Revelations 2: 2 – 5

2 I know your deeds, your hard work and your perseverance. I know that you cannot tolerate wicked people, that you have tested those who claim to be apostles but are not, and have found them false. 3 You have persevered and have endured hardships for my name, and have not grown weary.

4 Yet I hold this against you: You have forsaken the love you had at first. 5 Consider how far you have fallen! Repent and do the things you did at first. If you do not repent, I will come to you and remove your lamp stand from its place.

Isaiah 40:

28 Do you not know?
Have you not heard?
The LORD is the everlasting God,
the Creator of the ends of the earth.
He will not grow tired or weary,
and his understanding no one can fathom.
29 He gives strength to the weary
and increases the power of the weak.
30 Even youths grow tired and weary,
and young men stumble and fall;
31 but those who hope in the LORD
will renew their strength.
They will soar on wings like eagles;
they will run and not grow weary,
they will walk and not be faint.

Are You Eeyore?
Can you be thankful while trying to find your tail…
Author: Pat Aman
November 21,2003
Pastor Pat Aman/©1996/2015
CWPM1996/2015

Have you ever felt like Eeyore. You know the little gray patched up donkey in the Winnie the Pooh series. They lived in a beautiful 100 acre woods Eeyore use to say, “Is my tail still on?” Then he would say, “let’s have a look, and he turned slowly round to the place where his tail had been a little while ago, and then, finding that he couldn’t catch it up, he turned round the other way, until he came back to where he was at first, and then he put his head down and looked between his front legs, and at last he said, with a long, sad sigh, “I believe you’re right, Pooh, it is still there.”

Sometimes I feel the same way, I feel I have lost my tail, and cannot find it. I think that we sometimes go to that 100 acre woods, a beautiful place, but it becomes our gloomy place just like Eeyore.

When you are in that gloomy place it is hard to give praise and thanks when we feel like Eeyore that we have lost our tail.

Even though Eeyore had great compassion for others, and was always trying to help people, he still at times felt, Oh, poor me. See, he lost his love for life. He some how lost the sense of a positive attitude. His fire had gone out.

In our lives we all at times may think, I am burned out, woe is me. We still truck along trying to do our best, but we have to continually put patches on our lives just to hold us together.

See, God speaks of this very thing in Revelation chapter two. He tells the church at Ephesus, that He knows all their good deeds, but He is getting a little disappointed in them, because they have lost their first love. “Him.”

Again, I myself sometimes feel tired, even though I keep getting up from being knock down, that my first love is getting depleted from my life. I need to get that fire back, the fire that helps build my faith up. Yes, that is when I need to get down on my knees and look up to God and find my tail.

God promises to give strength to the weary, and I tell you now, I have to stand on that promise.

So, if today, you are feeling like Eeyore, and you have lost your tail, and are sitting in your gloomy place look up to the Heavenly Father.

Yes, get back on your knees, and look up to God and say, “I think you are right God, I still have it together.” And then begin singing, praising and thanking God and see your life turn around, as we become Thankful instead of woe is me.

In others words, you may have to be like Eeyore, turn around, check things out, and see if you may have to let some things go that maybe clouding up your way. The way God wants you to go. You may as Eeyore, have to get in a downward position on your knees, so God can show you that your tail is still on and your headed in just the way He wants you to go.

You just need to turn around and follow God with Thankfulness and Praise.

Between now and Thanksgiving, I will be posting devotions that I have written through the years on being thankful and what is thankfulness.

I hope you enjoy.
Blessings, Love and Prayers,
Pastor Pat.

Stop Grumbling
Author: Pat Aman
November 16, 2001
Pastor Pat Aman/©1996/2015
CWPM1996/2015

If you, O LORD, kept a record of sins, O Lord, who could stand? But with you there is forgiveness; therefore you are feared. (Psalm 130:3)

What should inform the thankfulness of a Christian? What should be its motive? The common remedy against grumbling for many is the “it could be worse” attitude. The mother says to her ungrateful eater, there are starving children who don’t get to eat. The unhappy employee sees the rising unemployment rates and complains a little less. Reader’s Digest recently gave 10 Reasons to be Thankful, which included larger homes compared to forty years ago, rising literacy among young people, and hundreds of television channels to watch anything we want, anytime we want.

As Christians, we should be thankful for God’s common grace. Our Lord cares for us and provides for our needs and we should increase in our thankfulness for his provision. John Calvin wrote that “thankfulness is the soil to which pride does not easily grow.” For Christians, there is a more fundamental level to our thankfulness: We no longer stand in God’s judgment. Our sins are forgiven. Someone else bore the wrath for our unrighteousness. The forgiveness of sins should make our hearts swell in thankfulness more than the two cars we have in our garage.

In fact, if our thankfulness is only informed by our material increase, then it is difficult to be thankful in times of great suffering. Yet, if our thankfulness is informed by the Gospel, then we can endure much poverty or affliction, awaiting our blessed hope.

Also, if the Gospel does not inform our thankfulness, it is difficult to forgive others when they sin against us. However, if our hearts are adorned with thankfulness for God’s saving work on our behalf, we will be quick to forgive. It is only with a Gospel-thankful heart that we can obey Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.”

“God’s Promises to Protect His Children”

Devotional Author: Pastor Pat Aman/November 2, 2015,  © 1996/2015 Coffee With Pat Daily Devotionals”
Study Notes: The New King James Bible

Nahum, whose name means, “Comforter” or “Full of Comfort,” is unknow except the brief caption that opens his prophecy. His identification an “Elkoshite” does not greatly, since the location of Elkosh is uncertain. Capernaum, the city in Galilee so prominent in the ministry of Jesus, means “Village of Nahum,” and some have speculated, but without solid proof, that its name derives from the prophet. He prophesied to Judah during the reigns of Manasseh, Amon, and Josiah. His comtemporaries  were Zephaniah, Habakkuk, and Jeremiah.

In Nahum 3: 8-10, the prophet recounts the fate of the Egyuptian city of Thebes destroyed in 663B.C. and other cities such as Nineveh’s. So the following is a prophecy of what God will do it His people do not repent and come back to Him.

`A key test of faith for God’s people comes when God judges the nations around them. For Christians, this can mean that God may judge the nation in which they live. He is able to protect and spare His people from judgement that fall even on their neighbors.

Nahum chapter one shows us how God will save a repented people, destroy an unrepented people

In verse 7, shows us that we should trust that God is good! He is a place of safety for us when we are in trouble. He is faithful to care for those who trust Him to do so.

In verses 12-13, We need to believe that God is willing and able to deliver us from any bondage. Know that He will eventually stop any attack upon us.

And in verse 18, we must hear and believe the good news of deliverance from our soul’s enemy through Jesus Christ.

1 A prophecy concerning Nineveh. The book of the vision of Nahum the Elkoshite.

The Lord’s Anger Against Nineveh

¹² This is what the Lord says: