NO COMPROMISE--the Life Story of KEITH GREEN

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.