Intimacy

All of us deeply yearn to be seen, known, and loved as we really are - that's what true intimacy is all about. The digital world can give the illusion of intimacy, but a screen will never be able to satisfy what only Jesus can. In this message we unpack what intimacy with Jesus looks like, and how that then overflows into the rest of our lives. 

For more info about RPYA check us out on Instagram @rpyoungadults or at our landing page on rockypeak.org

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey guys. My name's Brianna. I am one of an attendees of RBYA. But I am going to do the reading for us today, and we're going to be opening up to Psalm 139. So I'll give you a minute to open up your Bibles. Okay. Psalm 139. You have searched me, Lord, and you know me. You know when I sit and when I rise. You perceived my thoughts from afar. You discern my going out and my lying down. You are familiar with all my ways. Before a word is on my tongue, you, Lord, know it completely. You hem me in behind and before, and you lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me, too lofty for me to attain. Where can I go from your spirit? Where can I flee from your presence? If I go up to the heavens, you are there. If I make my bed in the depths, you are there. If I rise on the wings of the dawn, if I settle on the far side of the sea, even there your hand will guide me. Your right hand will hold me fast. If I say, Surely, the darkness will hide me and the light become night around me. Even the darkness will not be dark to you. The night will shine like the day, for the darkness is as light is for the darkness is as light to you. For you created my inmost being. You knit me together in my mother's womb. You pray I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made. Your works are wonderful. I know that full well. My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in a seek in the secret place, when I was woven together in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed body. All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be.

SPEAKER_01 2:01

Thank you, Brie. That was amazing. You know, as I'm listening to you, I'm reflecting on what a soothing voice you have. And now my jarring voice gets to sound like a jackhammer coming up here. Hey, it is good to be with you once again, RPYA. For those of you here last week, I missed being with you guys, but as you saw in that video, I had some good family things to be a part of. And several of you are here for the very first time tonight. And if that's your case, welcome to RPYA. If we haven't had a chance to meet yet, my name is Jeremy, the young adult pastor here, and that's my youngest son, Isaiah, and that's what we were doing last week. My son is convinced he is going to be the WWE F world champion. So we were down at the Staple Center watching professional wrestling. Dude, we saw a dude staple a birthday card to another dude's chest. It was amazing. It was a great guy time to hang together. But I'm excited to be back home with you. And for those of you that are here for the first time, I want to tell you a little bit about what you've gotten yourself into. RPYA stands for Rocky Peak Young Adults. We are a young adult ministry for anybody the ages 18 to 25. And we meet here in this building every Sunday night at 6.30. And we exist because we know that Jesus wants to unleash a movement of passionate Christ-following young adults. And by unleashing a movement of you, it's going to change your generation and the world around you. And so a way that we partner with Jesus' desire to unleash you is by creating these weekly spaces to be a place of encounter for you to come as you are, as a real person, to be able to encounter the real Jesus. And some of you are walking into this room on fire, growing and passionate. Awesome. We're glad you're here. Some of you are walking into this room beat up, numb, discouraged. I'm glad you're here. Some of you are walking into this room going, I don't even know how I got here. I don't believe in this, I don't believe in God. I'm glad you're here. Wherever you're at in that spectrum, my hope is that this is the beginning of a relationship in encounter. My hope is that this is the beginning of your relationship with a church community. Because being able to commit to a church community consistently is when real growth happens. And so we're gonna go into a time of teaching. This is an opportunity not for me to speak at you, but for me to learn with you as we open up God's word, which is living and active, and see what He wants to say to us. To help us with that time, you probably sat down near a pen and a note sheet. I don't remember things, so I like to write them down as we go through. And lastly, for those of you that weren't here at the top of the night, I would love to invite you to throw your phones on Do Not Disturb so that this becomes just a sacred space between you and what God wants to say. So let's go ahead and pray together. You would close your eyes. If you would just take a deep breath as you sit. And before I say anything else, would you just, in the stillness of your own heart, would you just pray, Jesus, I want to see more of you. King Jesus, that is our prayer. We want to see more of you while we're in this place. We want to see more of you when we