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Resumes & the 4G's

What makes a killer resume, cover letter, or interview response? When you're able to extract skills from a previous experience (no matter how unrelated it seems), and transfer them over for the position you're applying for. This requires much reflection to go beyond the titles and employer names that validate our experience. It's not an easy process, but transferable skills are so key.

What I've been realizing recently is that I've missed out on a lot of opportunities to develop transferable skills/lifelong principles from the six-ish years I've considered myself a believer. CSMP has been so good for me this year because I'm learning principles, more than the "right answers."

One principle that has been on my mind the past two weeks: The 4G's.
Everything in our lives happens for our good, our growth, and God's glory.

Based off of Romans 8:28, PSeth shared this at the prayer summit as we began the new ministry year.

Today I was directed to Day 25 of the Purpose Driven Life by a friend who knows how consumed I've been with the 4G's. Rick Warren's interpretation of Romans 8:28, broken down phrase by phrase:

  • "We know": Our hope in difficult times is not based on positive thinking, wishful thinking, or natural optimism. It is a certainty based on the truths that God is in complete control of our universe and that he loves us.
  • "that God causes": There's a Grand Designer behind everything. Your life is not a result of random chance, fate, or luck. There is a master plan. History is His story. God is pulling the strings. We make mistakes, but God never does. God cannot make a mistake-because he is God.
  • "everything": God's plan for your life involves all that happens to you-including your mistakes, your sins, and your hurts. It includes illness, debt, disasters, divorce, and death of loved ones. God can bring good out of the worst evil. He did at Calvary. Everything that happens to you has spiritual significance.
  • "to work together": Not separately or independently. The events in your life work together in God's plan. They are not isolated acts, but interdependent parts of the process to make you like Christ. To bake a cake you must use flour, salt, raw eggs, sugar, and oil. Eaten individually, each is pretty distasteful or even bitter. But bake them together and they become delicious. If you will give God all your distasteful, unpleasant experiences, he will blend them together for good.
  • "for the good": This does not say that everything in life is good. Much of what happens in our world is evil and bad, but God specializes in bringing good out of it. In the official family tree of Jesus Christ, four women are listed: Tamar, Rahab, Ruth, and Bathsheba. Tamar seduced her father-in-law to get pregnant. Rahab was a prostitute. Ruth was not even Jewish and broke the law by marrying a Jewish man. Bathsheba committed adultery with David, which resulted in her husband's murder. These were not exactly sterling reputations, but God brought good out of bad, and Jesus came through their lineage. God's purpose is greater than our problems, our pain, and even our sin.
  • "of those who love God and are called": This promise is only for God's children. It is not for everyone. All things work for bad for those living in opposition to God and insist on having their own way.
  • "according to his purpose": What is that purpose? It is that we "become like his Son." Everything God allows to happen in your life is permitted for that purpose!

God consume my thoughts with these godly perspectives, and grow me as a woman of conviction.

You can read the rest of the chapter here.

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