Interview With Derek Prince (Part 2)

Geoff Buck: That has been an inspiration to me to watch your life over the years how you’ve been led by the voice of God. I was thinking for example how you determined to marry Lydia.

Derek Prince: Yes. Lydia, we have to explain is the Danish lady that I married and got her eight adopted daughters in one day. Well she had a little children’s home just outside Jerusalem and during World War II soldiers in the Middle East, from Britain, Australia, New Zealand, United States, Canada, basically all the English-speaking nations were hungry spiritually. They had nothing. Life had nothing to offer them, and they discovered that you could get a blessing if you went to this little children’s home. So, I mean literally hundreds of soldiers made their way there and were blessed.

Well I was in the Sudan at the time, which is a long, long way from Jerusalem. But some fellow Christian soldier said, “If you really want a blessing there’s a little children’s home you should go to.” So when I got leave I went to the little children’s home and sure enough I got blessed, but I got a lot more than I expected because I got a wife and eight daughters.

But as to how I got the interpretation, well I visited the home. Lydia was really struggling, had very little money and eight girls to feed. And so I got a burden on my heart. So when I went back to where I was posted to I thought I’m going to pray for that Danish lady. And I did. And then I got this simple tongue and interpretation. “I have joined you together under the same yoke and in the same harness.” I thought, “You’ve joined us together. What does that mean?” But I’m not very discreet so the next time I saw Lydia I said, “God told me that He’d joined us together under the same yoke and in the same harness.” Her reply was, “Well He’ll have to work on both ends of the chain.” She wasn’t by any means too excited.

But after we were married, I realized the yoke was marriage, the harness was working together. And we did work together for thirty years and thousands of lives have been touched by our working together. So I do owe, in a way, a special debt to that gift of interpretation. God has guided me time and time again.

Another example was when I was about to be discharged from the Army, just a little before the incidents I’ve related, I was praying and I got this tongue and interpretation. And God said, “I have called thee to be a teacher of the Scriptures in truth, in faith and love, which are in Christ Jesus.” And then He paused and He said, “for many.” And if He had even tried to tell me how many people I would reach I wouldn’t have been able to believe it. But I mean there is no way of being able to calculate the number of people I have reached. It must be in the millions. And I give God all the glory. I mean, see it was His plan. That’s one thing I’ve been careful about. I haven’t always succeeded but I’ve always tried to find out what is God’s plan. Not what do I think I should do, or what do other people think I should do, but what does God think I should do.

Geoff Buck: Following that theme of being led by God the Holy Spirit, I recall your story about coming back from Africa, from the mission field, and being at Christmas time back in Lydia’s country and going out to the cliff and praying about the next phase of your life. Do you remember that story?

Derek Prince: I do. Yes. It’s one of the turning points in my life. Well there was this cliff top overlooking what we call the North Sea and the Danes call the Western Sea, but it’s the same sea. And I felt a particular closeness with the Lord. I would get up on this cliff top, look out across the sea and pray. And at one point I felt the Lord spoke to me, not audibly but very clearly. And He said; “Now you’ve done this and this and this. You’re a missionary, you’re a member of a denomination, you have a pension scheme, you’ve been the principal of a college. Are you satisfied or do you want to go further?”

And the question shocked me because I really didn’t think there was anything further to go. So I thought it over for a while and I said, “No, Lord, if there is anything further then I want to go further.” And the Lord gave me, as always, a very clear and specific answer.

“Well, there are two conditions. First of all, all progress in the Christian life is by faith. If you’ve not willing to go forward in faith, you cannot go forward. Secondly, you’re putting on too much weight and you need to see that.” So God is so down-to-earth and practical. And within a year I was out of everything that I was in when I prayed that prayer and I was walking absolutely in faith. In fact, Lydia and I started out—we’d been in Canada—we started into the States without any clear vision for the future. And of course Lydia was a lot older than I was. So we were in Park Ridge, Illinois, and we were driving down the road and Lydia said to me, which was an unusual question. She said, “What’s your plan for our future. What’s your provision for our future” Well right at the end of the street was a cemetery. So I said, “There you are.” That’s really all we had for the future at that time.

We didn’t have a thousand dollars in the bank. We owned a very old car, we had no pension scheme, no insurance, I wasn’t a member of any denomination, but God took care.

Geoff Buck: I recall you at one point talking about the kind of home that you were allowed to send Lydia home from. In other words, the kind of beautiful home in Fort Lauderdale that she went to be with the Lord from.

Derek Prince: You saw that home didn’t you?

Geoff Buck: I remember that home and I thought how wonderful it was that Lydia, after all those years of service, that God so prospered you and she went home from a beautiful place.

Derek Prince: I must tell you, it didn’t mean much to her, that home. But it was beautiful home. It had six bedrooms, four bathrooms, a swimming pool, a boat dock, and a tennis court. It’s just God’s way of saying, “If you give up anything for Me, you’ll get it all back, multiplied with My blessings.” And I’ve seen that principle all through my life. Whatever we give up for God in faith and in obedience He will return it one way or another, multiplied.”

Another thing that has become very vivid to me is what Jesus said in Luke 14 when He said, “When you give a supper or a dinner, don’t invite your friends, your rich neighbors, your family. Invite the people who have nothing. Because if you invite your friends, they’ll pay you back. But if you invite the people who’ve got nothing, you’ll be paid back in the resurrection.” And I’ve come to the place now where I ask people, “There are a hundred and sixty-eight hours in the week. How many of those hours are you doing something that you’ll be paid for in the resurrection?” It’s really started a lot of people re-evaluating the significance of their lives.

Geoff Buck: Lydia was a very special woman. I never had the privilege of meeting her, but I hear stories about Lydia as I traveled across the country and of course from you. And I was just thinking about Lydia. What did you learn the most perhaps from living with Lydia?

Derek Prince: I think what inspired me the most was her faith and her courage. She really was—you know the Bible says, “The righteous is bold as a lion.” She was like that. I mean she was a woman on her own for nearly twenty years in Palestine where women are despised and the majority are either Muslims or Jews. She brought up a family that at one time or another cared for about seventy children. And, I mean, everything was against her and she never gave up, she never bowed to anything that was not from God. She would tell people straight to their face exactly when she thought about them and she was always right. And she came to be respected by the people who wouldn’t have ordinarily respected that—the Muslims and the Jews.