leave this place. We want to see more of you as we go back to our family or our friends, as we go to our weeks, as we start our Mondays. We want to see more of you in our schools or in our Starbuckses or in our places of work. We want to see more of you in our good and in our joys. We want to see more of you in our pain and our trials. We want to see more of you in our temptations and our sins. Jesus, we need more of you. And so as we go into this time of teaching, we don't need to ask you to speak. You already are. We are just choosing to commit to listen to what you have to say. And finally, as a communicator, I pray that I would become less. I don't want anybody walking out here going, Man, Dre, he's a good speaker. I want people walking out here going, Jesus is an incredible king. And so thank you for this opportunity, Jesus. In your name, we all said, Amen. So in June of 1998, which was a long time ago, but I'm old, I was 16 years old, going into my junior year of high school, and a very unique movie came out starring Jim Carrey called The Truman Show. Have anybody ever heard of this movie, The Truman Show? And if you've ever, if you've not heard of it, the premise of it is that Jim Carrey's character, Truman, was adopted as a baby by a television studio. And what they decided to do was they decided to make a television show of his entire life, in essence, the very first reality show. And so by the time we come into the Jim Carrey character, he's now in his late 30s and he's lived his with his entire life 24-7 broadcast to a worldwide audience. But the twist is he doesn't know. And so everything about his life is a lie. His city and where he lives in is a giant movie studio. His friendships and his jobs, his marriage, they're all actors. He has no idea that his life is the most popular show in the entire world. And we're gonna come back to this movie a little bit later on in the message. But what I want to point out is almost 30 years ago, the most fantastical, the thing that seemed like the most, the most fantasy of the entire movie was the idea of someone's entire life being streamed for other people to see. And then as we come to today in 2026, what was for me as a teenager fantasy has become for your generation pretty normal, huh? We live in an era where you've been raised in form to pretty much have cameras on you at all times. You have been raised in an era in which it is very normal for your entertainment, vloggers, influencers, reality TV to all give the premise that you are being invited to see and participate someone's quote, real life, the day-to-day. It is normal in your generation for you to post your life, to film your life, to share the intricacies and the intimacies of your life with the world around you, people you know and people you don't. One of the things that I find incredibly strange, that is incredibly normal in your generation, is that it is normal for no less than 50 people to have your location at all times. Why? You're just inviting being murdered at that point. But isn't that normal in this day and age? To open up Instagram, to open up YouTube, to open up TikTok, and there's a video of somebody telling, showing you their morning routine. There's a video of somebody crying on camera about something that hurt them. There's a video of somebody angry and telling you who they're angry with and why they're angry. There's videos whilst people are driving, which come on, guys. There's videos in places of work, there's videos where you're not supposed to. Because this idea that our whole lives are meant to be broadcast is absolutely normal in your day and age. And I want to ask this rhetorical, which means no answer, just think about it. I want to ask a rhetorical question. In fact, it's a question we've been asking this entire series: how is the digital world shaping you? How is the digital world forming you? Just because something is normal, does it automatically mean that it's good for you? And that's really what we've been talking about in this whole series. How is the digital world shaping you? Because when it comes to our lives being broadcast, when it comes to the fact that your generation is pretty much living the Truman Show each and every day, or watching other people live it, what we realize is that it is shaping us to believe in illusion. And the illusion of a life that is broadcast, quote 24-7, is that it is an illusion that we are known. But is that true? And that's what I want to unpack with you this evening. And so for those of you that are here for the very first time, again, I'm really glad you're here. This is week three in the final week of a series called Digital Reset. And here is our heart. The digital world can be a good thing. The digital world can be a great thing, but the digital world is a lousy king because the digital world cannot give us what our hearts truly need or long for. And so the reality is we are so immersed in the digital world that we haven't realized that not only has it taken over many of our lives, but it's become incredibly destructive to many of our lives. And so the goal of this series is to be able to equip you to reset your relationship with the digital world. Hear me, the goal is not to go back to the Stone Age. I love my Apple music and Google Maps and all of those things. The goal is not to go