CHAPTER 10

For Him Who Has Ears To Hear did take off! Very quickly,  it moved up the chart of bestselling Christian records to become the biggest debut album in the history of Christian recording—with over 300,000 copies distributed.

The net effect was that, by the end of 1977, requests for concert bookings started flooding in from all across the country. It was exciting. In the space of a few short months, Keith rocketed from being an “unknown” to becoming one of the most popular and sought after singers on the Christian scene.

But very little of the “flap” about his popularity reached Keith at all—not in his heart anyway. He disliked being referred to as a record ing “artist”, since that term seemed to carry with it the connotation of being on a higher level than other people. And more than that, I could tell that Keith was starting to get caught up with inner questions that, for him, held more importance than his popularity rating.

“Mel,” he said to me one morning, as I packed him for another concert tour, “I feel like the Lord is calling me to make an even deeper commitment to him. I don’t want to get caught up in everything that’s happening to us and become a “celebrity” in the church. I can already feel the pull to go out there on stage and manipulate the crowd by saying things I know will move people emotionally. I don’t want to get soulish.”

In particular, Keith felt he needed to count the cost if he was really going to be a true follower of Christ. He was beginning to struggle with the thought that something might happen to me. There had been this rumor kicking around about a devastating earthquake God was going to send to southern California. It was supposed to destroy Los Angeles. Whether or not there really was going to be an earthquake, Keith considered what he would do if something happened to me.

While Keith was on the road alone for a few days, he wrote a prayer to the Lord:

January 22, 1978

. . . I only pray You let me keep my wife Melody for I need her love and help although Your grace is sufficient unto me. Please spare her to stay with me, I will give You far more love than I give her, and all my love for her is for You Jesus.

Take anything, but leave my Melody. Please God, but I am willing to suffer all loss if it is Your precious will. I am Yours.

Bye bye Lord—Your baby.

Keith returned home thoughtful. Would a tragedy cause him to lose his faith? If he wasn’t willing to lay even the deepest loves of his life before God, what did that say about the roots of his faith?

When Keith told me what was bothering him, he said firmly, “I’ve decided that whatever it takes to get deeper with the Lord I’m going to do—even if it means praying and saying, ‘Lord, Melody’s really yours.’”

Keith’s wrestling with giving everything to the Lord had another dimension to it, too—because we’d just had some great news. I was pregnant! Shortly before, I’d had a miscarriage—but this time it looked like there were none of the early distress signs I’d had with my first pregnancy. We were really thrilled! Now all we had to do was wait out the nine months.

Those nine months weren’t spent passively, however. We were on the road, running through airports to catch planes and staying up half the night to counsel our ever-growing community in Woodland Hills. And I wasn’t alone in my pregnancy. There were three other pregnant women with us!

With so many people who were badly in need of help, it was a relief to have some more stable people joining us, people who needed a place to stay while they learned how to make a full commitment to the Lord. Kathleen Griffin was one of those. She had just moved in with us from down south, and we thought she was one of the most caring people we knew. Her thick, blond hair and California-girl complexion made her one of the prettiest, too. She seemed to represent the kind of Christian commitment we wanted to encourage others to make. After you become a Christian—what do you do about it? Did you keep the blessing to yourself or, like Kathleen, pour yourself out for others?

There was already talk about a second album, and Keith believed it was supposed to be more than a “nice” collection of upbeat, inspiring songs. A stray comment he made one day really stuck with me.

A few of us were in our living room one day, talking about how necessary it was to pray. Keith offhandedly said, “Our whole life should be a prayer!”

The words just rang in my ears. I kept hearing the phrase over and over in my mind, “Our whole life should be a prayer!”

Later, alone in our room, I sat down at the piano and just started playing. A melody just came to me, and also some words, flowing together with unusual ease. I played the few simple chords and I started to sing what Keith had said—only now it was in the form of a prayer—with hardly any forethought:

Make my life a prayer to You.

I wanna do what You want me to. . . .

I reached for a pencil and pad of paper and started jotting down the lyrics as fast as I could. Then I started playing the piano again. There were a few false starts, but basically the whole song flowed out in about twenty minutes.

When it was finished, I was overjoyed. I’d never experienced the Lord’s help and creativity in my writing quite like that before. I almost felt like I had just taken dictation. “Make My Life A Prayer To You” seemed to be born of the Spirit in a special way.

