Roger Marsh: Well hello, everyone, this is Family Talk, a listener-supported division of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. I'm Roger Marsh. Today we're going to hear from Christian comedian, Ken Davis. Ken is the author of 12 books, including Fully Alive. Now, that book was made into a film by the same name and now enjoying a popular run on Netflix. Ken is also the president of Ken Davis Productions and Lighten Up Ministries, which publishes his books and produces inspirational and motivational live shows, seminars, and videos.
Roger Marsh: Ken Davis was born in Northern Minnesota and lived there until, in his own words, his blood began to freeze. Today, he lives in Franklin, Tennessee with his wife, Diane.
Roger Marsh: When Ken Davis was in high school, he struggled with not being good at sports. He wanted so badly to be like the popular athletes, but by his own description, he had the hand-eye coordination of a carp. Ken learned later in life, though, that his worth didn't come from anything he could do or say, but rather from his relationship with Jesus Christ.
Roger Marsh: On today's part one of a two-part broadcast, Ken Davis will use his timeless wit and humor to contrast the world's futile search for happiness with God's ultimate promise of redemption, joy, and abundant life in his Son, Jesus Christ. Let's listen now, here on Family Talk.
Ken Davis: For those of you who have never heard me before, I think it's important to set the stage so that you understand what's going to happen. I'm not right. There is something basically wrong with me. God made me this way so that I would have something to do.
Ken Davis: I'm reminded of a little story that sort of explains it for you. There was this little boy that was born, and when he was born, his parents named him Odd, O-D-D. The doctor snickered and he went out into the hall and he told the nurses and the nurses began laughing in the hall. When the little boy started grade school, he got teased unmercifully. He couldn't even hold a job as a young man.
Ken Davis: Finally, at the age of 58, he turned to his wife one night and he said, "I am sick of this." He said, "When I die, I do not want my name on the tombstone. You put the date I was born, the date I died, that's it." About 10 years later, he passed away, and true to his wishes, his wife bought a beautiful tombstone and put on it only the day he was born and the day he died. But even to this day, as people walk through the graveyard, they look down and go, "Isn't that odd?"
Ken Davis: Tonight, we're going to be talking about getting all you can get out of life. There's still some people who try to convince me that travel is the ultimate test of joy. I'm here to tell you it is the ultimate test. Things have changed dramatically. I have in many of my tapes talked about travel, but I'm here to tell you it has gotten almost unbearable.
Ken Davis: The other day, I stood in line for two hours to take a 45 minute flight. Now, I believe in security, I really do, but common sense would be a great part of it. Two hours for a 45 minute flight. Then I went through a portal of some kind and there was a little Darth Vader guy on the other side of the portal. He took a wand and went voom voom all over. Voom voom.
Ken Davis: He said, "Put your luggage on that table." I'm not kidding about this folks. He opened my luggage and he went through every tiny bit of my luggage. I have pills that I take. I have seven little compartments with five pills in each compartment. He opened each compartment. I'm not kidding you. It's hard to be Christian in those moments. He opened each compartment, all seven compartments, and then he dug a little further and came up and you could see this look on his face.
Ken Davis: He had found a little pair of fingernail clippers and he said, "What are these?" I said, "Those would be fingernail clippers." He says, "What are you planning to do with them?" I said, "I was thinking that maybe after four or five hours, I could work my way through the skin of the airplane with them." That's the wrong answer, by the way.
Ken Davis: He said, "Take off your shoes and I want you to go back and put your shoes through." It's a true story. I'm telling you the truth. So I had to go back after two hours and put my shoes through on the belt. He said, "Take off your coat. Go back and put your coat through." I thought, I think I've offended this man. I put my coat on the belt and the coat went through. He said, "Come over here, sit down." He said, "I want you to roll your socks down." This is truth. He said, "Roll your pant legs up." Then he took his little want and on the bare flesh of my legs went voom voom voom voom.
Ken Davis: I held my composure. But I leave here tomorrow at seven in the morning, I'm going to the airport naked. I'm getting dressed on the other side of the portal and I guarantee you, I won't have to wait in any lines. First person I tap on the shoulder is going to go, "No, just go ahead. You just go right on ahead."
Ken Davis: I was in the marathon this morning. I didn't want to be. They blocked off traffic completely around where I'm staying. I was in the marathon. I watched 20,000 people running, running, just running. Do you know where this came from? In 490 B.C., before Christ, 490 years before Christ was born, a man by the name of Philippides, now this is the truth, was involved in the conflict between the Athenians and another bunch of people that hated them.
Ken Davis: I'm trying to think of who it was. Boy, they hated them and there a big battle. Philippides, who later became known as Pheidippides, Philippides went to the Spartans to enlist their help in the battle. Then he came back and found out that the battle was already being won. So they sent him from the little town of Marathon, this is the truth, from Marathon to Athens. He ran and delivered this message: "Rejoice," he said, "we conquered." Then he dropped dead.
