Soft

In a recent article Marshall Goldsmith was opining about resumes and the things that we typically include in one. Then he challenged the reader to imagine writing a resume that did not include any of the typical categories (school, work experience, accomplishments) but only "soft" skills. What if you had to prepare a resume where you couldn't highlight the elite college you graduated from, or your years of ministry, or the “nickels and noses” you were able to bring in? The only data you can put on your resume are your interpersonal skills. What would they be? What would you say? That you are able....

To listen?

To give proper recognition?

To share - whether information or credit?

To stay calm while others panic?

To make midcourse corrections?

To accept responsibility?

To admit a mistake?

To defer to others?

To let someone else be right some of the time?

To say thank you?

To be uplifting - to encourage others?

To resist playing favorites?

I think you see where this is going. Fact is, when it comes to schooling and work experience, pretty much everyone has that. Where you can really differentiate yourself is in your interpersonal skills. Pick one, any "soft" skill that you feel you're lacking. And start developing it....now.


Let us now define what godliness is. We can say at once that it is not simply a matter of externals, but of the heart; and it is not a natural growth, but a supernatural gift; and it is found only in those who have admitted their sin, who have sought and found Christ, who have been born again, who have repented. But this is only to circumscribe and locate godliness. Our question is: What essentially is godliness? Here is the answer: It is the quality of life that exists in those who seek to glorify God.

The godly man does not object to the thought that his highest vocation is to be a means to God's glory. Rather, he finds it a source of great satisfaction and contentment. His ambition is to follow the great formula in which Paul summed up the practice of Christianity - "glorify God in your body....whether therefore you eat, or drink, or whatsoever you do, do all to the glory of God" (1 Corinthians 6:20; 10:31). The godly man's dearest wish is to exalt God with all that he is in all that he does. He follows in the footsteps of Jesus his Lord, who affirmed to his Father at the end of his life here: "I have glorified thee on the earth" (John 17:4), and who told the Jews: "I honor my Father...I seek not mine own glory" (John 8:49f). He thinks of himself in the manner of George Whitefield the evangelist, who said: "Let the name of Whitefield perish, so long as God is glorified." Like God himself, the godly man is supremely jealous that God, and only God, should be honored. This jealousy is a part of the image of God in which he has been renewed. There is now a doxology written on his heart, and he is never so truly himself as when he is praising God for the glorious things that he has already done and pleading with him to glorify himself yet further.

We may say that it is by his prayers that he is known - to God, if not to men. "What a man is alone on his knees before God," said Murry McCheyne, "that he is, and no more." In this case, however, we should say, "and no less." For secret prayer is the veritable mainspring of the godly man's life.

- J.I. Packer, "Hot Tub Religion"