Keith loved the song and started singing it in concert right away. Then it really came alive because it was, of course, Keith’s prayer, too. One night, Steve and Nelly—now Mr. and Mrs. Greisen—came to a concert. Nelly was so moved by the song, she asked me if she could sing it on the next Second Chapter of Acts album. What an encouragement! I couldn’t help but remember the days of tears and wadded up lyrics in the trash.

Through the months of April, May, and June 1978—while “Ears To Hear” was number one on the charts—we were in and out of the studio recording Keith’s second album. The only problem was he still didn’t have an album title that felt right. Sparrow was eager to release the album and we needed a concept so the artists could get busy with a cover. Nothing was clicking. Then one day, when Keith was looking through all the song lyrics for what seemed to be the tenth time he suddenly glanced at me with excitement.

“Hey, Mel, what about these words in your song?” He quoted:

Make my life a prayer to You.

I wanna do what You want me to.

No empty words

And no white lies,

No token prayers,

No compromise. . . .

“No token prayers, no compromise,” he repeated. “Let’s just call the album No Compromise!”

It seemed to capture the heart of what Keith wanted to say to other Christians—that they needed to quit compromising, stop listening to the voice of the world, and start living committed lives.

Even the artwork was going to reflect the “No Compromise” theme—one man, standing up in the midst of a crowd that was bowing to an earthly king who obviously wanted to be worshipped. One of the guards was angrily pointing at the lone man with a look that said, “You’ve had it!” The picture reminded you of Daniel in Babylon.

Keith’s idea was to shake Christians awake from the comfortable “slumber” we’d seen. Sure we weren’t faced with anything as obvious as the choice between bowing to a false god, or death. But Christians are continually tempted to bow to other “false gods”—to go with the crowd, to not speak out for what is right, to be ashamed of our convictions. So we compromise. We bow to invisible idols of acceptability, fear, pride, lust, greed and secret sin. Keith wanted other Christians to face the need to have these things cleaned out of their lives—just as he was facing the need in his own life.

Keith was so convinced of the urgency of this message that, as with the first album, people were rallied to pray. During each session, day or night—sometimes all night—there were people from the community in the studio with their heads constantly bowed in prayer. If the recording engineer was having trouble getting the right sounds, they prayed. If Keith was trying to hit some difficult notes, they prayed. If we were working on guitar parts, or background parts, they prayed. There was constant prayer—asking for God’s help and grace. We sensed this was a special project and a difficult message. It was going to need the smoothing oil of the Holy Spirit to slip the strong things Keith was saying into peoples’ hearts.

As always, I was right at Keith’s side. Keith trusted my judgment and he’d often ask, “Mel, how was that?” Or he might say, “Do you have any ideas for background vocals?” And Bill Maxwell was so pitch-sensitive he could always tell if any notes were even slightly off-key. Bill seemed to know how to bring the best out of Keith. And our good friend, Peter Granet—the one we’d dropped our “gospel bombs” on in Sequoia a few years ago even came to lend his support by being the recording engineer. It was one big happy family!

And speaking of family, I was very pregnant by this time. Whenever Bill played the drums my baby kicked me without mercy—often, right in time with the music!

But there were a few points on which Keith and I were not side-by-side. One of Keith’s new songs was called “To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice”. Actually, I loved the song—but there was one line that really bothered me. The whole song was sung as if it was the Lord speaking. At the end of the third verse, there was an especially troubling line:

To obey is better than sacrifice—

I want more than Sundays

And Wednesday nights.

‘Cause if you can’t come

To Me everyday,

Then don’t bother coming at all.

In the studio, Keith and Bill had a long discussion about it before the final vocal was laid down.

“Keith, I really feel like that statement is going to make people feel condemned,” he objected, “especially people who might not know the Lord.”

“It’s mainly for Christians who should know better,” Keith replied. “I really believe I need to say it that strongly to make the point.”

“But it’s a hard line to draw,” Bill came back, shaking his head.

“Well, it’s the line I’m walking,” Keith replied.

