Resume

Yesterday – while listening to a Danny Silk sermon (http://podcasts.ibethel.org/podcasts/follow-your-favor) about finding your favor, I was thinking about how important it is to know that thing you do better than anyone else – and by knowing that to direct your life in a way that you can use that skill or skills as much as possible.

Really this is a lot like learning to write your resume – just instead of trying to use it as an annoying calling card for employers nationwide – you only use it yourself to manage your life. When I was laid off and for a good while prior to being laid off – I spent a little time asking my closest friends to tell me what they thought I was supposed to do with my life. I felt very unhappy with my current job and I spent most of the ride home every day praying that God would remove me from it and give me something new to apply myself to. Typically I would start my prayer with “again…. Please give me a way out of there Lord”…. Wondering why I would pray this prayer every day after work and I still felt trapped and every way out I had tried so far had failed. I struggled with these feelings most of the time I was there – and wavered between trying to “love” my job by telling everyone I was content and happy and hoping these feelings would just become my actual feelings and being miserable and feeling trapped forever in this job. I do feel this prior job had an important purpose in my life, and I wouldn’t change my past – but God’s timing is always perfect and I know I will continue to learn better and better to just trust Him and stop struggling so much to control everything.

Anyways, I believe God uses time to generally move his people towards the things they are meant to do with their life – I think often we fight that flow by trying to organize our life ourselves and not listening to God’s voice or our friends and family who tell us what we shine at. I feel in retrospect that if I had taken time to look hard at my own interests and what made me feel passionate instead of worrying about income and what other people wanted to do with their lives, I might have noticed sooner that my old job was not where I was supposed to be. I tried to make myself fit into that job – but really I should have realized that I needed another, my old job was only a stepping stone to something else.

When you write your resume, you put everything in there that will convince this employer that you are absolutely a must-hire. When you think about your own future and your personal resume, look at what it is in your life that you get excited about. What makes you want to stay up late exhausted working on? What makes you want to jump out of the bed in the morning when you realize excitedly what is waiting for you. Work is something that should be wonderful – it isn’t something we should dread. Sure – sometimes we have to do things we don’t want to because we’re working towards an ultimate good, but I sure don’t want to dread waking up every day for the next 38 years – I’d rather just sell everything I own and go get a hotel in Peru for 35 cents a day. Guinea Pigs are cheap and a delicacy – and the view is spectacular.