Okay, so I told you we were going to look at six particular pieces, six facets of intimacy in my mind, and so this session we're going to look at two of those. We're going to look at product, and we're going to look at places. Intimacy is a whole person experience, which means that it is cognitive, it is affective, and it is volitional. Intimacy is cognitive. It's a thinking thing. It's not just a feeling thing. Sometimes when we think of intimacy, we think of it as a feeling. If you were to go and look at these feeling charts, you can do. Guys, we typically, our emotional vocabulary is like good, bad, and angry. That's our emotional wheel. And it wasn't until I went to school and was forced to memorize a whole bunch of information about emotions that I began to get a broader vocabulary. I was an IT guy for 10 years before I was a counselor guy. So I was relatively inept when it came to the emotional piece of this. But it's not purely an emotion. You can find intimacy on some of those. emotion wheels on some of those charts. Very rarely, though. So it is something that we know. It's something about one another that we can engage our mind with. It's cognitive. It's volitional. There are activities Follitional just means will, behavior. There are things we do that are intimate activities together. We talked about how it is euphemistic of the idea of sex, and that is probably the most intimate activity that we do together. And yet it's also incredibly connective emotionally. It's affective. So intimacy can't just be pushed into one of these frames without the others. And it needs all three in order to really be understood. When we talk about intimacy affectively as a feeling, what is it? Well, this is the thing you and I probably mean most intuitively when we talk about intimacy. And so my definition of the product or the feeling of intimacy is a sense of deep and abiding connection. I want to walk through those three elements with you, a sense, deep, and abiding. A sense. What do I mean by a sense? Well, by a sense, what I mean is that this is something that's more intuitive. Of those three elements, of the cognitive, the affective, and the volitional, when we talk about being intimately connected to somebody, it is probably most a feeling, an experience of being connected to someone. And there's no meter that you can tick. Wouldn't it be nice if we had some sense with one another you could see the sort of meter above their head, how connected you are to that particular person? If it was our spouse and it began to go the wrong way, we might know to respond and to let them know that we care. And if with somebody we shouldn't have connection and we see it coming up, we would know to avoid. But we don't have that. And instead, it's just this sort of intuitive sense that you and I have about who we're connected to. And guys tend to misread this. Not with each other. We're actually kind of okay with each other. Right? We kid each other. We kid because we care. Have you ever read The Five Love Languages? Raise your hand if you've read The Five Love Languages. Yeah. Super helpful. Like The Five Love Languages. I think there's at least a sixth, and it's sarcasm. Because that's my love language. Right? So dudes, we actually get each other pretty well. But when it comes to women, how we sense whether or not we're connected and they feel connected to us, actually, studies have shown we're not that great at it. And all the wives go, uh-huh. Yeah, I know. You have to communicate and sometimes over communicate. And sometimes guys don't even recognize when there's somebody in their orbit that's beginning to feel a connection with them, right? We can be kind of, not to be offensive here guys, we can be kind of stupid in this lane, right? It's fine. So it's more of a feeling than it is some particular number, something that you can just metrically see. And intuitive feelings are harder to grasp. There we go. So they're harder to get your hands around. They're more nebulous. And guys tend, of course, to be more technical, and they tend to be intuitive. Not all guys. And let me just pause here real quick. So when I say things like, hey, guys do this and girls do that, that's not a forever and always. It is a broad stroke, which means that the research has found a gender typical, but in any gender typical expression or character trait or anything, there's a minority that can waiver anywhere from 15% all the way up to like 35% or 40%. So when I say guys do this and girls do that, Caveat, star, right? I just don't want to have to start every time. But no, hey, if I'm a guy that's really intuitive and I kind of get this, that's awesome. It doesn't make you any less of a guy. And if you're a girl who's like, this has always been kind of like, you know, galaxy brain stuff to me that doesn't make sense, fine, no big deal. You're no less of a woman just because this isn't as intuitive for you. But typically, gender typically, intuitive feelings that are harder to grasp and harder to find are harder for men than they are for women. So that sense feeling makes it nebulous, especially for guys and for couples. But there's a sense, and the sense is deep. There's a deep connection. What do we mean when we say a deep connection? We mean it's more than just surface. It means you know something about me that you couldn't know just by looking on my Instagram feed. If my children were here, they would laugh at me that I just used Instagram because I have no social media or social media skills whatsoever. But I make fun of them for having social media. Nonetheless, there's a lot that we put out there for everyone to see. And in some sense, what do we put out for everybody to see? It's the prettiest. It's the best. It's the picture of me with my Bible and some flowers and this nice cup of coffee with window light just nice pouring in. You don't ever see on Instagram like the instant oatmeal packet, like oatmeal dust all over the counter. And then afterwards, because I didn't clean it in time, I've got a chisel, and I'm trying to chisel it out. You don't see that on Instagram. Well, part of intimacy is you know the dirty oatmeal dust part of me. You know the part of me that's boring. You know the part of me that I don't actually want people to see. It requires something much deeper and more profound than I'm willing for a general public to know. And that means that it usually requires both time and effort. By the way, this is why less than 10% of affairs happen with someone you've known less than six months. Couple of very interesting statistics. First off, statistics on affairs are really hard to come by. Because how do you get that information? And then, like, are they reliable? They are cheating on their spouse. So this is like big asterisk when you talk about stats about infidelity. But two things to know here. One, less than 10% of affairs happen with somebody that is considered more attractive than their spouse. Let me put that oppositely. Greater than 90% of affairs happen with people that are as or less attractive than their spouse. And that's because what drives affairs is not just some sort of physical lust most of the time, it's actual emotional intimacy. It's deep connection emotionally that produces a drive for expression physically. That's what produces most affairs. Not, hey, I was in a hotel bar, and I had one too many, and this hot thing came and talked to me. I've been doing therapy or counseling for, I'm not good with the maths, since 07. If someone wants to do the math for me on that real quick. 17 years? Yes, I'll take 17. So 17 years. I have never once heard that story. That someone just had an affair with someone because they were cute. Ever. In 17 years. And I have unfortunately had to help a number of broken marriages. Instead, it's usually some sense of emotional connection in which something deep about me is more and more known. and I feel received in it. It takes time, it takes effort in order to know each other at this level. It doesn't come like that. Except when you first fall in love with somebody. And then doesn't it feel effortless to just connect with that person? Oftentimes it does. It's that infatuation high. It's that Song of Solomon moment. Right, where Song of Solomon, the actor, male and female, they're willing to go over, through, around anything to get to one another. They just love each other and can't be apart from one another. And for whatever reason, in the Lord's grand design, that's what he gives to you and I often early in our relationships. It's just like this mountain of trust we don't even deserve. Right, and again, if you've been married more than six months, you look back and go, ha ha ha, I really didn't deserve it. There was a lot more here in me that I didn't know. And there's a lot more in you that I didn't know. And now this trust is really being tested. And that's, that's the rest of your marriage. And hopefully it pays off. It's the sort of marriage that pays trust off. But in that one time, it takes time and effort to create connections, which is part of what is, again, so confusing at times for us as couples, as we're trying to either maintain or enhance the intimacy that we had. Don't you just remember when we were first dating? And you used to write poetry for me, right? Or you used to go and do my wife. She'll probably listen to this later and laugh at me. And she should. She will always refer to that period and time in our life as, do you remember the period where you ate Indian food with me? Because she loves a good curry. And I'm like, nah, it's all right. I don't know about curry. And we used to go to an all-you-could-eat Indian buffet when we were first dating. And I would go, and I would put stuff on, and then just kind of move it around the plate to make it look like I had eaten some. Right? And so she always said, remember when you would eat Indian food for me? It was just so easy and so effortless. And now that we've been