All My Friends Have Issues By Amanda AndersonExemplo

Not only do all my friends have issues, they have individuality. Many of us are on opposite sides of issues that divide nations, churches, and people on Facebook. We are working mothers, stay-at-home mothers, single mothers, married mothers, and women who aren’t mothers by choice; homeschoolers, public and private schoolers; teachers, missionaries, and marketing strategists; Republicans, Democrats, Independents, and undecideds; iPhone and Android users; Western medicine devotees and alternative medicine advocates; gun owners and anti-gun protest marchers; Presbyterians, Lutherans, Baptists, and undeclared; vegans, Paleos, carnivores, and cupcake-eaters. With some, I have many convictions in common, and that’s as comforting as a Tempur-Pedic mattress. With others, we might debate differences of opinion, but we don’t try to force one another to our side. With still others, we now accept our differences with a laugh and an agreement to disagree in few words.

If I or my friends had insisted on homogenizing our convictions, opinions, or callings, our relationships would have lasted months rather than years. I’m so grateful that we’ve gotten to the place of accepting our diversity. Because in some kind of counterintuitive miracle, their strength and courage of conviction help me stand in mine. . . .

Your girlfriends who know Jesus are not just your friends: They are partners in the gospel with you, bringing a message of reconciliation to the world. Not only do you strengthen each other to do God’s work in the world, your friendship itself is God’s work in the world. Friends who love each other with a holy affection for one another’s well-being – respecting one another’s differences of opinion[A1]  and lifestyle choices -- are so countercultural and so beautiful to behold that they become a witness to the goodness of God and his power to transform hearts from self-centered and deceptive to loving and honest.

Thank God for these women that love you, issues and all. Thank God for the heart he’s given you to love them. And then, as Peter says in 1 Peter 4:8, “Love each other as if your life depended on it,” because it does.

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For more information on this topic, check out the book All My Friends Have Issues by Amanda Anderson https://amzn.to/2EdVx71