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You Have Not Fallen Short | Guided Prayers · Central Christian Church

• 0:04
  SPEAKER_00: It's easy to measure our lives by what we can see.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_00: The income, the title, the home, the way our story stacks up next to everyone around us.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: James writes to people who came up short by all of those measures, and he hands them a surprising kind of comfort.
• 0:26
  SPEAKER_00: Here is how he puts it in James 1, 9 through 11.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_00: Believers in humble circumstances ought to take pride in their high position.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_00: But the rich should take pride in their humiliation, since they will pass away like a wildflower.
• 0:45
  SPEAKER_00: For the sun rises with scorching heat and withers the plant.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: Its blossom falls and its beauty is destroyed.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: In the same way, the rich will fade away even while they go about their business.
• 1:01
  SPEAKER_00: Sit with the picture James paints, a wildflower in the field, bright and beautiful in the morning.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: Then the sun climbs, the heat comes, and by afternoon it is withered and dropped.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: That, he says, is what status is, merely temporary.
• 1:24
  SPEAKER_00: The things we rank ourselves by will fade, even while we're still chasing them.
• 1:30
  SPEAKER_00: But the person in humble circumstances already holds a high position, not because of what they own, but because of who they belong to, and that does not wither.
• 1:47
  SPEAKER_00: Let's start by thanking God for a worth that doesn't fade.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: Thank him that your high position was never something you had to earn or buy.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_00: It's yours because you are his.
• 2:01
  SPEAKER_00: And thank him that, unlike the wildflower, his love for you doesn't wither in the heat.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: Now be honest with him about where the comparison has worn you down.
• 2:32
  SPEAKER_00: Name the place you feel behind, the money, the title, the life you thought you'd have by now.
• 2:42
  SPEAKER_00: Tell him where you've been chasing a flower that fades, exhausting yourself, climbing for a position you already hold in him, and ask him to settle your heart in what actually lasts to the shoulders relax for a moment.
• 3:46
  SPEAKER_00: Picture that field of wildflowers, bright and then gone.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_00: And feel how little of your worth is actually riding on it.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: Let this be your prayer.
• 4:01
  SPEAKER_00: My life is not a flower that fades.
• 4:05
  SPEAKER_00: I belong to you, and that is enough.
• 4:34
  SPEAKER_00: Ask God to lift their eyes off the comparison and to root them in a worth they don't have to earn.
• 5:19
  SPEAKER_00: Free us from the endless climbing and settle us in the high position we already have as yours.
• 5:28
  SPEAKER_00: We rest in that today.
• 5:30
  SPEAKER_00: Amen.