married for 23 years, it takes time and effort. Even with somebody that I love and have loved from the moment I saw her, I promise you. I didn't believe in it, but I promise you I love this woman from the moment I saw her. Even with someone like that, it takes time and effort to keep this sense of deep and abiding connection. You have to just mine for new stuff, new ways in which I know you every single day. I mentioned here how it means knowing the parts of me that are not desirable. That's often what creates the most effective sense of connection. We know what it's like to show the good parts of us, but when someone sees the dirty, crusty parts of me that I don't want to be seen, and they love me anyways, that's incredibly connective. You want to see that happen inside of scripture? Go read Psalm 88. Psalm 88 is the darkest psalm in the Psalter. Here's a guy who starts low, goes lower, ends lowest. If you read in the NIV, NIV is almost always better for poetry because they do the thought for thought thing rather than strict word for word. It's much better for poetry. It ends with, you, God, have made darkness my only friend. I want to imagine for a second. that you're God. I know, terrible. I just heresy for one second. I promise I don't believe it. I'm just asking you to do an exercise with me. Imagine you're God, and someone says, hey, I wrote this little ditty about you. And it goes something like this. You've taken everything from me. You've made me suffer since my mother's womb. And you've made darkness my only friend. So here you go. What would you say? Like, OK, that's a little rough. You chose violence. Maybe we could somehow soften this a little bit. Don't forget what I did for you in Egypt. My son's coming. He's going to do something for you. And instead, God graciously, amazingly says, yeah, that's about me. Put it in my book. Sometimes my believers feel that. They feel that about me. And that's OK. And they don't have to clean that up. They don't have to give it a pretty beginning. And they don't have to give it a sweet ending. It can just feel dark and difficult. That's amazing. That's the sort of God that you have. And that's the sort of connection. When you cry out like that, when you pray like that, it vivifies your soul's connection to the Lord. to know that He can receive you. We receive each other in those moments. It creates those same sense of deep connections because you get to see the part of me that I don't want the rest of the world to see. Abiding. So a sense of deep and abiding. So more than just that it can go deep and you can know about me, it's the fact that you're going to be there and you can handle the weight of our relationship and not choose to hit the door. You won't run in a crisis. You'll show up when I need you. You'll be by my side working with me even when times get tough. That's a sense of tried and true, tested, willing to be there. Look, I'm going to be beside my wife no matter what. His name just escaped me. He was a minister here in Greenville at Second Prez, was Ligon's youth guy. His wife had dementia. Say again? No. It'll come back to me later. Man, it drives me nuts. He used to send an email. Do what? No. No. People just keep throwing out names. It's good. It doesn't matter. My point is this. This man He was relatively well-known. He sent out this encouraging email every single morning, full of scripture. And he was kind of one of those circuit guys, early kind of circuit preachers in the reform tradition, and could have kept going and cared more about his career. And his wife got dementia, early onset. And he stopped everything in order to take care of her. And he's not a guy now that has all the books. He's not a guy that has all the conferences. But he is a guy who is my hero, that he would love his wife like that. And I intend to love my wife no matter what. It's abiding. It's not going to go anywhere. It doesn't run when things get tough. That's that sense of connection that's an intimate connection. So you've seen the worst of me and you're willing to see me through the worst of life. I told you we'd look at Psalm 25, 14 at least once. Here it is, the friendship of the Lord. I told you it's rendered other places, intimate friend, secret counsel. It's for those who fear him and he makes known to them his covenant. We're going to talk about covenant more and more as we make our way through. But abiding relationship is grounded in covenant commitment. That's why the relationships that have the highest ability to be the most intimate are those that are grounded in covenant. It's a public declaration of long-term commitment and should allow the highest degrees of vulnerability. OK, so that's the feeling of intimacy. Now I want to talk about places. So that's product. Now we're going to talk about places. Before I move on to there, let me just see if anybody has a question real quick before we move to places. No, great. OK, good. Where am I known? I'm going to give you five. I