I had already voiced my concerns about it to Keith by this time. I knew Keith wanted to make a strong statement—but I wondered if there was another way he could do it. Some people were going to be offended, but even that wasn’t my main concern. The bottom line for me was, did the statement really represent God’s heart toward us? Of course, he wants us to come to him every day. But even when we blow it, I couldn’t imagine God saying, “Don’t bother coming at all!” I felt really torn. I knew that, for Keith, it was like he was trying to shake people who were sleeping through a fire.

When I’d told him my concerns, he said, “If you saw a child about to get hit by a truck and the best you could do was kick him out of the way just before impact, you’d do it. He might end up with a few broken ribs but at least he’d be alive. And any parent would thank you for saving his life—they wouldn’t be angry about the broken ribs! You did the most loving thing you could do.”

In the end, the decision was made to record the song as it stood. Even though the lyric never really sat right with me, I also wanted to see religious apathy shaken at its core—even in my own life. And in that, I totally supported Keith’s heart in the message he wanted to convey.

Another song that carried a “strong-punch” message for Christians was called “Asleep In The Light”. None of us had any trouble with the lyrics in this one.

Keith got the idea for the song from a phrase in the book Why Revival Tarries written by a man named Leonard Ravenhill, who had come to America in 1950 after being involved in many revivals in Great Britain. Keith just happened to find the book on someone’s coffee table, during a time when he was asking God to help him be less intense. After finishing it he said, “What is God doing? Letting me read this book was like pouring gasoline on a fire!” Keith was so stirred he took the concepts from the book and put them into a song—hoping the fire would spread.

Do you see, do you see,

All the people sinking down?

Don’t you care, don’t you care,

Are you gonna let them drown?

How can you be so numb

Not to care if they come?

You close your eyes

And pretend the job’s done . . . 

 The world is sleeping in the dark

That the church just can’t fight

‘Cause it’s asleep in the light.

How can you be so dead

When you’ve been so well fed?

Jesus rose from the grave

And you, you can’t even get out of bed.

It was true that Bill and I—and many others we knew—were behind the warning Keith was trying to sound. But what about the Christian public? What would they think about this message that was growing stronger in Keith’s heart every day? We’d soon find out.

That summer, while the album was being pressed, Keith was invited to sing at a festival in Oregon, called “Jesus Northwest”. It normally drew about 20,000 people—but this year, an estimated 35,000 people were there! A traffic jam clogged the roads for two or three miles, and the police were frantic. The campsites were overflowing. It was all one, big, glorious confusion! Because the festival went on over several days, in open fields under a blazing sun, many people stripped down to the bare minimum to beat the heat. Keith and I thought it looked like a mini-Woodstock.

It was great that so many people were there enjoying the Lord and enjoying each other—but something seemed a bit amiss. It was a huge success and the promoters were blown away. But the real question was, what would the outcome 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? In fact, 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 trailer to pray before Keith’s turn to go on-Stage. Our friend Winkie Pratney, who lived in east Texas, was there with his wife, Fae, because Winkie had been a main speaker. By now, Keith and Winkie had developed a certain closeness. Winkie was like an older brother to him. He was probably the only person who would have put up with Keith’s late night phone calls—sometimes at 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning—just to say “hi”. A New Zealander, Winkie had a quick, brilliant wit and a keen mind. His dark eyes flashed brightly when he laughed, and he laughed often. But beneath the humor was a drive to see men, women and young people commit themselves to Jesus Christ. For years, he’d written books and articles, spoken and travelled around the world as a true ambassador for the Lord. So Keith’s spirit meshed with his readily.

And just now, they were both troubled—not about what had happened at the festival, but what hadn’t happened. We’d 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, and that it was just one big party. Keith and Winkie felt strongly that if nothing happened then, 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, blond 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 about her 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.”

While Winkie was outside, I looked over at Keith. I could hear loud weeping and choking sobs coming out from under the piano. In between the sobbing, Keith prayed out loud, “Oh God, what do you want me to say? What do you want me to do?”

When Winkie walked back inside the trailer, he was holding a small piece of paper in one 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 gave it to 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.

“And 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. . . .”

I’d gone over to the side of the crowd to watch Keith on stage. As with any outdoors event, the crowd was a little restless. I knew they were waiting for Keith to sing, and so he did. But the song he chose to open with was anything but lighthearted—”To Obey Is Better Than Sacrifice”. As soon as he finished, 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 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 had gotten 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 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 35,000 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 . . .”

