What does Tribe teach about unanswered prayer?
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 unanswered prayer starts with a distinction that Pastor Brian drew from Isaiah 62: the promises of God are not in question, but they do not arrive on their own. Brian says, "The promises of god are always guaranteed but they are not automatic." That gap between the guarantee and the arrival is exactly where persistent prayer lives, and the series through Isaiah 62 treated that gap not as a sign of God's indifference but as an invitation to keep pressing.
Brian used two parables from Luke to show what that pressing looks like in practice. The friend who knocks at midnight and the widow who wears down the unjust judge are both portraits of someone who refuses to stop asking. He also pushed back on the instinct to stay quiet so as not to bother God. Brian says, "If you think that you don't want to bother god with your problems, that's actually an issue of pride in your life." The teaching treated that reluctance not as humility but as a failure to take God at his word.
One phrase from that series stayed in the room: "Our prayers don't come with tracking numbers." Brian used it to name the particular discomfort of not knowing where a prayer is in the process or when it will land. The Isaiah 62 watchmen are told to give God no rest until he makes good on his word, and Brian's point was that this is still the posture. Persistence is not a lack of trust. It is what trust looks like when the answer has not come yet.
Taught from Isaiah 62:6-7 · Luke 18:1-8 · Luke 11:5-13 · Isaiah 62:1-12
“The promises of god are always guaranteed but they are not automatic.”
From The Power of Persistence in Prayer
The passage taught · Deuteronomy 13:1-5
1 If a prophet or a dreamer of dreams arises among you, and he gives you a sign or a wonder,
2 and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, “Let us go after other gods” (which you have not known) “and let us serve them”;
3 you shall not listen to the words of that prophet, or to that dreamer of dreams; for Yahweh your God is testing you, to know whether you love Yahweh your God with all your heart and with all your soul.
4 You shall walk after Yahweh your God, fear him, keep his commandments, and obey his voice, and you shall serve him, and cling to him.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- December 11, 2023 The Power of Persistence in Prayer Brian Hunter walks through Isaiah 62 and Luke 11 and 18 on persistent prayer, holding God to his word, and praying with shameless audacity until he answers.
Mentioned along the way
- August 23, 2026 You Can't Say That About Women, Jesus A Canaanite woman refuses to be dismissed, and Jesus calls it great faith. Brian Hunter looks at what Jesus really meant when he said things that would get him canceled.