Living on the Edge - Seperate from the World

So this month we are talking about living life on the edge which we define as a life filled with all the power and joy and purpose of God. A life on the edge is a life infused by the presence of God in every moment and Romans 12:1 tells us that this kind of life starts with surrender. When we present our bodies as a living sacrifice to God we begin to experience the life God wants us for us and tap into God’s best for us and honestly, this is a great place to live and a great life to experience.


When I finally surrendered to God 19 years ago as a sophomore in college those first few weeks after saying yes to God were amazing. Life just looked different. There was joy in every moment, I could see God working and moving in so many different ways both in me and around me. I began to see people and the world from a different perspective, a more Godly perspective, and it was amazing. I was living life on the edge and it was wonderful and I wish I could tell you that the experience of renewed faith and trust and love for God lasted forever – but it didn’t. Surrendering to God doesn’t mean that we will never wrestle with sin, it doesn’t mean we will be free from doubt and worry and it doesn’t mean we will always make the right decisions and walk in God’s will and way every moment. We know this and my guess is that many of us experienced this reality just this week.

Last Sunday we had the opportunity to surrender to God through worship and prayer and communion and while we were moved to our very core in wanting to give our lives fully to God, when Monday came we faced all the same temptations as last week. We worried about our finances, our hearts and minds wandered to places where we know they shouldn’t go, we struggled with greed and lust and selfish ambition and by mid week were filled with guilt and shame because of poor choices. While we have such great intentions of living on the edge with God, too often we find ourselves far away from the edge living in the midst of compromise. Too many times we find ourselves in this cycle of surrender on Sunday, mediocrity on Monday, watered down faith on Wednesday which leads to failure by Friday and then we end up back here on Sunday filled with remorse and yet with a genuine desire to surrender to God again and experience life on the edge.

While many of us experience this cycle in our lives, I witnessed the real heartache and pain of this while in Lewisburg. Every Sunday there would be college students from Bucknell in worship and many of them had such a great heart for God and I knew that their desire was to live on the edge with Jesus each and every day. We would talk about it on Sunday and through the week and yet weekends on a college campus are not easy when you are trying to live a Christian life. Temptation is all around and every Sunday there would be students in worship filled with guilt and shame and real anguish over poor decisions they had made on Friday and Saturday nights. Sunday would come and they would surrender to God again, but the cycle would continue.

Too many of us live life caught in this cycle and yet the truth is that God wants more for us, but many of us never experience God’s best because we fail to see that we don’t surrender ourselves to God and suddenly become the perfect person who never struggles in faith again, we don’t surrender to perfection, we surrender ourselves to a process. When we surrender to God we enter into a spiritual process that involves growth, discipline, struggle and ultimately victory and the first step in that process is to begin to separate ourselves from the world, that’s what Paul says in Romans 12:2

Paul says here that we are able to know God’s good, pleasing and perfect will which means we can experience real transformation in life if we will no longer conform to this world, or if we will separate ourselves from the world. While surrendering ourselves to God is a necessary first step because it expresses our desire to live for God, the second step to experiencing the life God has for us is to be willing to separate ourselves from the power and influence of the world around us and there is a reason we need to separate ourselves from the world – the world is not run by God but by Satan. Look at Ephesians 6:10-13.

The ruler and authority of this present world is Satan and so we need to separate ourselves from the power of Satan so we can experience the full life of God.

So let’s take a moment and talk about Satan. The name Satan means accuser, or one who obstructs and opposes. So Satan is the one who opposes us and obstructs our ability to live the life God wants for us. In a recent survey, over 40% of Christians said that they didn’t believe in Satan and the problem is that if we don’t believe that our enemy exists, then it’s hard to fight them. Now when I talk about Satan, I am not talking about a little man with a red suit, pitchfork and pointy tail, but I am talking about a real presence of evil and temptation that actively works to pull us away from God and the truth of God. Whether you want to talk about Satan as a real spiritual being, or the full force of evil and temptation in the world doesn’t matter, what does matter is that we understand that Satan is the real ruler and authority of this world and Satan works to pull us away from God. When we surrender to God we are entering in to a real spiritual battle and if we want to experience the life and power of God then we need to fight that battle and work to separate ourselves from the world.

But what does this kind of separation look like? Are we supposed to leave our homes and community and go off to live in a cave or some kind of Christian commune? Many people in the early church did just that, it was called the monastic movement and they literally separated themselves from society and went off to live in the wilderness to be able to live more fully with God, but I don’t think this is what Paul is talking about. If we look at 1 John, we not only hear a call to again separate ourselves from this world but here John defines for us what the world is - 1 John 2:15-16. So the world is the cravings of sinful man, the lust of the eyes, and the boasting of what one has or has done. In other words, the power of this world that seeks to pull us away from God is sex, wealth and possessions, and our desire for status - position – power or pride. Just think about these things for a moment: sex, wealth, riches, possessions, status, position, power… aren’t these the very things that the world tells us we need in order to have a good life? The world of entertainment and advertising that surrounds us tells us that sex and wealth and power will make us happy and bring fulfillment and purpose to life and that grabbing hold of all of that in excess is living life on the edge.

