Roger Marsh: Welcome to Family Talk, the listener-supported broadcast division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh, and you are in for a special treat today as we listened to the second half of Christian comedian, Ken Davis and his talk entitled The Joy of Good News. Ken is the author of 12 books, including Fully Alive, which was made into a film by that same name. He has his own production company and runs a ministry devoted to encouraging others to grow closer to God. Ken authors books, writes entertaining blogs for his website, and he and his team produce motivational live shows, seminars, and videos. He lives in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife, Diane.
Roger Marsh: Dr. Dobson himself selected this broadcast especially for you today, so let's listen now to part two of this uplifting classic presentation from Ken Davis here on Family Talk.
Ken Davis: I remember going to a church camp. You see, when you don't understand the value that God places upon your life and when you live with the desperate attempt to prove your worth by some other means, then unfortunately what we will often be willing to do is step on the carcass of someone else in order to lift ourselves up a little higher. If you don't believe that, ask any young person sitting in this audience who attends a high school. It's one of the cruelest environments on the face of the earth. I know, I went there, I lived there.
Ken Davis: And so when I got out of that environment and was in a new environment where I wasn't put down, where people didn't know about me, where I wasn't teased, I found someone to tease. And this little boy who had a physical impairment and mental disability, and he would walk across the campgrounds, and I would follow behind him and mock the way he was walking, and I would lisp the way he lisped. A little circle of friends laughed, they thought that was so funny. I felt accepted by those people. Then, I was unaware of the heart and soul of this little person that I was torturing. I was doing the very same thing that had been done to me. But as long as I was on top, that's all it seemed to matter.
Ken Davis: I would never have remembered this boy except for one thing. The last day of camp, we were standing around in a circle with our little suitcases, the money we got back from campteen in a little envelope, and our bed rolls were there waiting for the buses to come. I heard this young man coming, his name was Bernie, I heard him coming from way off in the camp somewhere and he was yelling this, "Good news. Good news." Immediately, my mind began to turn. I started to think, "What can I say that will mock this little boy? What can I say that will make my friends laugh one more time and remember me as the funniest guy at camp?"
Ken Davis: But before I could think of anything, little Bernie broke into our circle there, and with fire dancing in his eyes he looked from one of us to the other and shouted, "Good news. Good news." He said, "Jesus loves me. Jesus loves me." I didn't know what to say. And before I could think of anything, he burst from the little circle and you could hear them going all over camp going, "Good news. Good news. Jesus loves me."
Ken Davis: I'm going to tell you something, in that moment, Bernie, regardless of his IQ, understood what some geniuses have never figured out. He understood that he had nothing to prove, that Jesus loved him just the way he was. There are some folks in the highest echelons of business today who work so hard they hardly ever see their families, who work so hard that their marriage is at risk, who try to accumulate enough stuff so that someone will say, "Hey, he has value, he has worth. Look, he does have worth." And he doesn't understand, that person, what Bernie understands, that it could all be gone tomorrow, and he would still be as valuable as he can possibly be in the eyes of God.
Ken Davis: I have good news today, folks, you've got nothing to prove. Anytime you turn to a neighbor or a friend or a business associate or a schoolmate and you say, "I need to live up to their expectations," that expectation is falling far short of what God's ideal for you is. You want to get all of the gusto you want to get out of life, live with nothing to prove. Let me tell you something, you don't only...for important yes...
Ken Davis: ...see, the new people are going, "Oh-oh." Let me tell you something. Let me try to tell you something, you don't only not need to prove your worth to each other, listen to this now, but you don't need to prove your worth to God. So many folks grow up in the church trying to be good enough so that God will love them, grow up in evangelical churches where it is taught from the time you enter the door, by grace are you saved through faith and not of works. It isn't works that does it. We're taught that, and then we keep trying to be good enough so that God will love us, good enough so that he'll send his blessing, good enough so that he'll accept us and bestow worth upon us.
