Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World

by Jennie Allen

Jesus said that the person who has been forgiven much, loves much.[3] So, too, the things that sent us into hiding are the very tools God redeems to pull us out of hiding and so that, in love, we can go pull other people out of hiding.

Hurting people hurt others. But equally true is that only forgiven people can truly forgive.

“To love at all is to be vulnerable,” C. S. Lewis famously wrote.

we wrap up our pain and hold on to it like a prize, refusing ever to set it down. It’s a memorial to the madness we’ve faced and survived and a reminder to never let ourselves be played again. But is that self-protection worth the cost of continuing to live isolated and sad? For me, the answer is a hard no.

Complaining seeks relief. Vulnerability seeks transformation and connection.

He told me about how they shared. “There was no concept of ‘mine,’ or of privacy, or of ownership. Everything we had was ours.”

If shame makes us hide behind locked doors and high walls, pride is the paint, the wreath, and the cute landscaping that says, “All good here! In fact, we are better than good. We are amazing! Look at our beautiful new shrubs.”

Pride is our defense when we are accused. Pride is our insistence that our opinion is Bible truth. Pride is our good works we set out to showcase our virtue. Our achievements that affirm we are justified in our choices. Our proof we wave around to show we aren’t sinful.

Iron sharpens iron. It isn’t supposed to be comfortable. But it leads us closer to God and closer to who He wants us to be—and that ends up feeling like home.

…when I address sin in a friend’s life and that person doesn’t receive it well? I’m a big believer in asking permission in friendships. Ask, “Do you want to hold each other accountable to growing and maturing? I would love for you to speak into my life, and I would love to speak into your life, if you agree.”

…determining if someone is a trustworthy voice in my life? First, look for healthy people and become a healthy person. Counselor Jim Cofield shared with me once some basic qualities of a healthy friend.[7] Ready? I am a receptive person rather than reactive. I am more resilient than rigid. I am aware and mindful rather than unaware and emotionally clueless. I am responsible for my own life. I don’t blame or take victim status. I am empathetic. I am strong. I am stable. I am realistic. I don’t have expectations that are unattainable. I see the world in a beautiful way and don’t grow stale. I believe God is for me. I am grateful and content. I know how to trust, hope, be humble, desire, and love well.

whenever we elaborate and “unfold” creation beyond where it was when we found it, we are following God’s pattern of creative cultural development.[5]

We carry weighty purpose into every interaction we have, and every human carries in them a weight of glory. When we understand this idea, we love differently. We view our daily work and encounters differently.

Alone we want to escape or cope, but in community we help each other do hard things.

Put family and people back in your everyday life. And together fight back against this individualistic culture that has intoxicated us into thinking that convenience and personal achievement equal happiness, because they don’t. Our time on earth is short. Our mission is crucial.

Conflict should make friendships, not break them. If we don’t run.

Conflict isn’t the enemy to our friendships; conflict is fodder to make them grow. Conflict is inevitable in the kind of deep community we are talking about here. But handled biblically, it can strengthen and deepen our relationships.

I’ve never had a truly intimate friendship that was free of conflict.

We must become people who come close. We must become people who engage. We must become people who choose to stay.

Conflict is safe when you know you won’t quit each other.

But if you quit, that will mean you start over in finding your people. Guess what? The new people are going to hurt you too. Or you will hurt them. Or both. Because we all do.

If you stay, you work through it and grow stronger together.

King David never defended his own name. He held people back from defending his name. He was comfortable with being misunderstood or people thinking ill of him. He knew God would defend what deserved to be defended. God is the defender of our names, which means we get to live unoffendable.

If you think about it, friendship—all relationships, really—is a giant inconvenience, at least if we’re doing it right. And the inconvenience chosen again and again changes us, wakes us up, makes us laugh and love and hope and dream.

Family is God’s very first, best place for us to learn and live community. But what we think of as family is a far cry from His original design. You can try, but no amount of research is going to turn up ancient evidence of a mom, a dad, and 2.5 kids living on their own, fenced off from everyone else, on a one-third-acre plot of land. What you will find, if you go hunting for details on how things used to be, is a whole lot of communal living.

If you expect to find beauty in your family relationships, you will find beauty. If you expect to find support, then you will find support. If you expect to find acceptance, then you will find acceptance.

We aren’t meant to carry the problems of the whole world all day every day. But we are the first generation to know them all. Let me be clear: I’m not saying we put our heads in the sand and get a pass to not care about the issues of our day. But in trying to care about everything, we end up helping nothing. It’s called compassion fatigue. The people closest to us are falling to the wayside while we bleed out for global crisis. And we end up paralyzed. God set us in villages for most of all time to care for one another—and that capacity rarely exceeded thirty to fifty people in a lifetime. And we’ve lost that way of life.