Derek Prince - How Derek Managed To Fast For Eight Years
This is an excerpt from: Self-Humbling Through Fasting
Now, we’ve already quoted together 1 Peter chapter 5, where Peter says, "Humble yourselves". So the scriptural way to do it, the scriptural way, there are other ways, but the primary way to humble our souls is by fasting. Now I want to give you a few historical examples. First from the Old Testament and then from the New. When I was saved in 1941, if you can believe that there were people alive on earth at that time, I was very ignorant of Scripture. I wasn’t altogether ignorant of the Bible because, as an Anglican, and one of the great strengths of the Anglican church is they do read the Scriptures in every service. So I knew the Scriptures in a sense historically, but I had no spiritual understanding. I was twenty-four years old. I'd been educated at the best institutions in Britain. I had never met a person who told me he was born again. I didn’t know that such an experience was possible. And then I had a very dramatic encounter with Jesus in the middle of the night in an army barrack room.
Let me tell you this. You can do a lot of things and stay the same. You can pray. You can join a church. You can sign a decision card. You can do all sorts of things and stay the same. But, when you meet Jesus you will never be the same again. That’s revolutionary. I’m due to speak to a group of young people Saturday evening and I want to bring them a revolutionary message, because the gospel is a revolutionary message. When it isn’t revolutionary, it isn’t the gospel. So, in His own way, and I didn’t know that the Lord spoke to people at that time, but He indicated to me that He wanted me to fast one day a week in 1941.
I have to say, without being boastful, that I’ve done that ever since, from 1941 until the present time. Often I’ve fasted longer, as much as three weeks or more. But I calculated the other day that having done that for however many years I’ve been a Christian, I have fasted more than three thousand days, which is more than eight years. If the Lord had said to me, "I want you to fast eight years," I would have been appalled. But taking it one week at a time, I made it through. I will tell you I will never go back on the practice of fasting. It is too important.