Ken Davis: Sometimes I find the oldest and most familiar verses in the Bible to be the most comforting, "For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believes on Him should not perish but have eternal life." The Son of God came down here to live and to die for you just the way you are. You say, "How could He love me?" Some of you are sitting here today, "How could He love me? You don't know what I've done." I don't, He does, and He loves you anyway. You've got nothing to prove. Trust Him, believe in His love, accept the salvation that He has offered for you, accept the grace and forgiveness that He gives to you, and get on with your life so you can live with the kind of gusto He created you to live with.
Ken Davis: The second principle is this, you want to get all the gusto you can get out of life, live with nothing to hide. You can't run a good marathon looking over your shoulder. You can't live a good life if you've got stuff in the closet. The Bible says that if we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us of our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. There's two points I want to drive home here. Number one is this, there's two directions you could go. You could say, "Okay, then I'm just going to do anything I want. I will erase the whole moral thing from my life." If you do that, you will destroy your life. You won't even come close to the potential for which God created you. Someone said this, and I believe that it's one of the most powerful little statements I've ever heard, "He who is enslaved to the compass has the freedom of the sea."
Ken Davis: You can't go anywhere, you can't do anything unless there are some guidelines in your life. And God did not set the guidelines He set in scripture to destroy our lives. He set them there to save our lives. I'm a pilot. Last year I crashed my airplane, in September. It was a perfectly clear day. I had been hunting. Some of you don't hunt, just bear with me. I got a big elf, I butchered it, I put all the meat in the back of the airplane and flew from the mountains down to the airport that I always use. And somehow when the wheels touched the ground, I lost complete control of the airplane and it just cartwheeled down me a runway and ended up with one wing folded up over the top, the landing gear completely broken off. I was unhurt. I stepped out of the airplane and I was standing on the runway. The emergency equipment, the fire trucks are coming up and up comes a big car that says FAA.
Ken Davis: Do you know what that spells? Trouble. You are in big trouble. The plane is sitting there, elk's in the back, and this FAA guy comes up and goes, "Are you okay?" And I unfortunately fell back on this gift God has given me. I said, "I'm fine, but I think you should check my passenger." Oh, I paid dearly for that. I just want to say government folks don't have a sense of humor.
Ken Davis: When I learned to fly, they told me there were rules you had to obey in order to fly, and one of the rules was you never go into a cloud. If you go into a cloud, they say, you lose your equilibrium. You can't tell whether you're upside down or right side up. I don't know your name, but look at me, I'm right side up. Am I not right side up? And if you were to come up here and turn me upside down, I would know that I was upside down. I approached the whole thing with the whole attitude of saying, "This is ridiculous. Why would they want to have restrictions like this?" I used to dream about flying into clouds. I got my pilot's license, I rented an airplane and went cloud hunting. First day. I rebelled against the rules and said, "This is stupid."
Ken Davis: Now, I wondered a little bit, so I was careful, I found a little tiny cloud first. I backed off, and I went into the cloud and came out the other side. It was kind of neat because everything disappears momentarily. And then I came out the other side, and it was like someone turned the lights on again. Oh, it was absolutely wonderful. So then I found a big cloud, and I went close to the big cloud. I didn't want to just risk everything right away, so I just stuck my wing into the big cloud. And I pulled it out and it was right side up, it didn't turn around. So I backed off about a mile and a half and got a run at this big, huge cloud. I went in there, and it was the most amazing thing I have ever experienced in my life. My stomach came up and said to my throat, "How are you doing, man. Glad to know you."
Ken Davis: It was the most sensations I had never experienced in my entire life. And then while that was happening, I looked over and I had some pencils in a book laying on the right seat, and the pencil and the book just came up and just... They stayed there, they weren't touching anything. I remember seeing the pencil turn slowly like that. And then suddenly it snapped to the ceiling like it had been drawn by a magnet. I looked up to see the pencil on the ceiling. You know what I thought? I thought, "That's why they don't want us in here. They don't want us to have any fun. This is the coolest thing that ever happened." That thing snapped to the ceiling, stuck on the ceiling. In that instant, my airplane came out of the cloud, and sometimes I tell you stories that aren't even close to true, but this is a true story, that thing was upside down.