Keith’s 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. . . . 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 life before him, to give him everything. It doesn’t cost you much to follow Jesus—just everything!”

Keith did sing a few more songs—”The Sheep and the Goats” and “Asleep in the Light”—but they only served to underscore his hard-hitting message. Then he sang “My Eyes Are Dry”, and taught it to everyone. As he sang 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, “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 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 is Andrae Crouch, Evie and B.J. Thomas. You can even idolize your pastor. 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. . . .

“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 clingy-ness 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 everybody 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 who’d never given Jesus every hope, dream, possession, every friend and loved one.

I looked at the young guy I’d been watching to see if his hand was up. Instead he was flat on his face along with many others! Other hands were up everywhere. Not only that, weeping and loud crying was breaking out all across the open, grassy field. It was awesome. I could hear people sobbing and choking prayers out 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. And that’s the way the festival ended. Keith came down from the stage, exhausted. I knew he’d delivered his soul. I was the first one to encourage him about how powerfully the Lord used him. But there were many others waiting to tell him the same thing. It was a bit overwhelming for Keith.

As we were driving back to our hotel we saw some people still out in the fields—praying.

Even with great results, Keith came away from the festival quite disturbed. What was the purpose of a festival anyway? Was it just a place for Christians to get together and have a party? Or maybe it was just another way to market the gospel. The promoters did seem to have good hearts, but were the people who came receiving it in the right way? Or did the responsibility of the spiritual tone of the event rest with each invited minister?

And for Keith, personally, his night of ministry left him with many questions. It took raw obedience to tell 35,000 people who were all “having a good time” that God hated their festival. The pressure to please a crowd that large is overwhelming—to be popular and loved. Even to sell a lot of records or make a “good” name for yourself. In obeying God, Keith figured his “hard message” would turn people off. That would have been easier for him to live with. But to become like a “celebrity” in spite of his strong words was, in some ways, frightening.

“Mel, I left all that stuff behind three years ago when I became a Christian. The groupies, the fans, the praise of men—I don’t want to get sucked back into that again.”

Keith’s quick rise to popularity had been unsettling enough. He was worried about getting entrenched in a system that might eventually cause him to forget about God—or cause others to focus on him instead of the Lord. Keith was also worried about the power of his own charisma. Even though he didn’t want to, what if he was “making things happen” in his own strength? How did he know if people at any given concert were responding to a move of the Lord, or if they were just responding to the performance skills he’d acquired over a lifetime of training?

For Keith these were more than passing questions. They were deep concerns. He had major questions about the Christian music industry—but even more troubling were the questions he had about himself. Keith really felt he needed to take some time off to sort through everything. We’d been on a non-stop schedule of traveling and recording for months. Besides that Keith figured it would be a great time to do some studying.

Winkie Pratney had bought Keith a whole library, because he saw his hunger for the Lord and his confusion over the intensity of his feelings. Winkie felt that Keith needed to study church history. Winkie told him, “Lots of Christians have felt like you dothey’ve written some really great stuff. You need to read what they had to say.” Then he took us to a bookstore and bought Keith a shopping cart full of books.

So, shortly after we returned home from “Jesus Northwest”, Keith announced, “I’m taking a sabbatical—starting right now!”

“For how long?” I asked.

“I don’t know, maybe a year. I might do a few concerts, but no major touring. I need some time. I want to get into the Word of God more—and all those books Winkie gave me. I just need to figure some things out.”

It was nice to have Keith at home more as my September due date approached. We were so excited about this baby. We’d already read several name books, along with flipping through the Bible, to help us find some names we liked. We were taking natural childbirth classes to learn how to survive the “unknowns” of my first labor. Keith’s mom even gave us Keith’s original baby dresser! He’d painted it with a bunch of hippie stuff several years ago, so I spent a few days stripping off the paint, oiling it, and putting on a smooth satin varnish. Things were coming together!

Preparing to be parents brought us to a whole new level of counting the cost of living the type of life we were living. We both felt excited, however, about raising our child in a busy ministry. It seemed to us like the best way for a child to have an understanding of how to serve God was to grow up doing it. Still, we hoped we’d be good parents and be sensitive to our child’s needs. Up to this point, we both thought producing an album was a much harder task than producing a baby. But that idea, at least from my point of view, was about to change drastically.

