Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World by Jennie Allen Read Free Book Online Page A

God.”
    As I’ve mentioned, God existed in community and created us out of His love. Genesis 2:18 says that after God had created one person on the earth, Adam, He said, “It is not good for the man to be alone” ( NIV ).
    So God created Eve, and He gave Adam and Eve everything they needed to thrive, to grow, and to live together on the earth. The first two humans lived together with God in the garden. They were naked and unashamed. No shame before each other, and no shame before God. Just free, beautiful love and the safety of authentic relationship. They shared the goal of caring for creation. They were given a boundary (just one). And they had all the time in the world to enjoy God, His creation, and each other.
    When I slow down and really consider what life looked like back in the Garden of Eden, I see five realities:
Proximity. They enjoyed physical closeness to each other and God.
Transparency. They were naked and unashamed, fully known and fully loved.
Accountability. They lived under submission to God and to each other.
Shared Purpose. They were given a clear calling to care for creation.
Consistency. They couldn’t quit each other. They needed each other and shared everything together.
    These five “tastes of heaven” provide the framework for how we build healthy community in our own lives today. God established a perfect community that we can work to reclaim here and now.
    The Repercussions of Independence
     
    I say “work to reclaim” because that’s about all that we can hope for in our present reality. Because Adam and Eve wanted independence more than connection and they bucked God’s authority, shame entered their relationship, they forfeited close proximity with their Creator, they corrupted their God-given purpose, and time began to count down to a grave. Sin entered the world.
    Since the beginning of time, we’ve fought hard for the independence we think we want—not just Adam and Eve, or you and me, or the three-in-five people who admit to being lonely pretty much all the time [4] —but rather every human who has ever lived.
There is no one righteous, not even one;
    there is no one who understands;
    there is no one who seeks God.
    All have turned away. [5]
    It’s the story of humankind. We see the repercussions of that independence everywhere. But nowhere is it shown more clearly than in our human relationships.
    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.

4.
FINDING YOUR PEOPLE
     
    AFTER ZAC AND I LANDED in Dallas, we wasted no time in finding a church our family could call home. With four kids who were experiencing varying levels of anxiety about the restart, not to mention my own tailspin, we needed to act fast. We did exactly zero church shopping, choosing to simply return to the church we’d attended twelve years prior, when we had briefly lived in Dallas to attend seminary.
    Next, when I learned that my camp counselor from twenty-five years earlier happened to be living in the same town and attending the same church, I swallowed my embarrassment over being essentially friendless and asked if she’d be my friend.
    To be fair, it didn’t exactly go like that. But that’s precisely how it felt. Michelle is only three or four years older than I am, but given our bond when I was a teenager, I took the risk of initiating a conversation. When she showed up at the coffee shop with minimal makeup and wearing a plain T-shirt and workout shorts, I knew we could be good friends. Thiswas Dallas, where standard dress for the grocery store rivals my Austin wedding attire.
    I cannot overstate how monumental this singular decision was, in the overall course of things. You may not believe me when I