back to the Stone Age, but the goal is for us to keep the digital world in its proper place. And so, week one, we talked about the fact that the digital world cannot give us a true narrative, cannot give us the true story of our identity. Only God can, and he's already spoken it over you. That you are a beloved son, you are a beloved daughter, you are worth dying for, and he wants to breathe new life into you each and every day. Then last week, our friend Trent Norgis talked about connection. The digital world may be a great way to communicate, but it's a terrible way to connect. It will never replace real life relationships. And one of the most important real life relationships is church community that Trent was encouraging you. Don't come to church. Don't come to Rocky Peak or your home church in the morning. Don't come to RPW just because it's convenient. Come because you're choosing to grow and do life with these beloved weirdos around you. And tonight, we're looking at the third illusion, this idea of being known. In other words, it's the word intimacy. What is the digital world trying to offer you when it comes to intimacy? And why does it fall short? And so let's define our terms a little bit because I'm willing to bet that for many of us, when we hear the word intimacy, we usually have only heard it or we think about it in the context of sexual intimacy, of having sex together. And that can be a core component of it, but it's not the sole definition of that word. We need a bigger and a stronger understanding. So there in your note sheet, you've got a section titled A Bigger Definition. The first fill-in was the digital world offers the illusion of intimacy. The digital world offers the illusion of intimacy. And then the second fill-in is I want to present a definition of intimacy. Intimacy is being known and loved at the core of your identity. Intimacy is being known and loved at the core of your identity. And so as I unpack that, it means that you are known and you are loved as you really are. We have been formed, not just by the digital world, but by pride and sin, to live life behind a mask, to put a persona in front and go, maybe this is what you want. Maybe this is what'll give me what I want. Maybe this will give my acceptance. And so many of us, we live in abject terror of the mask slipping off and people seeing who we really are. That is not intimacy. Intimacy is someone looking past the mask, seeing you as you are, and loving you as you are. And here's the beautiful truth about the gospel. You were created for intimacy. You were created to be seen, to be known, and to be loved by God the Father. You were created to see, to know, and love God in return. The problem is sin and rebellion that separated us from God. That's the gospel message. And when we lost our relationship with God, we lost our model and our definition of intimacy. But the problem is we still yearn to be known at our deepest level. We are still searching for intimacy, and we are listening to the world around us to give us a map, to give us a direction. How do I find a place where I'm known? And it keeps leading us to wrong place after wrong place, and it leads us to the illusion of it. And this has been a problem since before screens permeated our lives. But I feel like the digital world has taken that issue and has just raised the volume into it. Because when you're watching vloggers and influencers that seem like us, there's this temptation to be like, I know you. I know you. When you're putting your life on Instagram or YouTube or TikTok, the hope is someone knows me. But what I want to do is I want to make sure that we understand a key distinction. There is a big chasm between actually being known and knowing of someone. There is a huge chasm between actually being known and knowing of someone. If you think of a celebrity that you admire or follow, maybe they are an actor, a musician, an athlete of some kind. Let's say this is somebody that you've been following their career or their work your entire life. You have seen movie after movie, you have seen interviews with them, you have even read books about them, but you have never met them in person. You know a lot of facts and information about them. You know of them, but you don't actually know them. But isn't there a temptation to believe that we do? And it's true with what we put out in the digital world. We are sharing facts about ourselves. We are sharing circumstances we're facing, we are sharing emotions that we're feeling, and we are throwing it out into the digital world, and people are knowing of things of us. Maybe they'll put a comment to be like, yeah, you're right, or I'm so sorry, or you're right, that person sucks, or I'm here for you, brother or sister. And those are nice and those are cute, but they are not making us known. Because again, while the goal is not the Stone Age or anything like that, the digital world will never give us what satisfies what never satisfy the longing of our hearts. The digital world is not strong enough. And so let's talk about the limitations of knowing of versus actually being known. And so there in your note sheet, you've got a couple of fill-ins. The first one is this the digital world is always gonna have distance. Meaning there is always gonna be a barrier between you and the people