When my first labor pains hit—two weeks ahead of schedule—we phoned our doctor. Nothing happened that first day, though, and the next day Keith set up prayer teams from our community.

At one point in my early labor, about twenty people from the community came to see me, bringing a bunch of wrapped gifts with them. Since I’d started labor early I was going to “miss” the baby shower they’d planned. I opened the gifts between contractions, but it sure was hard to smile at that point!

Finally, the next day I was taken to the hospital. Once there, things started to speed up—some. Keith was by my side, watching the contractions on the monitor and telling me to “breathe” and to “relax”. I was beginning to wonder if this baby was ever going to be born, and I was already totally exhausted. Keith would try to encourage me periodically.

“Pretty soon we’re gonna have a baby to hold!”

“Really?” I was beginning to have my doubts.

“Hang in there, honey. We’ll have our baby in no time. Just think! Our baby!”

Finally—after forty-nine hours of labor—I made it through the final few pushes and heard our doctor say, “It’s a boy!”

He had lots of curly hair, and Keith kept exclaiming, “Wow, a boy! Honey, a little boy! Oh, thank you Jesus! Thank you!” He nearly danced around the room beaming and thanking the Lord, every inch the proud father.

The doctor wrapped our little blond-haired baby boy in a blanket. I was in awe as I inspected his little fingers and toes and looked into his blue eyes. Keith and I just looked at each other. How did God do this miracle?

We named our son—our son!—Josiah David, after two great kings. Josiah was the child-king, and the Bible said he always did what was right in the eyes of the Lord, never turning to the right or to the left. And David was known as a man after God’s own heart. It already seemed like Josiah David looked a lot like Keith—who looked a lot like his dad. Keith was thrilled about that because of his deep love for his father. The feeling of being wheeled out of the hospital with such a precious gift in my arms was incredible.

Meanwhile our other “family” was growing, too. By now we had incorporated and we were calling ourselves “Last Days Ministries”. About this time it seemed like the Lord was bringing more people who would help us build our growing ministry.

The day Wayne Dillard drove up was a big event because he was the only one who’d ever shown up driving a new car! He’d written us from South Carolina after being deeply moved at one of Keith’s concerts, saying, “My friends call me ‘Mr. Fix-It’ and I’m willing to do anything you need.” We told him to come right away! And Jerry Bryant, who had a radio program in Illinois, came with his young son after sponsoring one of Keith’s concerts in Carbondale.

Not everyone came from such a great distance. Martin Bennett decided to move into the ministry after coming to a few of our home Bible studies. Carol Hoehn was also from the area, along with Francine Weisberg, and Pam Wible. Keith and I had also taken in a teenage girl who had a background of physical abuse and who needed some parenting. She shared a room with Dawn. By now Michelle Brandes, our old friend from The Bla, had become Keith’s secretary.

So, more and more, people were starting to pour in.

Along with the “people explosion”, of course, we needed a “housing explosion” as well. We bought the house next door to us, formerly owned by a guy named Harvey. We made a gate through the backyard fence and it became a girls “dorm”—even though we continued to call it by the unlikely name of Harvey’s House. We also rented another house on Dolorosa Street and called it The Rental. Then another house on Sale Street became known as The School House because it was across the street from a school. The Pool House was named for obvious reasons, and The Glass House got its name because it was full of sliding glass doors and windows. Within a short space of time we went from twenty-five people in three houses, to seventy people in seven houses!

Although we were experimenting with community living and everyone living out of “one pot”, Keith and I were underwriting almost one-hundred percent of the expenses with our own money. But God was really blessing us financially and we wanted to bless him by pouring it back into ministry. To give everybody at least a little feeling of independence everyone got $5 a month for “mad money”, and we did a lot of activities together like going out to Little Tony’s for pizza, or Solley’s Delicatessen for hot fudge sundaes.

To bring in some extra money we put together a housecleaning service and teams of girls went out. The guys had a gardening service. We kept leading more people to the Lord and we’d baptize them wherever we could—in swimming pools, at the beach, in jacuzzis—and Carol even got baptized in the bathtub at The School House. Everyone crowded into the small bathroom for the event, and I stood on the toilet lid to watch as Keith did the honors.

