Derek Prince - Not Being Loved Is The Worst Sickness
This excerpt is from: Overcoming Guilt, Shame And Rejection
Now we come to the last of these three problems. I’ve dealt with guilt. I’ve dealt with shame. I’ll deal with rejection. Now I consider rejection to be the deepest wound of the human spirit. And I was reading recently something written about Mother Theresa after she had died and she made this simple statement, Not being loved is the worst sickness. And I have to say on the basis of my dealings with people over many years, I totally agree. The worst sickness is not being loved. And there are some of you here tonight sick with that sickness. You may be Christian, you may be saved, but you’ve never realized what it means that you’ve been loved. You’ve never absorbed it. You’ve never taken it in.
Now there are various possible courses... Let me say, in the United States where I spend some of my time, I would guess that, this is the lowest estimate, twenty-five percent of the population have a wound of rejection. I think that’s an underestimate. I think it’s an epidemic and I think it’s not probably very much different here in Britain. It is the number one sickness in our culture today due mainly to the breakdown of the family. Now I’m going to give you just some simple examples. They’re by no means all inclusive. There are others I could give, but one of the commonest causes of the wound of rejection is a baby that’s rejected in the womb. People don’t realize that there’s in that womb, in that embryo there’s a sensitive little person who wants to be loved.
Now at a certain point when I was conducting regular deliverance services in the United States I saw that there was a certain age group that so commonly had the problem of rejection. So I worked it out. When were they born? The answer was about 1930 and if you’re an American the date 1929 is indelibly printed on your mind. It’s the year of the Great Depression, when everything fell apart financially. Most people were out of work. Few people had enough to eat. And you can imagine a woman finding herself pregnant in that situation she’s got six little kids to feed already and there’s a seventh coming and she doesn’t have to take any violent action. She just resents that little baby. And that baby is born with a spirit of rejection.
I believe my wife Ruth would permit me to say this. She was born in 1930 in a large, rather poor family. And she had that problem. She had a spirit of rejection. She was wonderfully delivered, but she told me, she said: That’s something I always have to guard against is rejection. It often tries to come back. Then, every baby as I understand it is born into the world craving one thing more than anything else which is Love. And if parents don’t love their baby or maybe love it but don’t know how to express their love, to manifest their love...
You see unexpressed love does a baby no good. It’s not a psychologist. It can’t work out: Well behind all that external there’s real love. It has to feel love; it has to have love expressed. And a baby that doesn’t feel love, and I would say particularly the love of a father, if you’ll forgive me ladies for saying that. I mean the love of a mother is wonderful, but the love of a father is particular. Let me say this and I’m speaking from my first wife, Lydia was one of the strongest characters I’ve ever met. And she did a work in Palestine amongst Muslims and Arabs that few people would have had the courage to do. She was often without sufficient money, she often had even the missionaries criticizing her, but she stuck through it.
And you know I thinking it over later, I realize one factor in her character was she was the youngest of four sisters and she was her father’s favorite and he always affirmed her. And do you know that makes all the difference in a child’s life if the father affirms the child. And an unaffirmed child, it may be provided for... I was provided for I mean I had every need met, but I never knew in my family what it was to be loved. I mean I was loved but nobody showed it. We were, you know what they say: the stiff upper lip. Never show your emotion. Never tell people you love them, just keep it cool, keep it cold.