you're watching on screen, between those people and you. It's impossible to have intimacy through a screen. You know, I have my iPhone set up that every time it wakes, it picks a different picture in one of my libraries. And I love it because it shows me pictures of my wife, it shows me pictures of my kids, it shows me pictures of my pets present and departed, it shows me pictures of one of my favorite wrestlers, the Macha Man, Randy Savas, because that's how I roll. And so there's times when I see an awesome picture, and I'm like, oh, that's amazing. But that's all it is. There's a barrier. I can't do it. Maybe another picture comes up. Great, but there's a barrier. I could watch videos, but it's still not the same. It's kind of like watching life through a window, that if you're watching people on the other side of the window and you go and man, man, I wish I was there, I wish I was with you, I wish we can kind of see each other, but there's always a barrier in front of you, isn't there? That is the best the digital world is gonna be able to give you. A comment on an Instagram post is never gonna give you the feeling that real life relationships will. And so at best, the digital world is a window, but at worst it's a barrier. Keeping us from being known. That's not the first villain. The second villain is this. The digital world will always have a distortion. I don't know who needs to hear this tonight, but I believe the Holy Spirit has some of you here to hear this. And I hope that you hear it with the heart of a father that what you consider to be real online is not real. It's a distortion. Even with people's best intents, it's gonna be about 15 degrees off. It's not a real reflection of real life, and that's not to say that everybody online is evil and is trying to see, is trying to deceive you, although a lot of people really are. But let's break this down a little bit. In one area, a lot of the distortion of the digital world is that we're seeing the result, we're not seeing the process. We're seeing this myth of people going, it's just that easy. Just take the supplement, just do this, just do this, and you're gonna look like me. It's just this easy. This is the answer to the question. This would solve all politics, this would solve all racism, this would solve all this. It's just that easy. This is all God wants you to do. The one thing God wants you to do, and it's easy. Sometimes we see people's accomplishments, people post proudly, degrees, job opportunities, those are good things, but we're watching the result, and we have no idea what the process was to get there. I don't know if any of you have ever heard of a young woman named Sadie Robertson-Huff. Sadie Robertson-Huff is um a Christ follower, she's an author, she has a podcast, which is pretty awesome. Uh, she actually grew up as a kid on a television show, a reality show called Duck Dynasty. Um, Google it. I never had the patience for it, but I like her. And back in January, there's an annual gathering called Passion. Passion is the biggest national gathering for young adults. And so they were meeting in Texas in a baseball stadium and they gathered about 40,000 18 to 25 year olds. And she was being interviewed and she was talking about this distortion of people seeing the end result and not understanding the process. And she gave this example of her. Posted a story on Instagram of her and her three children. Her oldest is five, so three kids, five and under, baking cookies. And she's sharing that. I realize that people just see me starting it and people see us ending it, and people can walk away with this illusion, going, man, that was so smooth and so easy for them. And what I realized is what people didn't see. People didn't see the tears and the crying. People didn't see the fighting between the girls. People didn't see the disciplining and the timeout. People didn't see the first batch that got ruined. People didn't see me having to run out to the store and get even more ingredients. And what she's sharing, and as she's confessing, is people didn't see how hard and how messy this really is. And so what they got instead was a distortion. That is just that easy. That's one area that the digital world distorts. Another area is that honestly, we present not necessarily ourselves, but we present a version of ourselves we hope we were, we wish we were. We try to present an idealized version of yourself. And I'm not asking you to raise hands. But come on, have you ever stressed out about what you post because you want people to think something of you? Have you ever gone through multiple selfies just to find the right one? Have you ever edited the picture just so it could be the right picture? Have you ever taken a picture of your food and it wasn't quite lit well enough? So you take another picture of the burger and another and another and it's finally cold by the time you eat it. Because we want people to think something of us. I mean, this starts when we're teenagers, right? Sometimes we want to post in a way that makes people think we're older or more mature. Sometimes we post in a way to make people think that we're popular or we're successful, that we're attractive or sexy, that people want to be us. Sometimes we post in a way so that people think we've got the right opinions and the right positions on