Mealtimes were always interesting because much of our food was donated. We ate things like squid, tongue, and graham crackers spread with cake frosting for dessert. Sometimes we’d just open a bunch of unlabeled cans to see what was for dinner. As we shuffled from house to house for meals and almost nightly Bible studies, I wondered more than ever what our neighbors thought about us. We were such a motley crew of ex-bikers, unwed mothers, and ex-drug-users. We’d walk along the street in clumps of ten or fifteen, past kids on skateboards and dads mowing the lawn in bermuda shorts—a bunch of post-hippies trying to follow God.

We decided the neighbors must think it was all pretty strange. So we sent teams out door to door through the whole neighborhood to let them know who we were and what we were doing. We also invited them to come to any of our Bible studies or Friday night potluck dinners. We’d say, “We’ll always be available to pray with you. If you ever need help with anything, just let us know.”

At our Friday night potlucks, we’d usually have some type of concert after dinner. Sometimes Keith would play, or one of our friends like Randy Stonehill, or Phil Keaggy. Then Keith, Richard Gene Lowe or Reverend Glenn would preach. We saw many people come to the Lord—even whole families with their children. Todd’s mother and father received the Lord as well.

But there was another side to community living.

Because many of the people who were staying with us had come from some pretty rough backgrounds their lives were generally out-of-control. We had to make a lot of rules to build in some strong structure. For instance, everyone had a “buddy” to go places with, because some people couldn’t go to the corner store alone without sneaking cigarettes, or beer, or scoring some drugs.  Some of the rules even seemed kind of crazy, but we needed them. For instance, it was against the rules to pull wheelies on the bicycles, because the tires got bent and people got hurt. It was against the rules to eat special donated foods without permission. And in order to keep some semblance of order we actually had to hand out demerits when people didn’t make their beds or clean their rooms.

Even though we knew other rehabilitation type ministries had similar rules, Keith was really struggling with having so many people under his authority. He confided to his journal:

I’m so afraid of power. Not God’s power. . . my fleshly desire to rule others. In my heart of hearts I only want to serve! To present the babes as mature men and women of God. I want more than anything else to pour myself out for them, for Jesus. But then there’s my old nature that wants to control everything.

Lord, I repent of my old nature and I give my fear of power to you. For you are the only true power, Jesus!! Control my life with your Spirit. Control the sheep’s lives with your Spirit—and if you use me, let me give thanks to you!! Let me continue to grow less important to me. . . .

In the midst of all this, Keith continued to explore the questions that had arisen after “Jesus Northwest”. He plunged into a time of soul-searching and reflection—praying for revival in his own heart. He was fasting regularly as he buried himself in the Word and the writings of Christian leaders of the past and present. The pages were worn and underlined by the time Keith got done with them. He’d often grab the nearest person and read the “good parts” to them out loud.

Keith was exceptionally fidgety and restless now, too. When he wasn’t fasting, I’d catch him poking his head in the freezer looking for his favorite chocolate ice cream. Then he’d pace the floor—the carton in one hand and a spoon in the other. He hated it when his weight was out of control, but his nervous energy got the best of him sometimes.

Early in October of 1978, I dressed Josiah for one of his first big outings—only the event wasn’t exactly as we’d have chosen. Richard Gene Lowe, our first teacher and our good friend, had been on his way home from a big conference somewhere. It was late at night, and he was sleeping in the passenger seat of his friend’s car. A truck coming in the opposite direction hit them head on. The doctors said Richard never knew what hit him. But we were shaken, even though we knew Richard was with the One he betrothed himself to years ago—his beloved Jesus. Keith really thought the Lord took Richard home in such a merciful way.

“Boy, that’s the way to go!” he said, “No laying around in a hospital with some long drawn out disease. You just fall asleep and wake up in the presence of the Lord!”

“Yeah, Richard didn’t feel a thing,” I said.

“When my time comes that’s the way I wanna go,” Keith said as he snapped his fingers. “Earth to heaven in an instant!”

Keith’s words went right by me at the time. There would come a day, though, when they would come back. For the moment, I busily tucked the blanket around Josiah as we headed out the front door for Richard’s memorial service.

One day, a short time later, Keith walked into our bedroom looking more serious than usual—and that was saying a lot. He was holding the book, Rees Howells: Intercessor, in his hand as he flopped on the bed.