mentioned them earlier last session. They are spiritual intimacy, physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, recreational intimacy, and intellectual intimacy. The entire reason my dissertation is on intimacy is because of this paradigm right here. It's based on the work of David Olson of the University of Minnesota in 1975. He created a metric called the pair assessment of intimacy in a relationship. I forget what the P stands for. Anyway, he actually gets down to four. He gets to physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, recreational and intellectual. He proposed two more. Spiritual intimacy and aesthetic intimacy. Like there's an intimacy around our sense of style and art and all of that. I have none of that. So it got dropped not because of me, but because there are enough doofuses like me that don't have that apparently. And so that got dropped. Spiritual intimacy also got dropped, not because there wasn't validity for it, but because University of Minnesota couldn't agree on what it meant to have spiritual intimacy. That's, again, all the way back in the 70s. So he had those four. And he is a believer, by the way. But he would have given you spiritual. I think all five are true. I wrote an article for Desiring God about this paradigm. Just had a friend who was an editor at Desiring God and asked me to write an article, did, and they just kept asking, and so I just kept producing stuff. And you just never know what goes viral, and it turns out that that particular article on these five types of intimacy kind of went viral, ended up in a book with John Piper and Francis Chan. And so when I went to go do my PhD, you take tests and do an interview to make sure that you can actually do PhD work. When I did my interview, they said, what do you want to do your dissertation on? And I said, well, I've thought about maybe doing research on depression and alcoholism in the age of the Puritans. They had to wrestle with those issues. It would be interesting, pre-psychology, to see how they wrestled with them. And they were like, eh, OK. And then. And then they said, anything else? I'm like, yeah, well, OK. I also thought that I might look at what at the time was ESS, Eternal Subordination of the Sun. Very technical theological thing, and whether or not it actually merited any application to marriage. And they looked at me like, no. And you're not smart enough for that. I'm like, OK. They were right, by the way. They were so right. And then I was like, well, there was this one article I wrote about intimacy and it went really far. And I figure if that's going to be the thing kind of on my resume that most people have read, I probably need to know more about it. And they said, yes. Your research is going to be on that. So it's because of that that here I am before you. I think this is a helpful way to think through the various ways in which you and I have intimacy, is to think through these five categories, starting with spiritual intimacy. What is spiritual intimacy? First off, it's the most foundational of the types of intimacy. When spiritual intimacy is high, it gives resilience to the other four. Why? Because the Holy Spirit does his work of conviction. When you and I allow our relationships, especially our primary relationships, as spouses to flag, he loves to use his word and his people. Haven't you ever been in a Sunday morning, and the preacher is preaching, and he says something about loving your spouse real well, and you go, oh, ouch. Right? And you're just like, OK. All right, Pastor Carl, here's your knife. You can have it back now. And that's what happens. The Holy Spirit loves to use his word and his people in order to remind us of the call to which we're called as spouses, which are really high callings, and typically include all four of those other domains of intimacy, physical intimacy, emotional intimacy, intellectual intimacy, and recreational intimacy. And so it's the one. Whenever I draw it out, and I draw it out for all my premaritals, we draw out this cube type thing. And on the base is spiritual intimacy, and the other four stack on top of it. And then I ask my couples, here's what I want you to do. Understanding that spiritual intimacy is the most important, rank the other four. What are the most important for you? Typically, guys, it's physical. Typically, women, it's emotional. That's not always true, but typically. Spiritual allows us to be convicted when any of those begin to dwindle. Now that you've ranked them, rate them for me, 1 to 10, how close do you feel in each of these areas? And of course, and I think I say this later, but ultimately, I'm looking for a 7 or above. Except not in the physical intimacy, because they're premaritals. Premaritals. Better be a three. I'm just kidding. Nonetheless, Satan loves for this to be low. Satan loves for the other four to be incredibly high. And then you stop coming to church. You stop getting in God's word together. You stop praying with