Fully Alive: Live for God’s Sake (Movie Review)

John FarrellBy John Farrell4 Minutes

“I don’t do this to stay alive; I do this to live.” – Unknown Cyclist

When Ken Davis was training for his first triathlon several years ago, he was riding his bike up a long, steep hill when he heard a sound coming up behind him. As he huffed and puffed up the inclineone that many times prior he would have gotten off and walked his bike upKen noticed the sound was getting closer. It reminded him of one of those life-support machines gasping for air.

Ken, who describes himself as “an intensely competitive athlete with no athletic ability to back it up,” turned his head to see a considerably older man a few feet away and gaining. He couldn’t let this happen so he stood up and started pedaling as fast as he could. Within seconds, the man was beside Ken and then he whizzed by him as is if he was standing still.

The cyclist disappeared over the hill, but several minutes later, the rider slowed down to allow Ken to catch up to him. When he was once again next to Ken, he looked at him smiling and said, “Don’t stop doing this. I don’t do this to stay alive; I do this to live.”

Ken will never forget the man and his poignant words. Sometimes he actually wonders if the other biker wasn’t an angel.

It’s stories like this that Christian comedian Ken Davis sprinkles throughout his 100-minute stand-up act, Fully Alive.

Although supremely competitive, Ken realizes he wasn’t born to catch a football, hit home runs, or perform gravity-defying slam dunks … and he’s okay with that. He was born to be a comedian … and weird. It’s the latter of those that he so self-deprecatingly admits to and embraces during his act. It’s genuine, refreshing, and, most of all, funny.

But through all of his comical anecdotes (and sometimes serious stories with humorous conclusions) he has one message that he wants to make clear – you should live fully alive with the glory of God in your heart because He loves you. God’s not done with you.

Just because you may be a few months removed from a heart attack, recovering from a nasty divorce, adjusting to a new normal after losing a job, or simply growing older, it doesn’t mean that your life is over. There is still more to life.

As Ken explains during his show, the Greek Bishop Saint Irenaeus, who helped spread Christianity throughout France, once stated, “The glory of God is man fully alive.” God wants us to be alive and thriving in His Kingdom, not wasting away our lives sitting on the couch watching television or just waiting for our end to arrive … even if it means failing every now and then.

To be fully alive and living in God’s presence, we should all strive to achieve what Paul said in Philippians 3:10: “I want to know Christ and experience the mighty power that raised him from the dead. I want to suffer with him, sharing in his death” (NLT). It is then that we may be fully alive.

Through his tales of triathlons, marriage, bullying, sledding down hills at speeds exceeding 40 mph, resurrected rabbits, and losing (and three hours later finding) his granddaughter while on a camping trip, it is obvious that Ken is excited to be living life fully alive and he knows that God isn’t done with him yet.