Step Away from the Edge: Introduction, Less Is More

This sermon was prepared and preached by Pastor Mike Rose at First Federated Church in Des
Moines, Iowa, on Sunday, August 3, 2008.
Copyright © 2008, First Federated Church

Note: I would like to credit Pastor Andy Stanley and his teaching on Life Stewardship for shaping my
thoughts on this series.

“Reality TV” represents a major shift that has taken place in television programming in recent years.
Within this genre of programming are shows that display people going to the extreme –programs like
Fear Factor, Man verses Wild, Ice Road Truckers and Deadliest Catch are examples of this.

One of the earliest programs depicting man going to extremes was The Crocodile Hunter - Steve
Irwin was always pushing things to the limits. Whether he was diving on the back of a crocodile,
subduing a poisonous snake, or swimming with stingrays in the ocean, you could always count on
Steve to take sanity and safety to the limits.

Millions tuned in to see how far Steve would go and whether or not his luck would run out as he
pushed himself and his prey to the edge. Now from the comfort and safety of my lounge chair, it was
thrilling to watch him take it to the limit. There’s something entertaining about watching someone
else on TV push themselves, their machines, their relationships to the limits.

However, back in the real world, at school, work, church, it’s not fun watching someone push
themselves to the brink financially, then going over the edge. There’s not a lot of entertainment value
in watching a couple take their marriage to the limits and seeing their family bust apart on the rocks
of divorce, or seeing friends take their schedules to the limit where they are stressed and on the verge
of a breakdown.

But this is our world - daily we’re bombarded with messages that tell us that real living is when we
take life to the edge. We’re encouraged to take our finances to the edge: “why wait till tomorrow
when you can have today?” And so, with our plastic cards, we buy and consume ourselves to the limit
and beyond.

We do the same thing with our calendars. We pack our days, weeks and months so full of activities
that we need handheld computers to keep track of it all. It seems we’re always adding but rarely
subtracting, and in the midst of all the activity, we feel we must be part of, we’re exhausted, stressed
and even depressed.

Not only do we leverage our finances and time to the edge, we often take our morality to the edge as
well. This seems to affect professing Christians especially. I see it all the time: how close to the edge
can I get without actually crossing over into sin, or how close can I get to the edge without breaking
the law.

We live in a culture that calls us to live at the limits, to take it to the Edge, but here’s what I want to
awaken us to in this series titled Step Away From The Edge: We were not created to live at the
limit!

Truth is, living at the limits is not sustainable, healthy or satisfying. And what we’ll discover in this
series is that God invites us to Step Away From The Edge - To live a life that is sustainable, to live
(and this is a key word in this series) with margin in our lives.
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Definition – Margin

Margin is the amount available beyond what is actually needed. It is the extra, the reserve.

The buzz word today is “go green,” stop global warming. One thing we could do is to begin printing
books without any margin’s. taking the words from one edge of the page to the other and taking away
the space between words. That would save a lot of paper and thus save a lot of trees. In fact, 1,200
years ago that’s exactly how they printed documents – here is an example of John 3:16 written
without margin

FORGODSOLOVEDTHEWORLDTHATHEGAVEHISONLYBEGOTTENSONTHATWHO
SOEVERBELIEVEDONHIMWOULDNOTPERISHBUTHAVEEVERLASTINGLIFE.

John 3:16 with margin

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in
Him should not perish but have everlasting life.

Can you see the value of margin? That little bit of space between the edge of the page and the text,
and the space between words, marks the difference between gibberish and understandability.

QUESTION: Which of the two screens represent your life? We would all want to say the one with
margin, but for many of us it’s really the one without.

Margin is the space between our current performance and our limits.

 You run, but not as fast as you could.

 You show up early so you have a little time to settle in before class begins.
 You get to the end of the month and have money left over.
 You get to the end of the day and have some emotional reserves intact.

We need margin in our lives! We live in a culture that pushes us to forget margin and take
everything to the limits and so many of us do and then we wonder why life is so hard.

Consequences of Living without Margin.

1. Stress levels increases.

a. You’re in heavy traffic, 10 miles out from the place of your appointment. As time gets closer
and traffic remains stagnate, what happens? Stress goes up!
b. Your finances are leveraged at the very edge, and your kid comes to you with a request for
money or the washing machine breaks down, what happens? Stress goes up!