and for one another. And when I say pray with and for, I mean not the prayer that we often say, dear Lord, please make my spouse the spouse I know I deserve. And instead, say the prayer that God wants you to pray. Dear Lord, please help me to live up to my call, to lay down my life, and to love my spouse the way they deserve. and help me each and every day to do more of that. And when I don't do it because I won't do it because I'm a sinner, help me run to you and by grace, know something more of your grace in my life that I may be more like that call and not less like it. Every single day. So our souls are knit together as we worship together. Oh, go back. As we worship together, as our sanctification has a similar trajectory to one another. So if one, all of a sudden, begins to stop doing some of these ordinary means of grace stuff. Now, does that mean you guys have to do the exact same Bible study? No. You don't. There are very few couples I know that seem to be able to do the same Bible study of the same material. They seem to engage in the material very differently and get on each other's nerves when they try to engage in the same material. That's fine. But be engaging in material. Be doing the thing that's helping you to love the Lord and increase your Christ-like character in your life. And like I said, pray for and with one another. Serve each other regularly. It's not about consuming one another. It's about serving each other. So if spiritual intimacy is high, it acts as this huge, stable foundation. And when it's low, everything else is just waiting to crumble. Physical intimacy. Here, I mean both sexual and non-sexual physical intimacy. Things like holding hands, a kiss on the cheek, a hug, right? Guys, sometimes, sometimes, this is probably one of the most common things that I've seen in my counseling over time, is that women feel like all physical intimacy is headed towards sexual physical intimacy. Right? That every holding of a hand, every kiss, anything that's receptive physically means it's on. It's OK. Let's keep going. Right? And for guys, sometimes you need to realize that women like to just hold your hand or cuddle with their head on your chest and watch a movie or whatever. And that doesn't always have to lead to sexual physical intimacy. I'm not saying that's anybody's problem in here. but maybe somebody for whom I'm recording this message, and they may listen later. None of you, I'm sure. Non-physical intimacy communicates care. It really does. You know, you've had a hard day, and someone just gives you a hug. They've done research on primarily primates. You would never do this with a human, but you just wouldn't. Wait until you hear where I'm going, and then you'll see why. There was this terrible, John Bowlby is the researcher's name who started this, terrible research where they gave baby monkeys the opportunity to either have a mom, a faux mom cuddle with them, which was basically just like a sock monkey, or to have food and milk and have no physical interaction. And they almost all chose to die. cuddling with a sock monkey, rather than physical nourishment. That is how much physical connection is wired into creation. And if so for a primate, how much more for us? So physical connection, incredibly effective and efficient at communicating care. And again, especially for children, that you can give them hugs and, you know, kisses on the top of the head and let them cuddle with you as you watch a movie or whatnot, but also true with us and our spouses, that we can hold hands. I mean, people have various tolerances for PDA. I'm not telling you to go make out in your closest public or Walmart. I'm not saying that. But if you held hands while you went shopping, that would be nice, I think. OK, maybe not. That did not look like it landed with any of y'all. OK, fine. Be that way. Sexual intimacy is part of the engine which drives intimate connections. So sexual intimacy actually helps men be more open to emotional intimacy. This is just physically true, by the way. There is a neurotransmitter that gets emitted in men's brains after we have sex. that makes us feel very connected and very fond to people. Which is why some of the earliest records that we have from one of the oldest professions there is, prostitution, is of Johns saying words that equate to I love you. We even have this as far back as Akkadian. Like clay tablets. Hey, this weird John said this thing. Why would somebody who paid for this thing actually say that? There's nothing emotional about it. And it's because in that act, men's hearts and minds are very open to connection. Very. And there's a neurotransmitter that's being produced in your mind to actually help you feel that way. There's a good book on this. It's called Hooked by two, an OB and a neurosurgeon, I believe. And really what it's doing is it's describing how pornography is reshaping men's brains and making them less open to emotional connections with their wives. Because when we