Ken Davis: How many of you know that what I'm telling you is absolute truth? This is absolute truth. He just dropped over dead.
Ken Davis: So throughout history, people have observed this and said, "That's a good idea." How messed up are we? There were 20,000 people running 26 miles without a message. Go to the finish line sometime. As they stumble across the finish line, ask them, "What's the message?"
Ken Davis: Years ago, there was an ad on television, some of you may remember, some of you may not, but it expressed what advertisers in today's age try so hard to express, to try and discover that one thing that'll bring joy and happiness and help you be everything that God created you to be. In this particular ad, there were four or five young people riding a catamaran.
Ken Davis: How many of you know what a catamaran is? It's two canoes tied together with a trampoline. It has a big mast on it. Have you seen a catamaran? It's one of the fastest sailboats on the face of the earth. It goes faster than just about any other sailboat.
Ken Davis: These kids are riding the catamaran and this was the message. The older people may remember it. You younger people, this will make no sense to you to start with. It went like this: You only go around once. How many recognize that? See, you want to reach for all the gusto you can get. Do you remember that? You only go around once, you want all the gusto you can get.
Ken Davis: Now, I want to talk about those two things for just a second, because those two statements are absolutely true. They are true. They are true statements designed to get us to listen to the message that the advertiser was trying to get across. Every person sitting in this room, according to scriptures, is appointed to live once and then to die and then to face God.
Ken Davis: Deep down inside, they know it's true. We have one shot at this life. There are insurance salesman in this building who make an excellent living, a worthy living, helping people prepare for that, and their message messages exactly the same. You've got one shot at it. That's why the choices that young people make are so important. That's why the choices that we make each day are so important. It's why we need to live each day to the fullest for which God created us.
Ken Davis: Then the second half of the message is this: So you want all the gusto you can get. It's our tendency to think, well, no, no, no, that's not a Christian thing. Gusto isn't a Christian thing. God never intended for this life to be a waiting room for eternal life. The blessings that God intended for us, some of them are available here for us today, and then someday we'll see what he really had in mind when he made us, when he created us.
Ken Davis: The Bible says, "Jesus said, 'I came that you might have life and that you might have it in the most boring, mundane way that you can possibly imagine.'" Is that what it says? No. I grew up believing that. I grew up believing if it's fun, it's wrong. I thought God's job was to stand up in heaven somewhere and go, "Behold!" I knew he stood like that because I had seen the pictures. "Ken Davis haveth fun. No."
Ken Davis: There's a couple of you that still believe it. There are some of you that are unwilling to trust God, because you think he wants to tear the joy out of your life. He said, "I have come that you might have life and that you might have it more abundantly." That you might know what abundant life is. He created you for a great purpose, for a great meaning in life.
Ken Davis: So the advertisers grabbed a hold of two truths and they paraded them out in front so they could sell a product. How many of you remember what the product was? It was beer. You only go around once and you want to get all of the gusto you can get out of life, so drink our beer. Give me a break.
Ken Davis: At 16 years old, I knew that was wrong. I was no idiot. Okay, I was an idiot, but I wasn't really an idiot. I knew that wasn't right, because I had eyeballs and ears. I just observed what was going on around me. My lips never touched alcohol as a boy. You say, oh, you must have been a good little boy. No, I had a father, and my dad used to say, "Come here." He'd get that far away from me and say, "Breathe upon me." I would breathe on him and then he would get up off the floor and he would say, "If I ever smell alcohol on your breath, that will be the last breath that you take."
Ken Davis: I believed my father, so I became what was known as the designated driver before the designated driver even existed. I was the guy. "You drive." I watched what would go on. I had a friend one time sitting in the back seat, he drank a bunch of beer and then some hard liquor on top of it. We're driving home, he's on the football team, and he's laying in the backseat doing this, calling out, "Mommy, mommy!" Then he yelled to us, "Oh, stop the car." We stopped the car, he leaned out and got sick, as sick as I've ever seen anybody. Shut the door, drove down the road. "Mommy! Oh, mommy, stop the car." Stopped the car, opened the door, he got sick. That happened five times. The fifth time I turned around to look because I knew he didn't have nothing left. I fully expected to see his tennis shoes come shooting out of his mouth.
Ken Davis: On Monday morning, we used to hang out in the locker room. He comes into the locker room and his eyes looked like two burnt holes in a blanket. He goes, "Oh, you should have been with us Saturday night. Did we ever have a blast." I was 16 and I figured it out. This was stupid. If that's fun, I've got a cheaper way to do it. Sneak out behind the barn and go, ah.