2. Your focus narrows, become self-centered. As margin decreases, the awareness of our limits
increase, and we naturally narrow our focus to deal with our limitations.

I see this in churches that once thrived, but have seen a down turn in their income and attendance.
They switch from outward focus to inward focus. The tendency is to shift from reaching the
community to simply trying to survive.

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3. Relationships Suffer – Relationships thrive in the margin. It has been said that “Business is the
enemy of intimacy.”

This is crazy, but many married couples allow themselves to get so busy and their calendars so
full that that actually have to schedule in times for intimacy – Can you believe that!

So in this series we’re going to talk about the importance of Stepping Away From The Edge to create
margin in our lives.

Specifically I’ll address: Time, to include our emotional and relational health, Morality and
Finances.

So this is a great series for you to be part of, it’s a great series for you to bring friends to, because this
is no small problem – It’s huge and affects most all of us in one way or another

Biblical Call To Margin

Now, I’ve been babbling on about limits and margin, What does the Bible have to say about all this?

The creation account shows God demonstrating the need for margin – Genesis chapter 1 takes us
through the six days of creation. Now notice Chapter 2:1-3, NKJV - 1Thus the heavens and the earth,
and all the host of them, were finished. 2And on the seventh day God ended His work which He had
done, and He rested on the seventh day from all His work which He had done. 3Then God blessed the
seventh day and sanctified it, because in it He rested from all His work which God had created and
made.

Question: does the limitless God of all creation need margin? No, but here He set the example for us
to follow, because we do.
Notice that God incorporated His example into The Law. Exodus 20:8-11 - 8Remember the Sabbath
day, to keep it holy. 9Six days you shall labor and do all your work, 10but the seventh day is the
Sabbath of the LORD your God. In it you shall do no work:…. 11For in six days the LORD made the
heavens and the earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested the seventh day. Therefore the LORD
blessed the Sabbath day and hallowed it.

Don’t get hung up on the issue of the Sabbath concerning what day it is, or even what you can or
cannot do in it. Don’t trip over the simplicity!

We could work seven days a week, cram our schedules with activity upon activity, but when we push
ourselves to the edge the result usually isn’t greater productivity and happiness, but stress and
depression.

We need margin in our time – a space between what we could do (the edge) and what we should do,
several steps back from the edge.

Not only did God mandate margin in our use of time, but also in our finances. There isn’t time to get
overly technical, but God never intended that we spend on ourselves 100 percent of what He
gives us.

In the Old Testament, God’s people were required to live on about 77 percent of their incomes – 10
percent went to fund the work and upkeep of the Tabernacle, 10 percent went to fund the festivals and

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feasts and another 10 percent, collected every third year, was to take care of the widows, orphans and
the poor (Lev. 27, Num. 18, Deut. 14).

We’ll go deeper in a couple of weeks, but God’s message to His people was this: If you’ll trust Me
and freely give Me what I ask you for, I’ll make sure that all have all you need.

But how many of us not only ignore teaching on Biblical stewardship, but ignore solid principles on
saving and investing for the future, opting instead to take all that God has given us, and all that the
creditors will give us, and spend it all?

More than anything, this is why the church fails to have the resources it needs for ministry; it’s not
because of high gas prices and economic downturns. It’s because God’s people have taken their God
given resources and leveraged them to the edge to have all that they want today without much
regard for tomorrow.

With our finances, time, emotions, relationships and moral choices many of us are like a man
standing on the edge – one wrong step, and we are in serious crisis.

God calls us to Step Away From The Edge – to create margin. WHY? For our safety, our sanity,
our serenity and our satisfaction.

The bottom line: We all have limits. The question is, will we live at the limits the world pushes us to,
which often takes us to brink of disaster, or, will we accept the limits God calls us to which allow
margin where the best enjoyments of life come from?

You and I are the ones who make that choice.

The First Federated Church copyright, above, is for the sermon itself, not for any items quoted in the
sermon, unless otherwise stated. All quoted items are done so in good faith, and the source is
attributed when it is known.

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