Ken Davis: And I called upon every bit of my training and released the control wheel and yelled, "Mother." Somehow the plane righted itself, and I went back and I landed and I got out. I went into the little place where they sign up and I signed up for instrument flight rules. The instrument flight rule books are about that thick and there must be seven or eight of them filled with rule after rule after rule. Once I learned those rules and how to follow them, do you know what happened? I can fly anywhere I want. I can go into the clouds. I can fly 300 miles. And when I pop out of the clouds, the runway I want to land on is going to be right there.
Ken Davis: He who is enslaved to the compass has the freedom of the seas. The pilot who says, "I'm going to fly by the seat of my pants," is a dead pilot. They will die. You fly by the rules, you believe the instruments. And that's why God has put these things in place for us. When we get in trouble and when we crash, God doesn't come to destroy us, He doesn't come to put us in jail, He comes to rescue us and to put us on the right path. Let me tell you something, when Christ could no longer carry the cross, they put it upon someone else's back, and they took Him up to that place, that place of the skull. And there, this man who never did anything wrong was nailed to the cross, and they picked it up and they dropped it in the hole, and He died there. I don't believe it was just the nails that killed Him. I believe that what killed Him was what I did yesterday and the day before and the day before that.
Ken Davis: What killed Him was He took upon His own soul, upon His own body the guilt for every sin that's ever been committed by every person sitting in this auditorium and outside of this auditorium and in the entire world. You think of the worst, most heinous crime, Christ took the guilt and blame for that upon His own soul. And as He hung there between heaven and earth, every fiber of His flesh, every drop of His blood cried out, "Good news. Good news." You've got nothing to hide. He took upon His own soul, on His own body the shame and the guilt that was intended for us, so that we could run free, so that we could move toward what He created us to be, so that we could know the freedom He intended when He first created it.
Ken Davis: You want to be everything God created you to be? Then live with nothing to prove and live with nothing to hide. Don't allow Satan to point his finger at you and cripple you with guilt, because Jesus died on the cross to take your sin away, to take your guilt away. And if we could just trust Him and get rid of that guilt, psychiatrists tell us we could empty our hospital beds. Good news, you got nothing to hide.
Ken Davis: The final principle is this, you want to get all the gusto you can get out of life, live with nothing to lose. Isn't it funny what we hang on to? What if God said to you today, what if He came to you today and said, "Follow me, I'm going to show you what I intended when you were born. Come with me." Would you be like me? My tendency would be to go, "Wait, my house. Wait, my career, I'm just getting started, I've got tapes to sell." We laugh but isn't that silly? A story is told of a man who was driving his Mercedes and crashed and rolled in it, went down a ravine and burned at the bottom of the ravine. In the process he was thrown clear but his right arm was completely from his body. He stood looking into the ravine. When the police got there he was weeping. "My Mercedes, I had $50,000 worth of options on my Mercedes." But he wasn't gesturing with that hand because it was gone. It was this hand he was gesturing.
Ken Davis: The police said, "You idiot, you need to come with us, you've been hurt." He said, "But I had spent $50,000, I loved that car." And the police said, "Mister, your arm is gone." He said, "Oh, no," and look down for the first time. He said, "My Rolex, where's my Rolex?" And we laugh. And we laugh. But when you live with something to lose, when you hang on to what can never be yours forever, you lose the ability to be everything God created you to be. That's what made the Apostle Paul so amazing, there was nothing they could do to stop him. "You stop preaching, we'll beat you up." Paul's attitude was, " I count it a privilege to suffer for this Christ. In our country, we don't want to suffer for anything. We will avoid suffering at any cost. I count it a privilege to suffer for this Christ."
Ken Davis: Well, how confounded were his enemies then? They had a little meeting, "We can't give him privileges, what are we going to do?" One of them said, "Let's kill him." So they came back and said, "You stop preaching or we'll kill you." And Paul's philosophy about that was, "For me to live is Christ. And if I die, I get promoted." They got together in a little group and said, "Well, we can't promote him. What are we going to do?" They killed him. They killed the apostle Paul thinking that they had just accomplished the best, they had stopped him in his tracks. But what they didn't see was what happened next. What they didn't see was when Paul ran to his Father and for the first time experienced the body without pain or hurt and saw God in all of His glory. Paul recognized he had nothing to lose.
