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October 10, 2025 · 41 min · Adam Mesa Sermons
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Adam Mesa is Lead Pastor of Patria Church and speaks to a congregation of 12,000 about how the gospel of Jesus Christ brings purpose to every life. Patria
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Intimacy with God: Building a Closer Relationship 0:00 Hi. Welcome to ALFC podcast. At ALFC, we seek the lost, teach the found, and send the disciples. We truly hope you are encouraged by this week's message.0:13 We are launching a series, and, that series is called fully devoted. How to have real intimacy with God. You know what? More than anything, God wants intimacy0:25 with us. And, we need to learn how to have intimacy with him. When I think about intimacy, I think about how close can I get to God? And that's what God0:37 desires, not for you, but also for him And the closeness of you coming together. See, when you get 2 people that get close together, there's no space in between you. And0:49 that's what God wants. There's too many spaces in our lives between us and God. You know what? We allow relationships to get between us and God. We allow money, fame, and fortune, social1:01 media, doubt, sin to get in between us and God. And, we're gonna learn in this series how to get all those things out And so it's just skin to skin, face to face with God. So I1:13 pray that you sit back. I pray that you're prayerful as we launch this series. You're up, buddy.1:19 Alright. Hey, everyone. So as you guys, you know what we normally do. If you have notes, if you have a bible with you, anything like that, you can get it and you could get it prepared because we are launching this series1:30 fully devoted. What it means to be intimate with God. What it means to spend time with God. That's usually the number 1 question people ask me when someone, from the church DMs1:42 me on a social media outlet or I get an email from someone in the church. 1 of the most common questions of someone is what should I do to spend more time with God? What can I do to spend more time with1:53 God? Or they're asking a question of something they're going through and the answer I have for them is, you need to spend more time with God. And then they'll often say, well, I don't know. I haven't come to that2:05 realization yet and I don't know how to do it. That's what we're talking about over the next 4 weeks. What does it mean to be fully devoted? You know, usually for all of us, the most common concept of spending time2:16 with someone is usually through a relationship. Whether it's a boyfriend or a girlfriend or a husband or a wife. The highest earthly form of intimacy happens between a partner.2:29 The highest spiritual intimacy that can ever happen for you and I is through God. And a lot of people will choose a lot of other things. In the same way physically and naturally when someone's looking2:41 for deeper purpose and deeper intimacy with someone, they'll choose other things to try to fulfill that space. People will often do that with God. People will take up certain prayers that they read that don't have2:52 anything to do with God. New age is big nowadays. People will light candles and crystals and all these other things and they think, well that will bring me closer to God. The reality is is there's only a3:04 few things that can be done to bring you closer to God. And the closer we understand the reality of what that is, the more deeper meaning our relationship with God is. I want you to look at this for a3:16 second on what intimacy with God is, what it means to be devoted with God. Here's what it is as we break it down today with me and Pastor Diego. We're gonna share a little bit and we're gonna share 2 big points.3:28 And over the next 3 weeks, we're gonna also share the other H's of what it means to be intimate with God, what it means to be fully devoted. Today we're gonna talk about intimacy God is for3:40 hiding and it's also for hunting. I'm gonna talk about what it means to be hiding. But before we jump in, what does it truly mean to be intimate? Well, I want you to look at this and if you're taking notes, you could3:51 write these things down because it'll really help you out. Intimacy is built. How do I build it? It's through shared time, shared values, shared4:03 transparency, and shared burden, and lastly through shared touch. Okay? 1 more time. Intimacy is built through shared time, shared values,4:15 shared transparency, shared burden, and shared touch. You know, I just wanna make you laugh for a second. When we think of intimacy, we usually think of a husband and wife. And so I4:27 have some intimacy jokes for you, not the way that you would see it. You know, many countries, you don't meet the bride or the groom until, the day you get married. In some countries, it's4:39 called arranged marriages. And so you really don't even meet your spouse that you're gonna spend the rest of your life with until the week before and sometimes the day before. So it was said that 1 time a kid went to4:51 his father and he said, dad, I heard that in some parts of the world a man doesn't know his wife until they get married. The dad replied and said, son, that's true everywhere.5:04 The other thing is a man was speaking and he said, my son asked me what it was like to be married. I told him to leave me alone and when he did I asked him why he was ignoring me.5:16 And then lastly, this is from a woman. She said, I once gave my husband the silent treatment for an entire week. When