experience this, we should feel very deeply connected to our wives. On the opposite side, it is emotional openness is the number one thing that tends to drive a woman's desire to be physically connected. So men often think that the number one thing that will drive a woman to want to be physically intimate is being good at being physically intimate. That makes up for roughly a third of the average woman's desire. The almost entirety of the rest of it is a man's emotional availability. the ability to be emotionally connected to their wives. So physical intimacy drives emotional intimacy, and emotional intimacy drives physical intimacy. You see that engine? Does that make sense, how that works together? Yes, no. Yes? OK. And instead, what we tend to do is we tend to demand what we want. And instead of that engine working together, instead of me rushing to meet your needs, I say, I need this. I refuse to meet what you want until you meet what I need. And then we end up in cycles of isolation rather than cycles of intimacy. Let's move on. OK, emotional intimacy. This is the sense that you get me. Actually, both men and women rank this incredibly high. So it's a vulnerable thing. Men usually rank it second on that list. Women typically rank it first. And the sense is that you get what it's like to be me. My joys are your joys. My frustrations are your frustrations. You may not be as frustrated as I am. You may not be as upset as I am. That's fine. But you get it. And I get the sense that in my heart, you're right there with me. And oftentimes, again, guys, because emotional language isn't as native for us, and because our culture tells us that if we're good at emotional language, there's something wrong with us, it's hard to be emotionally connected. It's hard to reflect back that sort of emotional awareness. And then we tend to do it differently. Men do life shoulder to shoulder. Women do life face to face. So if I want to connect with a guy, first off, no one in my church goes anywhere with me because I'm the pastor of counseling. Do you want to be seen? Going to lunch with or having coffee with the pastor of counseling? Neither do they. But if, for some reason, I'm able to connect with some dude, you know what we do? We go play golf together. We throw axes together, because there's a cool axe throwing place downtown Columbia. Whatever's cool in Columbia, I'm sure there's five times as cool things here. So whatever. Whatever. Don't rub it in. But we go do stuff together. Women would rather sit down and have coffee together, oftentimes. Again, broad strokes. But they typically rather talk about what's going on. In my counseling office, I have a pair of magnets. One of them's on a gyroscope and one's just a little magnet. And so you can use the little magnet to control the other one. You can even just spin it around your finger like this and the one inside will go like that. It's pretty cool. But there's two pairs of them. And so if I have a guy in my office and especially an adolescent guy in my office who's having a hard time talking to me, the first thing I do is I grab that magnet and I start playing with it. Do you know why? They'll do the same thing. They'll be like, oh, that's cool. And they'll grab the magnet and they'll start playing with it. And now their eyes and their hands are busy. And guess what? They start talking. They just open up. Which is why a lot of men's best conversations are when they're on the road driving. Because our hands and eyes are busy. We don't have to have this awkward eye contact. There's no playground in America where guys are like this. just holding each other's gazes. That doesn't happen. Right? And so, like, we get overwhelmed by eye contact. We can keep it for a couple seconds, but then it's time to move on. Weird. Creep, why are you looking at me like that? You've got to find ways in which guys and girls can communicate. Oftentimes, it's things like go on walks together. You're doing something. You're out in the world, and you're doing something. And guys actually feel a lot more open to talking and accessing what's going on in their hearts, their minds. And women need to know that their men are right there with them. They're not just going to fix it. That's the big, like, men are from Mars, and women are from Venus. Yeah? None of you probably remember that material because it was so big in like the 90s. But that was like their big insight, is that like men are Mr. Fix-It men and women are experiential. And that's so true. So you just need to find places and reps where you guys can talk and be honest and be known by one another. Interestingly, men feel most connected when they're allowed to talk. And women feel most connected when they know their men are listening. So if you think about where's the spotlight on any intimate connection, it's always on the dude. The dude is like, let me have some spotlight. And the woman's like, why aren't you listening? And then what happens is that you get in together and the wife will be more assertive at talking because she needs to know that you're listening. And the guy will be like, well, I can't get a word in edgewise. So I'm not going to talk. And then you end up in those same cycles of isolation. Rather than, OK, wife, I'm putting everything aside. I'm not here to fix it. I just want to be where you are. Tell me about your heart. What's going on in your heart right now? Are you sad? Are you happy? Are you confused? Are you angry? You're probably all of those things. And you're really confused because I'm asking this question. You think there's an alien living in my brain now. OK, what's it like to be you right now? That's all I want to know. And for 15 minutes, I'm going to give you my undivided attention. And I'm going to do things like, uh-huh, uh-huh, I'm sorry, sweetie. That's so hard. That stupid co-worker. Right? Whatever you've got to do in order to communicate, you're there and you get it. In fact, they've done a couple of interesting studies. One of the studies they did was if a guy doesn't give any sense that he is listening but can completely replicate what the woman told him, it's not connective at all. But if the guy has no sense at what the woman said at all but says, uh-huh, Uh-huh, yeah, that's so hard. They're super connected. How weird is that? You don't really have to know what's going on. You just have to give them the sense, like, oh, I'm right there with you. You're so welcome, all of you. It helps the most when you can give at least a little bit back. Oh, yes, that does sound like a hard day at work, baby. I'm so sorry. And then 15 minutes where you flip it around. Women don't have to do any of that. Women typically don't even have to go like, uh-huh, uh-huh, aw, honey. It's just like, no, just give us the microphone and let us talk. We just want to be able to talk for 15 minutes. Like, OK. All right. Let them talk. And that's sort of back and forth. Again, Satan loves to get into those details and keep those things from happening in any sort of organic way. Recreational intimacy. Connection that comes with having fun together. There's a way in which we're known when we're having fun. Something that just tickles us, that we enjoy, what our pleasures are. You take pleasure in what my pleasures are. Does that mean you always, always have to have the exact same recreational interests? But it does mean that you should have some recreational interests together. This type of intimacy is the first one that usually falls off the cliff once you have kids. Because you just don't have time or money to do a lot of the things that you... Do I have any couples in here about to have a kid? I did this... I did this for James Robbins Church and... When I got to this particular thing and I said that, a woman started crying right here. And I looked, and it was obvious that she was pregnant. I was like, ah, moving on, moving on, moving on. Look, children just take most of our time and energy and money, which is good. It's good. It's cultural mandate. However, what used to be natural, We would just go do fun things because we're not just going to sit around and be bored together all the time. No, we're going to find ways to go and do the things that we love to do. Well, now finding those opportunities is hard because everything costs money and we don't have a ton of money. Everything requires energy and I don't have a ton of energy. And so I just want to get to the end of the day. And so finding time, making sure that you prioritize times and opportunities to just enjoy life together. It's the light and life and air of a relationship. It's not your idol. I know some couples that go too far, and like if I can't go do the rafting, parachuting, whatever thing, camping. I heard a comedian one time that said, my parents never took me camping because they loved me, and I feel the exact same way. But I know that some of you love camping, whatever it is, whatever your thing is, right? Don't make it an idol, but do it. Find something that you do. And sometimes when kids come along, those things that you enjoy change and morph. That's fine too. Go out there and explore other things. There's some great resources out there about various recreations that you as a couple could go and do. But don't let it fall off the table. It's what brings joy. And again, we're not slaves to our emotions and we don't worship the idol of joy. But also, we're not stoics either. And we're not stoics in our marriage. And we should enjoy one another. Ooh, I have one minute. OK, here we go. And I'm sure child stuff, we need to be done on time. Last, intellectual intimacy. And that's intimacy that you get just from knowing my thought life, knowing the things that I think. And these can be complicated issues like politics and theology and education. It can be more straightforward things like sports and weather. It doesn't matter. It's just that you understand what goes on here in my gray matter and I get what goes on