what's going on. I think all of us, myself included, can relate that there are times in which we've stressed with what we're gonna post on social media because we want to post it in a way that would make people think we're something we're currently not. And maybe that's something I could bel I could become if enough people start to believe it. But it's not real. It's not real, it's a distortion. And so the truth is both distance and distortion, they're an incomplete picture, they're a broken picture. They don't reflect truth. And so, what's the point I'm trying to get at when it comes to intimacy? The digital world, the best it can do is an offer knowing of. What God offers you is to be known. What God offers you is to be known and loved at the core of your being, and with that, God invites you to know and love Him in an intimate relationship. And so let's go back to those scriptures that Bree read over us at the beginning of our time of teaching. That's Psalm 139. And if you're newer to the Bible or unfamiliar, the Bible's broken up into two halves. The first half we call the Old Testament. And the longest book of the Bible is in the Old Testament. It's called the Psalms. It collects 150 individual psalms. And these psalms are works of art. They are a collection of songs and poems. They were considered the song book of ancient Israel. And so what we gather together to sing at the beginning of our service for ancient Israel, they would gather to sing these psalms. And what I love about the Psalms, why they're one of my favorite sections of scripture, is because it's a collection of real life experiences. It's a collection of real life people talking about life with its ups and downs and what it really means to follow after Jesus in a real way. The Psalms are raw, the Psalms are honest, the Psalms are authentic, and the Psalms are intimate. And so if we just go to the first verse that Brie read over, a Psalm 139.1, you have searched me, Lord, and you know me. And so we as we talk about the Lord inviting us into a relationship of intimacy with him, let's emphasize the fact that he knows me, that he knows you. And so what I want to do is I want to say something that's gonna sound like a duh point, but the reality is I don't think we think enough of it to understand, whoa, the implications, okay? So here's what the psalm is telling us. When it comes to you, God knows everything about you. Now, let me emphasize that word again. God knows everything about you. And again, intellectually like, yeah, I get it. He's God, he's all-knowing, he's got all knowledge. No, no, no, no. Let's think about all of the implications of this statement. God knows everything about you. That means that God in this moment knows all the good about you, knows how talented you are in certain areas, knows your hopes, knows your dreams, knows what you want in life, knows what you're best at. God sees that part of you. But it also means that in this moment, God knows the worst parts of you. God knows your sin. God knows your secrets, God knows your grossness, God knows where you are broken, God knows what you look like in the morning, God knows everything about you. And I want to do an uncomfortable thought experiment, all right? If every one of your thoughts for the next week were broadcast out loud to the people around you, would people look at you differently? Would relationships be broken? Would people think of you as a deviant in some ways? Would some of you end up in jail because of your honest thoughts? God knows those thoughts. Can you sit with that for a second? God knows everything, everything about you, and he loves you deeply. And he loves you deeply. That is intimacy in a way that no one else could ever give us, whether in real life and especially in the digital world. God knows everything about you, and he still loves you, and he sent his son Jesus to die for you, to rise again for you, and to restore intimacy between you and God the Father. And it's not on your note sheet, but in G in the Gospel of Matthew, one of the four books that tell us about the life and teachings of Jesus, there's a very famous passage in which Jesus teaches us how to pray. It's called the Lord's Prayer. And the very first thing that Jesus teaches us how to pray is to call God what he calls God. And this isn't a stern dictator. Jesus is inviting you to an intimacy that he shares with God. He is inviting you to say, God, you are my father. I know you, you know me. I have a relationship with you. And so there in your note sheet, as we've been doing the last several weeks, I will have a statement called Neon Light, which is basically to say, if you don't remember anything else from this time, remember this. God is inviting you through Jesus to live intimately with him. God is inviting you through the work and presence of Jesus to live intimately with him. And so this relationship of intimacy, as we've defined it, to be seen, to be known, and to be loved exactly as you are is not meant to be an isolated moment. It's meant to be your life, it's meant to be your strength, it's meant to be your foundation that you are seen, you are known exactly as you are, and you are deeply loved by God the Father as seen through the work of Jesus the King. God is inviting you through Jesus to live intimately with him. And so as we begin