Derek Prince - How Young Derek Ended Up In A Home With A Single Lady And Her Daughters
This is an excerpt from: How I Became Involved in Israel
Well, a little later I was pacing up and down this depot and the Spirit of God came upon me. Well, I thought, I need to pray for that Danish lady because there she is, she's tired, she's overworked, she has very little help and she has the financial burden of those children, and obviously very little money. So I thought my duty is to pray for her. And as I was praying for her, again the Lord gave me tongue and interpretation. This was astonishing. The Lord said, "I've joined you together under the same yoke and in the same harness the message of blessing and the hand of power".
I thought what does that mean? I thought it must mean that God wants us to work together. Well, you couldn't of thought of anything less unlikely because I was a bachelor, an only child, I never had brothers or sisters. Girls were a mysterious unknown quantity to me. And how could God send me to a home with a single lady and eight girls? However, I'm fairly bold at times so the next time I got to Ramallah I said to Lydia, "I think God wants us to work together". Her answer was absolutely typical, she said, "God will have to work on both ends of the chain". However, I became a regular visitor at the home because the army had transferred me to Jerusalem. I want you to see this, this is where I ended my military service.
How many of you know Jerusalem, the Mount of Olives? The big hospital there which is now a Lutheran Hospital, the Augusta Victoria Building? Well, it was a military hospital in the war and I was posted to it. That's where I ended my military service. That's where I got my discharge. Think of the faithfulness of God. I had no control over my own destiny, the army could have sent me anywhere. It took me precisely where God wanted me to be. Well, I won't go into a lot of detail but I ended up by marrying the lady. And I married her because I loved her, and she loved me. We had complete harmony about Israel and the destiny of the Jewish people. She was a Dane, as I said, and you probably know the Danes have been unusually pro Israel most of their history.
But afterwards, my wife is showing me that I should show you a book. Probably most of you know it, called Appointment in Jerusalem. It's the story of how Lydia went out and started to take in one little dying Jewish baby. And out of that came the children's home. So if you haven't read it, I tell you, I've never met anybody who wasn't moved by that book. And interestingly enough, it has been given to probably a hundred Jewish people. It's a very clear testimony about Jesus. But never has one Jewish person been offended by that book. And many have been stirred by it. So, what was I saying? Remind me. Anyhow, we got married. That's the bottom line. So there I was, there were eight girls, ranging in age from 16 to 3. Six of them were Jewish, one was a Palestinian Arab, and one was English.
Let me just say this, I want to impress upon you that when God initiates something, it works. The only things that work are what God initiates. There were plenty of things I've done that God didn't initiate that didn't work, but I'm talking about what God has done tonight. Today, which is nearly 50 years later, the family of which I am now the head, because Lydia went to be with the Lord in 1975, numbers something over 120 members and they are scattered through three continents. They live in England, Canada, the United States and Australia. I have about 35 grandchildren and about 45 plus great-grandchildren, and 1 great-great-grandchild. They are a close family, closer than many natural families.
That is the sovereign grace of God. But it also is a testimony to Lydia's character that she built such a sense of family into those girls. Sometimes people called them orphans, and they would get offended. They would say, "We're not orphans, we have a mother". And eventually they said, "We have a father, too". I must tell you about one Jewish girl whose name was Ruhamah, she's changed her name now so it doesn't identify her. She was typically Jewish, dark, olive skinned. But the little English girl was very blonde, golden hair and blue eyes. One Arab in the village said, "How come you're so dark and your sister is so fair"? Ruhama didn't hesitate, she said, "My father is dark and my mother is fair". So, there we were.