it was over, he said, we got we really got along for a while there, now did we?5:29 You know, you probably shouldn't be looking at your husband or wife right now. If you're at home watching service, don't look at them in the kitchen or in the other room. If you're in Pomona, don't nudge on them. Or5:37 you're in Rancho, don't nudge on them. But the reality is, is commonly when we take our approach and our intimacy, our relationship with God, normally because we're human, because we only kind of judge5:49 things by what we see with our eyes, oftentimes we will judge our relationship with God or our devotion to God is also how we view our devotion towards another person, a husband or a wife. And so oftentimes6:01 if we do not have a strong marriage or we have difficult relationships, we will take that into our perspective with God and we will find it difficult to build and mature a relationship in time spent with God.6:13 But here's the reality, Oswald Chambers once said this, he said, solitude with God repairs the damage done by the fret and noise and the clamor of the world. Solitude6:25 with God, spending time with God repairs the damage done by the fret and the noise of the world. You know, today if you're taking notes as we look at what fully devoted means to God6:37 and with God, I want you to look at Jeremiah chapter 33 verse 1. As we're talking about that intimacy with God and being fully devoted with God reveals hidden6:49 things and it's also a place to hide with God. It's for hiding. If you spend time with God, it is a place that you can go and hide. God is a hiding place.7:01 And when you go to God as a hiding place, he will begin to reveal to you hidden things. You see in Jeremiah 33 verse 1, God is speaking to Jeremiah the prophet and here's what7:13 God says. He says, the word of the Lord came to Jeremiah a second time. This is a second word to to Jeremiah. It says while he was still shut up in the court of7:25 the guard, it says, thus says the Lord who made the earth, the Lord who formed it to establish it, the Lord is his name. Call to me. In other words, devote yourself to me. Come and be7:36 intimate with me. Call yourself to me and I will answer you. And here's the big part, and I will tell you great and hidden things that you have7:48 not known. God says call upon me, so spend time with me, separate yourself from the world around you, separate yourself from the people around you, separate yourself8:00 from the noise of the world, separate yourself from your troubles, from your difficulties, from your hardships. Call upon the Lord and then what God says to Jeremiah, which applies to us as well, is he says, if8:12 you call upon me, if you separate yourself from other people and other things and spend alone time with me, he says, I will reveal to you hidden things.8:25 Hidden things. Well, who's it hidden to? It'll be hidden from 2 type of things. It'd be hidden from other people and also hidden from our own selves. Oftentimes, we're looking for God to reveal stuff to us. What's our8:37 next step in future? Where's our next place? Where where should I work? Should I move? Should I not? Should I relocate? Should I not? Should I marry this person? Should I not? Here's the thing. If you're asking a8:49 question that you personally do not know the answer to, the only way that you will supernaturally receive an answer from God is by separating yourself from the circumstance, separating9:01 yourself from the situation, and allowing enough alone time to be spent with God so that he can reveal to you those hidden things. It's the only9:13 way. I wish I could tell you come to church on a Sunday and sing 1 praise song and it's gonna get answered, but that is commonly not the case. You want God to start revealing some hidden things to you, some of his9:25 own personal secrets that not everyone else commonly knows? The only way it could be done is by calling yourself to God, separating yourself from the noise of this world, finding a prayer closet,9:37 finding a time in the morning, finding a time in the evening, that's separate from distraction when the kids are in bed, when school work isn't in front of you, and spending time with God.9:49 You know there was a time over 7 years ago when I was gonna be proposing to my wife, Ashley, and I I was gonna do it in Los Angeles. And 1 of the things me and my wife would always joke about when we were just dating was10:01 we would look at stuff that we would want 1 day, whether it would be a really nice house or a really nice car. And we would joke and we'd say, well, 1 day if we win the lottery, we'll do that. We'll buy that10:13 house. We'll buy that car. Whatever it is. So my great idea to propose to her was to create my own lottery ticket, that I spent days upon days creating in Photoshop and figuring out how10:25 to actually make a scratcher and make it do everything that I need it to do. And so what happened was is I went to the Museum of Contemporary Art down in Los Angeles. I was walking with my wife and I had my hand around10:36 her her waist and while we were walking, I I dropped a lottery ticket down by my foot. And then I told her this is the perfect space to take a picture of you. And I brought my camera with me and so I backed up10:48 and I took a picture of her. Upon that time, I looked down and I said, oh my goodness. There's a lottery ticket right there. And she looks down at it and she goes, oh, yeah. Because normally if you'd find a lottery11:00 ticket on the floor, you would assume it had been used. Well, this 1 wasn't because I had planted