Find Your People: Building Deep Community in a Lonely World Read Online Free PDF Page A

from our terribly independent, success-driven culture.
    But are we happy?
    Why We Crave Deep, Intimate Relationship
     
    A few years ago, I went home to see my parents for the weekend and got together with some friends from childhood days. Nearly every one of my close friends from junior high and high school still live in the same community where we grew up. These girls became adults, moved out of their parents’ homes, went to college, got married, and then bought homes of their own just blocks from where their parents still live. When I go back to visit, it’s like rewinding to me, age seventeen. The streets are the same. The trees, while bigger, are the same. The landmarks are the same. My friends are exactly the same.
    Anyway, that weekend, after three or four hours of sitting around the table eating, laughing, commiserating, and relivinga hundred hilarious memories, we started vision casting about the retirement house on the beach we will one day share after our husbands are gone. We were joking (kind of), but the idea of deep-down communal living made my heart sing, and as much as I love my family, there is something about the vision of dear friends cooking together and sharing the daily mundane that sounds pretty perfect to me.
    If you are an introvert, I worry that you’re about to put down this book. I realize that I am hardwired for relational connectivity more than most people, but please hear me out:
    Even if a house full of friends isn’t your dream come true, you were built by God for deep relationships.
    In fact, God existed in relationship with Himself before any of us were here. It’s called the Trinity. God is one, and God is three. (If you’ve never heard this before, don’t worry. It hurts my brain still, and I’ve been to seminary.) The key point is this: for all eternity, God has existed in relationship—as Father, Spirit, and Son (Jesus). [1]
    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. [2]
    It means that our God has been relational forever. It means that He created us out of relationship for relationship—and not a relationship that is surface level or self-seeking. No, the relationship He has in mind for us is…
    sacrificial,
    intimate,
    moment-by-moment connection.
    Author and pastor Tim Keller said,
The life of the Trinity is characterized not by self-centeredness but by mutually self-giving love. When we delight and serve someone else, we enter into a dynamic orbit around him or her, we center on the interests and desires of the other. That creates a dance, particularly if there are three persons, each of whom moves around the other two. [3]
    Beautiful.
    Relational. It’s who we are, because it’s who God is.
    We were made in the image of God, who is relationship. This means our longing for healthy, mutually submissive, supportive, interdependent relationships isn’t simply us craving something good for us, like vegetables or vitamins; we are craving the fundamental reason we were created. We weren’t just built for community; we were built because of it. Woven into the fiber of our souls is a pattern for experiencing intimate relationship with God and then expressing that love in our families and communities and churches.
    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. Wehave 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.
    Consider what you’re aiming your hope toward. Who is in the center of