What I find interesting is that as we saw in our study of the 10 Commandments, sex, money and power are the same 3 false gods that the people of Israel were tempted to worship centuries ago (they were called Baal, Mammon and Moloch) – so things haven’t changed. Even the very first temptation that pulled Adam and Eve away from God was the pride of life – the serpent in the garden – who was Satan – told Adam and Eve that they could be like God, they could experience power in life, if they ate the fruit so from the very beginning Satan has appealed to our sense of self interest and ego and pride. So whether it was the serpent in the garden or false gods tempting the people of Israel, or Satan using the power of this world to pull us away from God, there are real spiritual forces at work to obstruct our relationship with God and keep us from experiencing life on the edge. Satan hasn’t changed his message at all – it’s just the media and method that have change. Instead of serpents, Satan tempts and attacks through TV, movies, internet and advertising. The means of communicating changes but Satan’s message stays the same, grab hold of sex, money and power and you will live life on the edge - but what Adam and Eve show us is that when we follow that message we end up filled with shame and grief because we have weakened our relationship with God which is where real life is found.

So we separate ourselves from the world so we can be in a closer relationship with God which is what allows God to shape our hearts and lives. The truth we always need to remember is that there is always something at work shaping our hearts and lives - it is either this world ruled by Satan or it is God. Our lives are shaped by what we feed our heart and mind and what feeds our heart and mind is what enters through our ears and eyes. So if God is going to shape our hearts we need to be intentional about what allow in to our minds, which is why Paul tells us to be transformed by the renewing of our mind, because a mind shaped by God’s truth brings life.

So let’s go back to Romans 12:2. What does it mean for us to not be conformed to this world so our minds can be renewed? It means we limit or stop the flow of messages from the world around us from getting into our hearts and minds which then opens the door for God’s word and spirit to enter in and transform us. One specific way to not be conformed by the world is to limit the amount of media that we consume every day. Studies done last year by the Kaiser Family Foundation show that teenagers spend on average 7 hours and 38 minutes every day consuming entertainment media (TV, movies, internet, gaming) and since we have taught our children how to multi-task, the reality is that they consume an average of 10 hours and 45 minutes worth of media in that 7 ½ hours. But you know, our children are better off than we are because studies show that most adults spend on average 8 hours and 11 minutes a day consuming media and with smart phones becoming the norm, that number will only increase because now we can watch video, listen to music, play games and of course see countless ads with any free moment we have. I know this is going to sound radical – but maybe we need to limit the amount of media we consume in a day or in a week. Maybe we need to fast from all media for a day and see what difference it can make in our minds and hearts.

I believe it can make a difference and here’s why:  The summer of 1983 I worked in Yellowstone National Park and in 1983 there was no internet and in Yellowstone there is no cable TV, or any TV and there were no movie theaters and you couldn’t get any radio stations and the only newspaper or magazine that turned up were usually a couple weeks old, so I spent the summer in a kind of self-imposed media fast, which for this boy who grew up on TV wasn’t easy. But I also have to say that it was a formative summer for my faith because I spent time reading God’s word, talking with friends about life and God and experiencing the power of fellowship and community and God used those very things to shape my heart and renew my mind and therefore bring me life.

So what would happen if we picked one day a week and turned off the TV, didn’t tweet or update our status on fb and only went online for work and to answer email. First of all, we would have about 8 free hours to do something else and maybe that time could be sent in a small groups or having dinner with the family or reading God’s word. As we limit the world’s ability to shape our hearts and minds we give God the opportunity to do just that.

You see, it’s not enough to just turn out the noise of the world; we have to replace that noise with the voice of God. We need to replace the message of the world with the life giving message of Jesus. There is no more powerful tool in shaping our minds and hearts than the word of God so I want to invite us to go back to our core values of connect and grow. When we connect to God through worship and his word and when we grow deeper in our faith through the intentional reading and reflection of God’s word – our minds are renewed and our lives are transformed and we begin to experience more of the fullness and power in life that God wants for us, but let’s be clear, it’s not our reading of the word that transforms us, it’s the power of God’s living and active word in us that renews our heart and changes our lives. On our own, no amount of reading the Bible can bring about transformation, but when we open ourselves up and give God the opportunity to speak and shape our hearts and lives – he will. This is why first step in living a life on the edge is surrender. So can the next step in living on the edge really be as simple as turning off the world and opening our hearts to God’s power and grace and love and our minds to God’s word? Here’s a thought – let’s give it a try and see.