Ken Davis: It isn't about beer. Then the question is, if it's not about beer, what is it? You don't get gusto out of life by drinking beer anymore than you get gusto out of life by eating watermelon, or sugar snap cookies, or a banana. In fact, it has the potential to destroy your life.
Ken Davis: But they tied two truths together. If it is true that we only go around once, and if it is true that we want to get all of the gusto out of life, that God created us for abundant living and we want to know how do I live to the fullest, then how do we do that?
Ken Davis: I'd like to propose tonight that there are three biblical principles that we can live by, and if we live by those principles, we will get a taste of what God intended for our lives.
Ken Davis: This is the first principle. The first principle is that we live with nothing to prove. I wonder sometimes how many lives are wasted, how many young lives are wasted, how many teenagers waste their life desperately trying to prove their value to their friends? How many adults pass up opportunity for witness and opportunity for integrity because they want to prove their value to their friends? How much of our value is wrapped up in what people think of us and we're so afraid to stand up for what is right because this group of people or that group of people may not accept us?
Ken Davis: I don't know how many teenagers are here, but I want to tell you something, something that saddened me all the years I was in youth work and saddens me today, and that is that many times we will come up through grade school and at about the fifth grade, we begin living our lives not for what God intended, but for what those people around us want. Trying to prove to them that we have enough worth to be part of their group. Here's what I want to say to you, teenager. The day you graduate, the day your fingers touch that diploma, those people that you have lived for will disappear from your life. I don't care what's written in your yearbook, for the most part, you will never see them again. So you have a choice now to either live to the potential God created you for or live down to expectations that don't even come close to what He intended.
Ken Davis: Live with nothing to prove. Most of you know my story. I didn't always stand in front of people and speak. I grew up in an atmosphere where the athlete was the one who had the power, and I had no athletic ability. I have the hand eye coordination of a carp. Do you know what a carp is? It's a fish with lips. With human lips, not fish lips. If you fall into a pool of carp, you will be hickeyed to death.
Ken Davis: There's a young man back here going, "What's wrong with that?"
Ken Davis: I couldn't play football, couldn't play basketball, and I thought, what do I have to offer? What is there that I have to offer? I had a person point their finger at me, a substitute physical education teacher, when I was a senior in high school, after he did a high hand-eye coordination contest. He said to me, "You will never amount to anything." Because I couldn't catch a football. I had curvature of the bone in both my arms. I couldn't bring my arms together to catch a football. I remember vowing, "I will be an athlete. I will be an athlete. I will be an athlete." It's never going to happen. It is never going to happen. What value do I have?
Ken Davis: I remember another moment, a moment when I was supposed to be kicked out of a class, and I had to sit in front of the teacher for about 20 minutes while she corrected papers. When she finished correcting her papers, she folded her hands together and caught my eye. She said, "Kenneth Davis." I never had my full name pronounced like that, but what disaster didn't fall. I thought she was going to expel me. I deserved it. She said to me, "God has given you a gift." She said, "Now, you're using this gift to destroy my class."
Ken Davis: She said, "That's going to change." She said, "I want you to go out for speech." I said, "Speech, you've got to be kidding. All my friends are walking around with letter jackets that have macho symbols on them, hockey sticks, footballs, I will not walk around with a set of lips hanging off of my jacket."
Ken Davis: God has given you a gift. Instead of me living up to some short expectations, she pointed me to an expectation that God had. She saw that God didn't create me like I am for no reason. She made me go out for speech, humorous interpretation. They don't invite me here because I'm a great preacher, but God gave me a gift, the ability to make people see what nobody else can see, the ability to make people laugh, to plow that ground, and then insert what I only know to be the truth, the only thing that makes joy meaningful. That is this: I've got nothing to prove.
Ken Davis: I know people who have spent the majority of their lives trying to prove to their business acquaintances, to a father or a mother, that they have value, that they have worth. I'm here to tell you that your value was established forever on the cross of Jesus Christ.
Roger Marsh: You've been listening to part one of a presentation from humorist Ken Davis here on Family Talk, entitled The Joy of Good News. Now to learn more about Ken Davis, his ministries, his publications, or to hear any portion of the broadcast you might've missed, please visit our broadcast page, if you're not there already, at drjamesdobson.org. Go to drjamesdobson.org/broadcast. You'll find everything you need there.
Roger Marsh: Now, please remember we would love to hear from you and you can write to us at our ministry mailing address, The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, PO Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80949. Again, that mailing address is The Dr. James Dobson Family Institute, PO Box 39000, Colorado Springs, Colorado 80949.
Roger Marsh: Remember to join us again tomorrow for part two of Ken Davis' presentation entitled The Joy of Good News. For all of us here at Family Talk, I'm Roger Marsh. Thanks for listening and join us again next time.
Announcer: This has been a presentation of the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute.