As I was reading Keith Green's biography, I felt compelled to share the below excerpt. I realized I have never reached this same point in my own walk with the Lord after 31` years that Keith had reached as a very young Christian. It challenged me to tears as I hope it will challenge you. Please take the time to read it and I pray it will touch you in the same way.
"He who has an ear, let him hear what the
Spirit says to the churches.” (Rev 2:7)
by Melody Green and
David Hazard
Pages 243-252
The festival was called “Jesus Northwest,” near Salem,
Oregon. It normally drew about twenty thousand people, but this year an
estimated thirty-five thousand people were there! As we were driven in, it was exciting
to know so many people wanted to get closer to God. And we loved hearing that a
traffic jam had clogged the roads for two or three miles, which had the police
frantic! Once inside the festival area, we saw the campsites overflowing with
thousands of tents jammed up side-by-side. It was all one big, glorious mess of
confusion and excitement. Because the festival continued for several days in
open fields under a blazing sun, many had stripped down to the bare minimum to
beat the heat. Keith and I [Melody] thought it looked like a mini-Woodstock
hippy gathering.
It was great that so many people were there enjoying the
Lord and enjoying each other, but as we began to feel more of the vibe,
something seemed amiss to us. It was a huge success, and the promoters were
blown away. But the real question was what the outcome would be from an eternal
perspective. Would everyone go home thinking, Wow, that was a lot of fun! Or was there something God wanted to
say to everyone?
Inside the hospitality trailer, the man who put the
festival together expressed his concern to Keith: “We have a success in
numbers, but I’m not sure what’s happening in the Spirit.”
On the last evening of the event, several of us gathered
in the little trailer to pray before Keith’s turn to go on stage and close the
evening. Our friend Winkie Pratney, who lived in East Texas, was there with his
wife, Fae, and son, Billy. Winkie had been one of the main speakers and had
stayed on to be a support to Keith. By now Keith and Winkie had developed such
a close friendship that Winkie was like an older brother and mentor to Keith. . . .
But
just now both Winkie and Keith were troubled—not about what had happened at the
festival, but what had not happened. We’d all heard that the emphasis of the
festival had been on music—lots of it and loud. There were some speakers, too,
but hardly anyone had given a challenge for change or commitment. The place was
packed but some were saying there had been no real move of God, that it was
just one big party. Keith and Winkie felt strongly that if nothing happened it
was a waste of a festival.
There
was a piano in the trailer and Keith crawled under it to get alone with God and
pray. He’d be closing out the festival in just a few minutes. From where I was
praying I could hear Keith softly crying.
There
was a tentative knock at the trailer door. Someone summoned Winkie outside to
see a young blonde girl who had asked to speak with him. She had tears in her
eyes. Winkie recognized her from the Youth
With A Mission booth there at the festival. She was timid, but at the same
time had a gentle boldness as she spoke.
“Excuse
me, but I’ve felt a little grieved during this festival because it doesn’t seem
like God has been given a chance to speak what’s on his heart. There’s been no
breakthrough. We’ve had counseling tents and prayer meetings, but nobody from
the stage has said anything about getting right with God.” She looked shyly at
Winkie and pressed a folded piece of paper into his hand, saying, “I don’t know if you can give
this to any of the leaders, but I was praying and, well, I really felt like God
gave me this Scripture.”
While
Winkie was outside, I looked at Keith. I could hear loud weeping and choking
sobs coming out from under the piano. In between the sobbing, Keith prayed out
loud, “O God, what do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”
When
Winkie walked back inside the trailer, he was reading from a small piece of
paper in his hand.
At
the same moment, Keith’s head popped out from under the piano and he said,
“Winkie, isn’t there a Scripture somewhere about festivals?”
Winkie
looked up from the paper in shock. “Yes,” he said. “I just happen to have one.
A young girl just gave it go me.”
When
Keith read the slip of paper, his mouth dropped open. A few minutes later, he
carried it on stage with him.
When
Keith walked into the spotlight, the crowd burst into a prolonged roar of
applause, whistles, and cheers. Keith sat at the piano and adjusted the
microphone, waiting for things to settle down a bit. Then he turned to the
crowd and, still wiping a few tears away, started talking.
“Have
you ever felt the Lord was sad? Most people think, ‘No, no, the Lord’s always
happy.’ Well, tonight I was praying and I kind of felt the Lord inside me,
weeping. So I started to cry.
“I
got to thinking about all the people that give God one day a week. How would
you like it if your wife gave you one day a week? ‘Well, dear, I’m here for the
weekly visit.’ People like to visit God from ten to eleven on Sunday mornings.
Like visiting time at the local jail. ‘Lord, how ya doing in there? Are they
treating you all right? Is the food okay? We’re working on getting you out.
Well, I’ll see you next week!’”
I’d
gone over to the side of the crowd to watch Keith on stage. As with any outdoor
event, the crowd was a little restless and distracted. And tonight it didn’t
help matters that an afternoon thunderstorm left two inches of squishy mud on
the ground. I could tell people were waiting for Keith to start singing, and
eventually he did. But the song he chose to open with was anything but
lighthearted, the newly recorded “To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice.” Ending with those last two lines: “Cause if
you can’t come to me every day, then don’t bother coming at all.” As soon as he
hit that last lingering chord, he started talking again . . .
In the Old Testament it says, “These people draw near
with their words and honor me with their lips, but they remove their hearts far
from me.” I was listening to everybody singing worship songs before, and nobody
deserves praise and worship but Jesus. It’s a beautiful thing.
But what if your wife said “I love you” but you knew
she didn’t honor you and love you in her heart. That you weren’t the most
important person on earth to her, and in fact, she had a couple of other men
she liked to look at and think about more than you? How sick would it be for
you to hear, “Oh, darling, I love you!” What do the words “I love you” mean? If
you praise and worship Jesus with your mouth, and your life does not praise and
worship him, there’s something wrong.
I want you to go away from here broken and blessed in
that order. I don’t want you to go away from here under condemnation. But I want
you to get broken before God because unless you’re a broken vessel, he can’t put
you back together the way he wants you.
The crowd was totally quiet now. I noticed one young guy
toward the front wearing cut-offs and a “Jesus Is Lord” T-shirt. He leaned
forward with a serious look on his face. It was then that Keith reached into his pocket and
pulled out the slip of paper Winkie had given him. I suspected things were
going to get even more serious as he started to read.
This Scripture is out of Amos. “Thus saith the Lord, I
hate, I reject your festivals, nor do I delight in your solemn assemblies, even
though you offer up to me burnt offerings . . . I will not accept them . . .
Take away from me the noise of your songs
I will not even listen to the sound of your harps. But let justice roll
down like waters, and righteousness like an ever-flowing stream.”
Does anybody understand what that means? Some of you
do. Among thirty-five thousand so-called Christians there’s always a remnant of
real ones peppered in. My job as a minister is to make sure that every person
here leaves a real one. But I can’t do it. I’m nothing but dust.
Keith
looked to the sky and said, “I depend on you, Lord Jesus . . .”
His words had the effect of a shotgun blast. The crowd
sat in stunned silence—the first silence I’d heard all night. I glanced quickly
at the guy in the Jesus T-shirt again. He was just sitting there with his mouth
open. I wondered what he was thinking as Keith continued:
How many of us care about the people living next door
to us? How many of your neighbors have never seen anything more than a little
fish on your car? They think you work at the fish market. If you get really bold,
you put the Greek letters in there—in case you run into a Greek truck driver!
What’s going on?
As for me, I repent of ever having made a record or
ever having sung a song unless it’s provoked people to follow Jesus, to lay
down their whole lives before him, to give him everything. It doesn’t cost you
much to follow Jesus—just everything!
Keith
talked about reaching the world—not just being responsible for what we see but
for what we know. He really hit hard when he compared the average Christian to
a three-hundred pound baby growing overweight on the teachings of Jesus but
never exercising his faith.
“The
best exercise I know is hitting the streets for Christ—door to door, ghettos,
prisons, old age homes, orphanages, high schools, colleges—why don’t you do it?
You say, ‘Cause I don’t feel led.’ You feel lead all right, it’s just
a different kind of led.” (bold & italics not in original) . . .
He
did sing a few more songs—“The Sheep and the Goats” from Matthew 25, and
“Asleep in the Light”—but they only served to underscore his hard-hitting
message. Then he prayed:
Lord Jesus, I repent for our sin of not caring about
all the lost souls, for not caring about all the hungry people. Lord Jesus, I
repent for all of us . . . for playing church and not being Christians, for
being part of religion but not being your children who are broken before your
throne, and put together in your Spirit.
When
Keith sang “My Eyes Are Dry” and taught it to everyone, he started to weep, his
voice cracking with emotion.
My Eyes are dry, my faith is old,
My heart is hard, my prayers are cold.
And I know how I ought to be—
Alive to you and dead to me.
Oh, what can be done with an old heart like mine?
Soften it up with oil and wine!
The oil is you, your Spirit of love,
Please wash me anew in the wine of your blood . . .
Then
with tears streaming down his face, Keith prayed again, “Lord, we’re sorry!
Lord, we’re sorry for having such deceitful hearts and such weak flesh. For
being children of our own desires instead of being children of your
desires—children of religion rather than children of truth. Lord Jesus, please
save us from ourselves and from institutions . . . Lord, corner our
flesh—crucify our flesh, kill our own desires.”
He
turned back to the crowd.
Do you know that the rich young ruler would be
accepted in any church today? But Jesus wouldn’t accept him. Why? Because he
had an idol in his life.
Do you know who the Christian idols are? I happen to
be one of them. So are Andrae Crouch, Evie, and B. J. Thomas. You can even
idolize your pastors. They don’t want to be idolized. They never asked for it.
Remember that applause you gave me when I walked out? I didn’t hear you applaud
the Lord like that anytime today . . . we’re more excited about a Second Chapter
of Acts concert than we are about the Second Coming! Sin!
This
was tough stuff. I wondered what everyone was thinking about Keith’s message.
How did a bunch of people who thought they were Christians feel about having
their salvation challenged? It seemed to me it needed a good challenge. And if
the young fellow I’d been watching was any indication, the Lord was doing good
things. He had his arms wrapped around his legs, his head bowed on his knees .
. .
Keith
continued,
The rich young ruler came to Jesus, and Jesus said,
“You still lack something. Go away. I can’t take you right now.” Who today
would say, “I’m sorry, brother, I can’t lead you in the sinner’s prayer. You’ve
gotta give up your dope, your selfishness, your love of possessions, your clinginess
to family and friends—and your life? Aren’t you a little disappointed at how
Jesus handled such a sinner? Didn’t the Lord know how to lead a soul to
himself?
The requirement for salvation is not just a prayer.
The requirement is an open, totally empty heart that’s ready to be full of
Jesus Christ. After saying the sinner’s prayer, if in a few months your friends
can’t tell that you’re born again, if your relatives can’t see a change in you,
if your teacher can’t see that you’re a Christian, you’re probably not!
Because let me tell you something, when someone’s born
again they get excited! It changes the way they live, what they do, how they
speak, how they act, what they do with their money, their cars, their
girlfriends—it’s all different! Then how come it looks the same? How come
Christians are trying to ride the line?
I challenge anybody who calls himself a Christian,
which means “little Christ,” to live as Jesus did. Or else sometime Somebody
might say, “I never knew you.” I’m gonna get on my knees every day and say,
“God, search my heart and see if there be any wicked way in me. I don’t want to
go astray. I want to be with you.”
You can’t get to heaven by being a nice guy. You might
end up to be the nicest guy in hell!
Finally, Keith gave a challenge to everyone in the
audience—first to people who had never given their lives to Christ, and then to
people who considered themselves Christians but had never given Jesus every hope,
dream, possession, every friend and loved one.
If you’re here tonight and you don’t know Jesus it’s
because of two things. One, because of your sin. Two, because of the hypocrisy
in the people around you, including me. If you don’t know Jesus, you’ve got two
choices—and I’m not gonna say “heaven or hell.” I’m gonna say you can follow
Jesus or you can hate him. You can’t sit on the fence. Those who are not with
him are against him.
Then
Keith asked people to bow their heads and he prayed, “Lord, we ask you for a
miracle. There are no words I can say, no song I can sing, to convict the
sinner. Only your wonderful Holy Spirit can do anything. Send your Spirit . . .
touching hearts to repent.”
Keith
turned to the crowd.
If you want Jesus Christ to completely take over your
life, you’re willing to die for him, give him every possession, every friend,
every loved one, every plan, every hope, every dream, you’re willing to give it
all up if necessary. I’m not saying that’s what he wants you to do, but you are
willing. If you’re willing to come before his throne empty-handed, raise your
hand, if you can’t look him in the eye and know you’ve been living a pleasing
life before him, get your hand up and make it right. Jesus Christ is not your
Savior unless he’s the Lord of your life, and Lord means he owns and
controls—lock, stock, and barrel—your destiny, your future, and your present.
And he throws away your past as far as the east is from the west.
I looked at the young guy I’d been watching to see if his
hand was up. Instead he was flat on his face right in the mud along with many
others! Other hands were up everywhere. Thousands of them. Not only that,
weeping and loud crying broke out all across the open, grassy field. It was
awesome. I could hear people sobbing and choking out prayers to God.
Then Keith asked everyone who was making Jesus Lord of
their life for the first time to stand. To my shock, almost everyone in the
crowd stood. Keith was so surprised he thought they must not have understood
him. So he clarified it.
“This is not a rededication. This is the first time, the
first time you’ve ever understood what making Jesus Lord really meant. Do you
really mean it? Wow! How many people here realize that when they get home they
have a lot of things to get rid of and a lot of things to change in their
lives? A brother down front here says he has to remodel his whole bedroom.
You’ve gotta remodel your whole heart, then the outside’s gonna change!”
Then Keith called Winkie, Fae, and me up on the stage,
and we all led worship with Keith for about half an hour. That’s the way the
festival ended. Keith slipped quietly down from the stage, raw and totally
exhausted. He had delivered his soul. .
. .
As
we drove across the festival grounds on our way back to our motel, we saw lots
of people lying before God out in the fields or on their knees—praying. It felt
like a holy hush had descended and was still lingering . . . gripping every
hungry heart.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzWyZxlwGKI -- To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice
Keith Green died at age 28 in a plane crash on July 28,
1982.
I’m a people watcher at the airport.
I like to see how the parents handle their kids as they run in and out of
standing luggage, how the young married couple cuddles in a corner, whose
eating a quick lunch before the flight, or whose looking around people watching
just as I am.
