Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World

by Jennie Allen

Inside that 150 are layers of friendship that deepen with how much time you spend with a person and the degree of your relationship with them. Research suggests that we can handle only fifty people in what we will call our acquaintances. Within those fifty people, there are fifteen people in our village. And within our village, we have a capacity to make five of them our BFFs. You read that right. Only five!

what pushes people deeper into our inner circles of friends? The amount of time we spend with them. Time.

Because I hate how needy I actually am. I am embarrassed in my brokenness, and maybe deep down I wonder if anyone would really even want to be in the middle of that cry with me.

We live guarded because we fear someone will use our weakness against us.

Outside of Jesus, relationships are the greatest gifts we have on earth and simultaneously the most difficult part of being alive.

Scripture says that the Son exists to glorify the Father, and that the Father exists to glorify the Son. It says that the Spirit exists to glorify them both. What that means is that they help each other, they promote each other, they serve each other, and they love each other. What’s more, this exchange has been going on for all eternity.

But here is where we go wrong. We look to people to complete and fill what only God was meant to fill. This is the primary reason we all are so unhappy with each other. We have put our hope in imperfect people. But that hope can successfully be answered only in God Himself. Eternity was set in our hearts, Ecclesiastes 3:11 says, which means only a relationship with an eternal God can fill our hearts.

We must understand the war we’re in. We must understand that the enemy is subtle and sneaky and seeks to destroy you by destroying your relationships. We have no better defensive weapon than having the people who love God rally around us, fight for us, and fight with us.

Christ followers enter human relationships full of hope and full of confidence to love others, regardless of the treatment they receive in return.

What if the power of a little team of friends is that each one brings different things to your life? I have fun friends who always make a plan and always make me laugh. I have wise friends who give me advice and call me out. I have encouraging friends who cheer me on and tell me what I’m doing well. I have challenging friends who disrupt my thinking and push back against assumptions I have made or push me to take greater risks. If I expected one or two people to fill all those roles, no one would ever hit the mark. Also true: if I didn’t appreciate the unique roles my friends play in my life, I might be mad that my “challenger” friend doesn’t encourage me more, or my “wise” friend isn’t fun all the time.

We all hurt others. We all sin. We all push people away. We all are guilty. Nothing in my relational life has helped me more than coming to terms with these simple truths: You will disappoint me. I will disappoint you. God will never disappoint us. Accepting this shifts our expectations from people to God. And He can handle our expectations.

Jesus’s people were all wrong—except that they were willing. And they were wanting. And they were all in. That seems to be the only universally clear marker of the small group of people Jesus chose to spend His time with. They were willing. They were wanting. They were all in. You may recall that Jesus made a habit of pushing away crowds and eating with His few. He pushed the crowds away and chose twelve. Within that twelve, there were three He spent the most time with. They were His closest people. The ones He confided in the most. The short version? It’s okay to be selective as we go forward. You will need to be.

You and I both are unhealthy people. Hopefully not completely unhealthy, but somewhat unhealthy for sure. Everyone has pockets of sin in their lives, and you and I are no different. The point? You will never find the perfect people to do life with you, because those people don’t exist. You will always be doing community with sinners.

Who are we looking for? In the “village” that Zac and I have built, there are two categories of people I spend my time with: People who need me. People I need. People who need me may not have much to offer in return, but what they can give me isn’t the point. I am there to love them, serve them, and encourage them—that’s it.

Your inner circle is made up of the people who are keeping tabs on you day by day and who know the state of your heart.

My inner circle is made of a handful of people who see me and know me and who are willing to be seen and known by me.

Availability.

Humility.

Transparency.

Instead, choose friends who will fight for you, friends who will fight alongside you, and friends who are as committed as you are to fighting against the dark. Pray for this.

