Derek's Personal Example

sound Now, I have come into this truth by personal experience. I hardly ever preach on anything that is mere abstract theory. Nearly everything that I’ve ever taught has been related in some way to things that have happened in my life. This is particularly true of this message. I want to give you three personal incidents that gradually alerted me. I didn’t come into this just in one moment; it was a gradual process of unfolding truth. And I think God supervised my education by permitting me to have certain experiences and deal with certain cases that opened my eyes to these things.

Going back to the end of the l960s when I was living in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, with my first wife Lydia, I had inherited from my maternal grandfather various Chinese pieces of art and culture. The way that came about, just as a matter of history, is that my grandfather who was an officer in the British Army was the officer commanding an expeditionary force that the British government sent to China in l904 to suppress what was known as the Boxer Rising or the Boxer Rebellion. And he returned with various items that he’d acquired in China. In due course, through my mother, some of these passed by inheritance to me.

Among them were four gorgeous embroidered dragons, each one on a separate piece of material. I mean, the colors were gorgeous. I learned from somebody who knew a little bit about Chinese culture they were Imperial Dragons because they had five claws. Ordinary dragons just have four claws but Imperial Dragons have five claws. And I really was very close to my grandfather so these meant a lot to me. When we set up house in Fort Lauderdale I had these four dragons framed on our living room wall. But after a while the Holy Spirit began to trouble me. Have you ever been troubled by the Holy Spirit? Do
you know what we do first? We shrug it off and we say that’s nonsense, He wouldn’t do that. Anyhow, the Holy Spirit would say to me, “Now, in the Bible what does the dragon represent?” Well, I knew the Bible well enough to be able to know the answer to that. The dragon represents the devil very clearly in Revelation 12:9 and so on. Well, then He would say to me, “Is it appropriate for you as a servant of Christ to have on the wall of your living room something that advertises the devil?” Well, you know, I struggled with this for a little while and I said, “All right, God, you win. I’ll get rid of the dragons.” And I did.

Now, I didn’t do that with any motive except obedience to God. But the results were quite remarkable. Up to that time I had been just getting by financially. I traveled and preached and received honorariums. And they covered our needs but we had no real surplus. Also, there were certain strange things happening even in my family. I was finding it difficult to communicate with my wife. Then I was entitled to an inheritance from my parents, a very substantial sum of money, and because of various
irresponsible acts by other people the inheritance was interminably held up. Now, I just got rid of the dragons but I began to realize that my whole level of prosperity had changed. I didn’t do anything different but the next year my income doubled without my making any changes.

Then I received the inheritance, it was released. And my first wife and I were able to purchase a house which was a rather big step of faith for us but we felt very clearly directed by God to purchase that house.

Now I’m not just preaching prosperity because, I mean, I think that has to be very carefully qualified. But prosperity with a purpose. We moved into that house, we lived in it for nine years and we sold it for more than three times what we paid for it. With the money that we obtained my second wife Ruth and I were able to build a home in Jerusalem—which is very expensive. God provided the finance through the sale of that house. That was not something we had planned. I didn’t have any conscious intention, but I realized that a dark evil force had invaded my home through those dragons. And until that force was expelled and dealt with I could not go on in the fullness of God’s plan for my life and ministry.

One interesting thing was I didn’t even know what God had for me that I was being kept from, you see? I’ve seen this is true in many peoples’ lives. When people are dealing with a curse they don’t know what they would be like to be freed from the curse. They can’t picture it.

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