Ken Davis: I knew a young man one time who had bone cancer. He was dying of bone cancer. He had no hair, he was 22 years old, had a sweet wife, and they'd given him a short time to live. I never saw a young man have a more powerful ministry with youth in my entire life. We were sitting at lunch one day and he leaned across the table and he says, "What's wrong with you?" He said, "Why are you so sad?" He said, "Is it because I'm dying?" He said, "You think this is contagious?" He pointed to his bald head. I said, "I don't know if it's contagious." Sitting in the restaurant, he rubbed that bald head with both hands and then leaped across the table and rubbed his hands on me and said, "It is contagious." People in the restaurant are looking at us like we're crazy. He said, "It's because I'm dying, isn't it? That's why you act weird around me."
Ken Davis: I began to cry, and I said, "I've never met anybody funnier than you. I can't handle this." He leaned across the table, and he said the words that inspired this message. He said, "Ken, were both dying." He said, "The only difference between you and me is that I have a pretty good idea when I'm going to die." And then he leaned across one more time and he said these words, and I will never forget them, he said, "And anyway, Ken, we got nothing to lose." 22 years old. He fought for life, he didn't just give up. But he also knew that if God chose to take him that he was going to a better place and he had nothing to lose. And so you know what he did? Instead of going in a corner and whimpering and crying, he ministered until the day he died.
Ken Davis: Three women walked along the road. The air was thick with dust they could barely see. They did not converse. Occasionally they would stop and one would break into tears. They were on a mission, a horrible mission. They were about to touch and feel and smell the worst evidence a human can have, that evidence that a friend has died, is gone forever. It was their friend Jesus. They turned the corner as they got close to the graveyard, and a light began to glow. It was brighter than anything they'd ever seen before. And suddenly, the light penetrated the fog-like mist. And there they saw an angel sitting on the stone and the stone had been rolled away. They were deadly afraid.
Ken Davis: The angel said, "Why are you afraid?" He said, "Why do you seek the living among the dead. Why do you see the gusto that God intended for your life where there is none." Then he said these words, "The one you seek is not here." How many of you know what the next three words are? I want you to say them with me. He is risen.
Congregation: He is risen.
Ken Davis: Now I want you to say them like you believe them. He is risen.
Congregation: He is risen.
Ken Davis: There's a basketball game going on right now. People are cheering, they're standing to their feet and yelling, and 100 years from now, it won't make one bit of difference. But I want you to say it like it's the greater than any basketball game that ever came on the face of the earth. Let me hear you. He is risen.
Congregation: He is risen.
Ken Davis: Good news. Good news.
Roger Marsh: You've been listening to part two of speaker Ken Davis's presentation called the Joy of Good News, here on Family Talk. To learn more about Ken Davis or to hear any portion of the broadcast you might've missed either yesterday or today, please visit our broadcast page at drjamesdobson.org. That's D-R-jamesdobson.O-R-G.
Roger Marsh: Now, let's be honest for just a moment, parenting can be tough. And that's why here at Family Talk we have created our 10-day parenting series. This email series is a perfect way for today's busy parents who are devoted to being intentional with what matters most. Every day, for 10 consecutive days no matter when you sign up, you'll receive a practical parenting tip and timeless scriptural truths. Just think about that, even if you pick up just one core piece of advice from Dr. Dobson, it could prove invaluable to you and your family. Now, to sign up for the 10-day parenting series from us here at Family Talk, just go to drjamesdobson.org. That's D-R-jamesdobson.O-R-G.
Roger Marsh: I'm Roger Marsh. On behalf of Dr. Dobson and the rest of our team here at Family Talk, thanks so much for listening. Join us again next time for another edition of Dr. James Dobson's Family Talk.
Announcer: This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.