in your gray matter. And I feel like you know what's going on. We get super complacent here. Once you've been together for a little while, it's like, oh, it's that story again. About that time you were in college and you did that thing with that guy. OK. Right? Oh, I know exactly. My model for you is perfect. I know how you think about this. You don't have to bring up whatever the story is on the television. I know exactly what you think about it. And the truth is that we surprise ourselves sometimes. Don't you surprise yourself as you engage with something like, huh, that's kind of a new thought for me. Never thought about it that way before. Or maybe I haven't even changed my mind on this thing over here. I'm seeing scripture in a new light and applying it and I've been doing a lot of deep work on this and think, oh, maybe I've missed or maybe haven't even thought enough about this. I change and hopefully become more Christ-like as my walk moves on. Right? And so our assumption of the model in our mind for our spouses is not perfect. And we should not assume that it is. But early in your marriage, tripping over stuff that you didn't know about each other, it's just like tripping over gems and gold. They're just laying about the place. Oh, I didn't know you like that. I didn't know you did this. I didn't know you went there. I didn't know you wanted that kind of job. I didn't know your sibling did. It's just all wonderful. It's all new. It's all great. But then you've been married for 2, 3, 5, 23 years. And it's like mining. It's hard work to try and find something you didn't already know about each other. But it's well worth it. That intellectual intimacy is highly connective in ways that go beyond just the brain, that actually go to the heart and to the hands, what we do. OK. Here we go. I told you this already. I usually try to have people rate these. and rank them. And what I want is people to rate them a 7 or higher. If you're the type of person that you hate number ratings, and I guarantee with a room this big, there's at least a couple of you that hate that. Like, what's the difference between a 7.5 and a 7.8? I don't know. Think of it in three categories. Think of it as mild, moderate, severe. But it's kind of hard to talk about intimacy being severe, right? Like that seems weird. So seven or above is basically that really high category. If you would nominate, that is to say, your connection with your spouse is in that high category, your relationship is incredibly resilient. Means when somebody else orbits that shouldn't, you're not likely to chase after it. But what Satan loves to do is to get all of these to begin to fall, and then allow somebody else to orbit in. And if your connection feels like a three, and someone gets to know you over a period of six, nine months, 12 months, and it feels like a seven or an eight with them, choosing to cut off the seven or an eight for a three feels like choosing to do open heart surgery on yourself without anesthetic. It's exhausting and terrifying, which is why men who know better and women who know better and know everything they're about to lose choose that way rather than their own spouses. So one of the best things you can do is have this grid in your mind. It doesn't have to be perfect. No one's perfect. but be trying to keep it in that upper third, and when it begins to wane, as it almost always will, begin to troubleshoot. How can we get this back up into the upper third? Do we need more time together? Do we need more focus time? Do we need to go on more dates? Do we need to plan once a quarter to get away together? What is it that we need to do in order to raise those ratings? Does that make sense? Gives you a kind of troubleshooting methodology in your head. Okay, we're already five minutes over, so I'm gonna end here. Can I do a couple minutes of Q&A if you have questions or do I need to get people out because of child care workers? Okay, got it. So, and I don't know if we have questions, but let me pray and if you have children, go pick up your children. If you don't and you'd like to stay and have questions, I'll hang around for another 10-15 minutes, okay? Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we do each one of us recognize how much we fall down when it comes to being the sort of connected shepherd and one who would care for the soul of our spouses. And we need your grace. And having that grace, Lord, we ask that you would help us. Help us to be skilled shepherds, those that try to shepherd one another in a way that feels deep and abiding. in a way that tries to have deep and abiding sense of connection spiritually, physically, emotionally, recreationally, intellectually, in any way possible so that as people see us, as people interact with us, they would know that there's more than us there. That there is you there. You are the one sustaining us so that you and you alone would get all the glory and honor. We love you. Pray this in your son's name. Amen.