My Tribe Story: How God revealed His Heart of Love to me
As the Tribe Lagos celebrates her 5th anniversary, follow the Tribe stories, a blog series featuring. ordinary people who have experienced an extraordinary God through the Tribe Lagos — a community of friends, knowing God and making his love known to the world.
Towards the end 2019 my spiritual life came alive again after being out of fellowship with God for a long while. At this time, I found it hard to believe that God loves me, or that He is my father. Everything I felt about God was according to the religious paradigm I grew up in where God was portrayed as angry; always displeased and unhappy with us and our sins, and we have to grovel and beg to get his help, love or attention. But as I was studying God started teaching me about His love, righteousness by faith and sonship. It was very difficult to accept at first because it was very different from everything I knew about God in the past, but I started to see those themes consistently throughout the Bible.
Every time I went to church, I started to notice that the messages being preached were contradicting the things I was learning in my personal study and fellowship with God. I was very conflicted because the preachers were men of God that I’ve loved and respected for many years. But the more time I spent with God — especially during the pandemic lockdown, the more I learnt about His love and my sonship, the more freedom and warmth I felt in my soul. Whenever I listened to my former teachers, it felt completely contrary to the love and warmth and freedom I was coming to enjoy. So eventually I stopped joining the church(es). But my fellowship with God got much better, and I had a few foreign ministries online that I connected to and learnt from especially in line with what God was teaching me.
After over a year of not going to any church, my wife and I decided to visit the Tribe. We knew about The Tribe from another ministry that it is affiliated with. We immediately knew that this was our church. For the first time since my new walk with God, I was in an environment where people believed and reflected the love of God. The teachings, the atmosphere, ‘the vibe’, the liberty of the Spirit was consistent with what God had been teaching me about his love. It was soooo beautiful and we decided to make it our family church, even though it was quite a distance from our house. The tangible, transformational effect that the message of God’s love was having was very beautiful to behold. There were so many people like me who had left traditional religious settings and have found safety and community in the beautiful atmosphere of God’s love that is intentionally being cultivated at The Tribe.
I was glad when they said to me, “Let us go to the house of the LORD.” — Psalm 122:1
I’m so happy I found this community. My personal journey with God has been amazing, but having a community of people that also believe the same thing, that’s priceless!
I’ve also had members of my family visit the church and they really enjoyed the tangible love and teachings reflecting that.
Written by IK Obi
Ik Obi is a tech expert, living and working in Lagos.