to hit the home stretch on this there in inertia, let's talk about three steps that you can take to develop this relationship. Because all good relationships need to grow and need to be developed. I talked about it in our weekend services this morning. In our souls, there's not a switch that just flips on and now we know how to do it. It's a journey, it's a journey that takes time and happens one step at a time. The Holy Spirit leads us one step at a time. And so for us to enter into this with fear and trembling, to be seen and known and loved by God means that we take one step at a time. And so what I do is want to give you three practical starting steps. So they're in your note sheet. The first one is this intimacy happens away from a screen. Intimacy happens away from a screen. Again, our goal is not to necessarily burn it all down, throw your phones off the pass, although some of you need to. But the goal is you're not my king. So let me keep you in your proper place. And so are you developing healthy boundaries with the digital world? Are you developing spaces in your daily life in which the screens are off or the notifications are silent, in which you can just be with God. You can just be with other people. One of the biggest damages that the digital age has done is that it's destroyed our ability to interact with other human beings, but it hasn't stopped there. The digital world has started to destroy our ability to interact with God Himself. We start engaging spiritually online, but again, it's not gonna give us what an actual intimate relationship with God will. And so for the last two weeks, we've had these cards, we're gonna have them during our prayer time as well, called Focus on One. These are incredibly practical and incredibly simple steps to begin to take to put the digital world in its place. And it's in progressive order. The very first one is pick one meal a day, whether breakfast, lunch, or dinner, in which your phone is away, in which the watch is off, in which anything that could notify you is just in the other room or turned off. Pick one meal a day in which you're living in peace. And then that progresses to pick one hour a day. One hour a day, again, where everything is off. I shared in week one that for me, this is often my hour as soon as I get home to see my family. I walk in, I put my phone down on the counter and begin to hug and engage with my family to interact with interact with them when it comes to life. And then finally, the third step is one day away from the digital noise. Now, that may not mean an entire day in which you don't have your phone on you, but it's a day in which you fast from social media. It's a day in which you fast from YouTube, it's a day in which you can turn the volume down on all the digital noise and kind of be a peace. For some of you, maybe the best day is Sunday. Hey, this is the day I go to church, this day I go to RPW, this day I engage in. This is the day in which I just delete my apps for that day. But intimacy happens away from a screen. So that's the first step. The second step, the second fill-in is this intimacy is grown through authentic prayer. You know what the problem with your prayer life is? That got a lot of your attention, didn't it? Is you're praying too politely. You're too sanitized, you're too cleaned up. You're kind of talking to God like he's a corporate boss. Or he's like an admiral in the Navy and kind of like, yes, sir, no, sir, just tell me what you want. That is not how God invites us to pray. Again, this is what I love about the Psalms. Do you know how God is inviting you to talk to him? As you are. Do you know how God is inviting you to talk to him with emotion, with messiness, with confusion, with anger, with fear, with hope, with joy. God is asking you to speak to him as you really are. So the invitation to prayer to be authentic is to be real. And one of the best examples we have of this in the Psalms is David. And some of you might recognize that that's King David. That's I slayed Goliath David. And David is awesome because David gives me hope from myself, because David had some incredible victories, and David screwed up multiple times royally. David wrote over 70 Psalms, and very few of them are happy. Most of them are real and messy. A couple of years ago, I was reading through the Psalms in my Times in the Morning. And if you start at Psalm 1, it doesn't take you long to get to what I call David's murder passages. When David is upset with his enemies and he prays to God, God murder them. And they progress in terms of like, God shatter their teeth, God strike them down. And you're kind of like, this is kind of awesome, right? But you know what God did as I was reading those scriptures? He brought conviction into my life. He brought conviction to my life and said, Dre, why don't you talk to me like this? And I'm sitting there going, like, because I don't want anybody to die. He's like, no, no, that's not the point. What am I learning from David's example? That David trusted God so much that David accepted God's invitation to an intimate relationship that he showed up as he was. He was not, he didn't have a mask, there was no pretense. He's like, this is exactly who I am and how I feel in this moment. And God, I'm gonna give you all of it. And God's response is to put it in the