it. And so it was down on the ground and what happened was I looked at her and said, hey, babe. It doesn't look like11:11 it's been scratched off. What whatever's underneath it and and nobody's seen it. What if we win some money? What if there's something under there? And she looks at it and she says, you know what? You're right. And I told11:22 her I happen to have a quarter in my pocket. We should scratch it off. And now in that moment as she gets it and she puts it up against the wall and she begins to scratch it and she begins to reveal11:34 what's behind it, all of a sudden it says 7 7 7, you won a lifetime of happiness. And then the bottom says, will you marry me? And so as11:46 she's crying and you see the picture and she's so happy and she has her wedding ring and she's on the phone calling all her family and friends at that time. After that, many people had asked me, Adam, what11:58 would you have done if she did not want to scratch off the scratcher? What if she wasn't interested? My response to them was, then she would not have known what was underneath12:10 that. That's it. They said, so you're telling me you would not have proposed that night if she refused to scratch it off? I said, 100 percent yes. I wouldn't have. Because to me,12:22 it was all about revealing that secret message to just her that only she would know that if she spent the time to do it. And I said, and if she didn't wanna spend the time to do it, well then I have to go on the drawing12:33 board and think of another way to propose to her. Because hopefully, as someone she would want to marry, she would have trusted me to say, hey, trust me. You should scratch this off. You're gonna like what's beneath it.12:43 And I feel like God often does that with us. Is there's things he wants to reveal to us, there's things he wants to say to us, but oftentimes for whatever reason, whether it be our pride12:55 or our experiences or whatever it is, we say, no, God, I don't want that to be revealed to me. God, I don't want to spend the time with you in the closet praying and praying down heaven to have those13:07 hidden things revealed to us. And you want to know the person that's missing out at the end of the day, it's not God. It's not God. For me, the message my wife needed to uncover was already13:19 printed on the paper. She just needed to scratch off and reveal it. Same thing when it comes to God, when we are fully devoted to God and we spend time with God seeking his face, the13:31 message that he wants to speak to us is already written. It is already purposed. Your future is already set a course. You have to pause. You have to spend time with God and you gotta spend13:43 time scratching off those hidden messages for God. And the last thing the last thing, spending time with God fully devoted is not only for hidden13:55 things to be revealed to us, but it's also for you to physically find a space to hide in God. Psalms 91 1 says this, he who dwells in the shelter of the most high will14:06 abide in the shadow of the almighty. Another way of saying this, Psalms 91 1, he who dwells in the hiding place because shelter in Hebrew is setter and it also14:18 is a place where you would go and hide often. It wasn't like a home. It wasn't a castle. It wasn't a living space. It was like when David was running from Saul, he ran into a hiding place. He ran into caves. It14:30 was a shelter. So when the scripture says, he who dwells in the shelter, it's he who dwells in the hiding place of the most high will abide in the shadow.14:42 Now, now you'll be in the shadow of God. You will be in the space and the place of God if you separate yourself and you find a hiding place with God. A couple other verses say14:54 this, Psalms 119 1 13 to 1 17 says this, I hate those who are double minded, but I love your halal. You are my hiding place15:06 and my shield and I hope in your word. See, digging in God's word is a place to hide and to hope in. Depart from me, you evildoers, that I may keep the commandments of my God.15:18 Uphold me according to your promises. Lastly, I want you to look at this, Isaiah chapter 54 verse 17. No weapon that is fashioned against me or formed against me shall succeed,15:30 and you shall refute every tongue that rises against you in judgment. This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and their vindication is from me, declares the Lord. You see this passage in Isaiah is speaking of15:42 if you would find comfort in God as a hiding place, then there is no weapon that could ever be formed or fashioned that could be used against you Because you are hiding15:54 in the presence of the almighty. You are hiding in the presence of God. So if there's ever a point in your life where you are scared, where you are afraid, where you're worried, where you're doubting, where you're16:04 questioning, well then I encourage you, dwell in the shelter of the Almighty. Find God as your hiding place. I wanna close with this quote and then we're gonna cut to a video16:16 for you guys. It says this, Saint Augustine, 1 of the great fathers of the church said this, to fall in love with God is the greatest romance. To seek him is the greatest adventure. To16:28 find him the greatest human achievement. If you are looking for a space in a place to be devoted to God, then I encourage you today to find your hiding16:39 place in God. Let's check out this video right now.Show more In this video 0:00 Intimacy with God: Building a Closer Relationship16:43 The Hunt for God: Seeking His Presence
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