“Did you know Rees Howells and his wife gave their infant son away so they could go to Africa as missionaries?”

“They gave him away. . . .,” I repeated, flatly. Already I didn’t like the sound of this.

“They gave him to relatives,” Keith continued, “and God told them they ‘could never claim him again’. Years later, after he graduated from college, he joined his father in the ministry in Africa. But he was already all grown up.”

“That’s really heavy.” Wasn’t there something else we could be talking about?

“Yeah. God told him to do it.”

“I sure hope it was God,” I said, and now I bit my lip, wondering what Keith was leading up to.

“Mel, what if God told us to give Josiah away?”

“I can’t see how that could ever be the Lord’s will,” I shot back at once. “I mean, do you really think he would ask us to do that?”

“I don’t know. He might. God can do anything he wants.”

“Well, I always want to obey the Lord, no matter what it costs. But that would be a hard one. Are you saying you would be willing?” I pressed him.

“It would be the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” he said, seriously. “But if I was one hundred percent positive it was God, I’d do it.”

By now, my heart was so heavy it could have burst. I was afraid Keith was going to do something crazy. What if he tells me he thinks God wants us to give Josiah to somebody else? I was thinking, What would I do? You don't trust give kids away, do you? My emotions were rocking.

Things had been so much easier when it was “just us and our stereo”. We’d always said we would give the Lord everything. But it seemed a lot easier to give God things like money, comfort, and time. How do you give your child? Rees Howells found out. So did Abraham, with his son Isaac. The enormity of their commitment was staggering to me.

Fortunately, it wasn’t a question we needed an immediate answer to. We weren’t going to put Josiah up for adoption or anything. Still, our parent-hearts were being painfully tested. And for the next few months Keith, in particular, was going through a deeper testing than I knew about until much later.

January 15, 1979

Lord, Help Again!

My Jesus, please pour your strong life out on me. . . . I’m almost dead. . . . I need and desire to be close to you. . . . Please, God, you know I’m serious about this. Send your angel to answer.

One evening, in February 1979, Keith was poking through his bookshelf—pulling books out, scanning a few pages, then putting them back. I noticed that he kept at it, until one book seemed to capture his interest. Keith carried it over to his favorite chair$5 Naugahyde recliner we “scored” at the resale store—and kicked back to read for a while. I smiled and shook my head. Keith was always tackling books that frightened me off just by their size.

It seemed like he was only half a chapter into it when he called me over.

“Mel, do you remember this book?”

It didn’t look familiar. “No. What’s it about?”

“It’s all about revivals! Real ones!”

I did remember what he was talking about now. The book was called Revival Lectures and it was written by a nineteenth-century revivalist named Charles Finney. One night about a year ago, Keith had phoned me from the road, sobbing into the phone. He had read me a whole chapter of that book over the phone! Keith had been reading more Finney lately and, tonight, he had rediscovered this particular book.

He went back to his reading now—no long passages to read out loud, I guessed—and I got ready for bed.

When I walked out into the living room to say goodnight, Keith was still engrossed in reading. But by this time, his expression had changed from excitement to total sobriety. Keith was so absorbed that he barely looked up as he mumbled a goodnight to me. I went in our room and turned out the light.

The next thing I knew Keith was shaking me awake. I was so groggy I could hardly understand what he was saying.

“Mel, wake up. You need to get up.”

 “Uh . . . why?”

“It’s happened! Get up. We’re gonna have a special meeting right away.”

Our voices woke Josiah up and he started to cry for my attention. It was barely daylight and through the haze of grogginess I wondered what on earth Keith was going on about.

“I’ve got to go to the other houses,” he was saying. “I’ll be back.”

As I turned my attention to Josiah, the front door slammed and Keith took off in the gray morning light. One of the first places he went was one of the men’s dorms. Wayne Dillard and a few other guys were awakened the same way I’d been. Later on Wayne told me what happened when Keith shook him awake.

“As soon as I got my eyes half-way opened, I could see his face—it was like he was smiling from the inside out. He was radiant.”

“Wayne, wake up!” Keith said. “We’ve got to have a meeting.”

“Okay,” Wayne mumbled, “but what time is it?”

“It’s about six. Listen, I was out in ‘The Ark’ praying all night. And I just got saved.”

“You what?”

“I just got saved!”