Bible as an invitation for you. As an invitation for you to talk to God in a real and authentic way. And so prayer is not about the magic words, prayer is not about the scorecard of how many hallelujahs have you said in a five-minute span. Prayer is simply an invitation to learn an intimate relationship with God by telling them what's real in your life now. What are you excited about in this moment, if anything? What do you hope for in this moment, if anything? What are you scared of in this moment, if anything? What hurts you in this moment, if anything? Why do you feel like numb in this moment if you do? What's your anxiety? Where do your thoughts wander to when you think about tomorrow or the day after? Tell God that. And that grows intimacy. That's the second step. And the third step is this intimate moments are not for a large audience. Intimate moments are not for a large audience. And hear me, I'm not trying to mock anybody if this is you, but I just want to use this as an example. When you see this trend of people posting like crying videos online, my honest question is, what is it accomplishing? Is it actually making someone feel better? And yeah, maybe people in the comments can be like, I'm so sad for you going in, but but is that doing anything? See, that's an illusion of intimacy, but it's actually putting more distance between us and the healing we need. And so the reality is intimate moments are just that. They're meant to be intimate. They're not meant for a general audience, they're meant to be between us and certain people, or between us and God, or us and a certain community. Because here's the problem: the larger the audience becomes, the more our eyes are focused on them and not Jesus. The larger the audience is, the more our eyes are focused on them and not Jesus. And so Jesus is calling you into an intimate, one-on-one relationship with him. Let me illustrate a way that God has been teaching me this over the last year. So as we go back to last summer on July 4th, this is me and my family at Universal Studios. We are universal people because I love the studio tour. I love learning facts about movies, and it is so much cheaper than Disneyland. So we are Universal Studios people. And so we went on the 4th of July, and that's us in this crowd of humanity getting ready for the firework show. It's over the Transformer Super Nintendo world. It's actually pretty awesome. And as the fireworks started, there was a sea of this. Right? There was a sea of this. I'm looking around, and I felt like the outlier as the only person that didn't have my phone now. And you know what? Instinctively, I began to reach from my phone because that's what we do, right? And as I began to reach my phone, I remember grabbing my phone in my pocket, I stopped and going, wait, who is ever gonna watch this? Like, am I ever gonna watch a greeny video of fireworks over the Transformers ride? Am I gonna text this of my friends and be like, check this out? No, it's terrible cinematography. But not only that, I realized that if I was doing this, then my eyes would be on this and not the people around me. And instead, I looked down and I saw my kids in awe. Because I forget that they don't actually see fireworks all that often. And so this is a rare treat. And I look down on them, I look down on Megan again, just beaming and smiling, and I realized, oh, this isn't a moment for my screen, this is a moment for us. And I just put my arms around them. And sometimes the moment is sweeter in here than it ever will be on a recording. That was an intimate moment, even though we were in a sea of people. That was an intimate moment that's just between us. And so as I wrap things up, I want to go back to the Truman show. And I want to spoil the Truman show for you, but it's over, it's almost 30 years old. You've had a chance. So at the very end of the movie, Jim Carrey figures out that his life is a lie, and that his whole life has been this television show. And he looks to escape, and finally he has this encounter with the creator of the show. And the creator is basically pleading with him: no, come back. Come back. People need to see your life. People need you. Live your life there. And what you're seeing right there is the very end in which instead of living his life for the cameras, he chooses to live an intimate, he chooses to leave and live an intimate and a real life. And a beautiful, dramatic gesture, he bows one last time and he walks out. And it makes me smile because that's really the invitation that the Lord has for us. There are times in which we are living in front of people, and that can be good and wonderful. But we are invited to a lifestyle of intimacy, and that happens one-on-one with the Lord. And hear me, young adults of Rocky Peak, if you can learn to develop an intimate relationship with God the Father, that will then overflow into a genuine intimacy in your in your most important relationships. That will then overflow into developing friendships and Christ-following community that is built on intimacy. That will then overflow into a marriage one day. That will then overflow into parenting, learning how to have genuine, intimate relationships in which both parties are seen, are known, and are loved as they are. And it all starts now with saying yes to God's invitation to you.