of cloud. In a landscape with almost no shade and a brutal sun, being under that cloud made possible things Israel could never have managed on their own, including traveling at night. The cloud was not just comfort. It was the presence and leadership of God making the unnatural possible. Brian connects that cloud directly to the Holy Spirit, which is what the church has today in its place. If you are in a season that feels circuitous or delayed, the teaching here is that the route itself may be the point, and that staying under God's leadership rather than striking out on a faster path you can see is the whole posture the passage is calling for.
That posture shows up in the 2023 message as well, where Brian walked through what it looks like to trust God before the promised thing arrives, not after. Drawing on Habakkuk and Job, the teaching is that mature faith brings praise before the fulfillment, not as a reward for it. He does not dismiss the difficulty of that. When the question of feeling hypocritical came up, he took it seriously. The train analogy he used puts faith as the engine and emotion as the car that follows, not the other way around. The point is not to perform a feeling you do not have, but to hold on to a greater truth than the one your circumstances are telling you right now.
Taught from Exodus 13:17-22 · Isaiah 63:11-14 · Habakkuk 3:16-19 · Job 13:15 · Isaiah 57:18-19
“You can never step back into the shade because you've missed it and you've blown it. Let me tell you that is a lie of the devil.”
From Stay in the Shade
The passage taught · 2 Thessalonians 3:16
16 Now may the Lord of peace himself give you peace at all times in all ways. The Lord be with you all.
World English Bible
Messages that go deeper
- August 3, 2026 Stay in the Shade Tribe church marks its last Sunday at the TMC with a message from Exodus 13 on following God's leading, just as Israel followed the cloud through the wilderness.
- February 13, 2023 His Praise on Our Lips Brian Hunter walks through Isaiah 57 and challenges his church to let praise lead faith, not follow it, even before God's promises show up in real life.