In the summer time my wife and I get a great deal of enjoyment from feeding hummingbirds. Seeing how our front porch faces in a general westerly direction it makes an excellent place for flowers and for hanging up hummingbird feeders. In fact, each year we hang 3 or 4 hummingbird feeders along the overhang of the porch so that we can sit and watch the birds in the evening.
This past year we had one hummingbird that spent all of his time chasing the other birds away from one of the feeders. My wife got angry with the little bully, but I felt sorry for him. He was so paranoid that he spent all his time in a futile effort to guard that, which could not be guarded. I never saw the little fellow eat. All he did was sit on a nail and then fly down to chase other birds away from the feeders. He would fly back up to his perch and in just a moment fly after another bird. I actually think the little fellow starved himself to death.
If we are not careful, we Christians can become a bit like that hummingbird. We can become so focused on one little aspect of Christianity that we lose sight of the big picture. On one hand you have the folks who are focused on the hard realities of life: the doom and gloom folks. On the other hand you have the folks who are zeroed in on the blessings of God: our prosperity gospel bunch. In the middle of all this you got the folks who think someone gave them a one-way ticket to heaven so they sat down and are doing nothing but waiting for the train to heaven. All these folks are what you would call: highly focused individuals … kind of like that hummingbird.
In any case, when our focus is so narrow that we have lost sight of the deity of Christ, we are in grave danger of ignoring our mission as ambassadors for God. We must not let ourselves get so paranoid over the spiritual battlefield that we missed the joy of God. At the same time, we must not let ourselves get so enraptured with the prosperity-gospel message that we fall prey to Satan’s deceptions. We must remember that we are on a dangerous battlefield, which demands our constant vigilance; yet, if we draw night unto God He will draw night unto us: we are free to find joy in serving Christ.
Please understand, it is not wrong to recognize the danger facing Christians and it is not wrong to seek God’s blessings. What is wrong is to devote all of your time and energy to just one ancillary facet of Christianity: we can be guilty of straining gnats and swallowing camels. We need to balance battlefield concerns with the joys found in being a faithful Christian so that our service to Christ is not encumbered with ancillary things. A mature Christian does not walk around with a cloud of doom and gloom hanging over their head nor do they just eat, drink and be merry in the blessings of the Lord. They are not ostriches either, with their head stuck in the sand and their butt totally exposed. A mature Christians lives to serve Christ and in the processes finds the joy of the Lord a midst the terrors of a spiritual battlefield.