God’s idea of community is deep, intentional, day-in and day-out connection, loving at all times, bearing with one another, sticking closer than siblings, naming every sin, running our races together, encouraging each other as long as it is called today.[5]

As it turns out, the reason those villagers with washing machines became depressed all those years ago, and the reason inhabitants of the happiest places on earth thrive so distinctively today, is the same: camaraderie.

We’re not meant to go through our days alone.

I hate to break it to you, but much of our problem isn’t with other people. It’s with us.

80 percent of our thoughts, researchers tell us, are negative.

Studies also reveal that 95 percent of our thoughts are repetitive.[7] The same is true about our relationships and our behaviors. When we think the same thoughts, we manifest the same behaviors, and those behaviors impact our relationships in similar ways.

Proximity.

Transparency.

Accountability to Others.

A Shared Purpose.

Consistency.

What if we chose to do life in close proximity to each other? What if we lived less guarded and more openhearted with each other? What if we chose people in our lives who challenged us to be better each time we were together? What if we shared a deeper purpose in our relationships? What if we stayed instead of quitting each other when it gets difficult?

We are meant to short-circuit when we are surrounded by people we aren’t engaging with. It’s supposed to make us feel tortured inside when we act alone in the context of perfectly good people we could be hanging out with and loving well.

Be close to those we’re close to—that’s my goal for us.

You will never have friends unless you are willing to consistently initiate. Be the one who reaches out. Initiate and initiate again. You can’t expect to have friends unless you get good at this. Even though it’s frustrating. Even though it’s awkward.

These individuals may be of varying ages and cross your path in various ways, but the point is to look for people with certain qualities to play different roles in your life, not just seek out two to three people who are exactly like you and expect them to meet all your relational needs.

THE SAGE This is the friend who listens, prays, and advises. They love for you to bring them a problem.

THE ENCOURAGER This is the cheerleader, the friend who believes in you. They see the good in you and call it out. It is easy for them to speak hope when you are discouraged. They see the best in life and people. This person oozes belief and support.

THE FOXHOLE FRIEND This is just a good companion. This friend gets their hands dirty with you. If you have an idea, they are all in! They will fight for you and fight beside you.

THE CHALLENGER This is the friend who isn’t afraid to tell you the truth. They won’t let you settle, and they will kick you in the booty if you get off track.

THE FUN ONE This is the friend that brings the party. They might not have a two-hour debate with you about a theological issue, but they will make sure you laugh often. They are spontaneous and pull people together and say something inappropriate that interrupts whatever bad mood you find yourself stuck in. THE PLANNER This is the organized and thoughtful friend who makes sure you get together and makes sure the bill gets split up correctly during a night out. She starts the meal train email and remembers your birthday.

Remember to look for your people in unexpected places. Life stage doesn’t matter. Age doesn’t matter. Find the people who are following after Jesus, and then go with them.

What one of my dearest friends needed from me wasn’t more attention, more camaraderie, more support. What she needed from me was more of me.

Don’t get me wrong. I love to go deep about you. I’m just not that interested in divulging the truest parts of me. It feels selfish somehow. Greedy. Needy. Wrong. It feels like I’m wasting your time. Or sucking up too much oxygen. Or saying more than is prudent. Or talking when I should be listening. I guess maybe, too, I hate not being understood. What if I share the deepest parts of me and you look at me confused? Or worse, you try to fix me or change me?

These are all my reasons for asking you the probing questions and listening with sparkling eyes, shoulders hunched toward you in interest, mind hanging on your every word. But the fact is, I’m guarded. The truth is, I’ve been hurt.

vulnerability is the soil for intimacy, and what waters intimacy is tears.

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

What if the other person doesn’t reciprocate with candor of her own? Try to find out why your friend doesn’t feel safe being transparent. Ask great questions and keep trying, if this is one of your safe people. A lot of people (like me! ) aren’t great at this. They honestly need practice. Don’t give up.

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

How will we ever have our wrong thinking challenged or small thinking expanded without friends to challenge and expand it?