Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

A man came to me years ago distressed over his marriage. He had been unfaithful to his wife and she had discovered it. They were trying to put their marriage back together again and I was helping them. At the close of our initial conversation he told me that he had just bought his wife an expensive diamond ring for Christmas. And he wondered if he should give it to he...

I once talked with a young man who had fought a serious alcohol problem in his life for years. He had at one point almost ruined his own life and the lives of the members of his family. As we talked the thought struck me, “If you removed just one thing from that boy’s life—alcohol—his life would have been entirely different.” When I share...

Bob Couch was in a revival meeting in the Central Baptist Church in Huntsville, Alabama. They had come to the close of the last service. He had given the invitation, the people had made their response, and he had stepped down to the front to help the pastor counsel with those who had made decisions. They had introduced them to the congregation and they had come now fo...

I read with great interest some time ago an article in Texas Monthly about Georgi Vins, that Russian Baptist pastor who spent eight years in a Siberian prison camp because according to the Russians, he had injured the health of Russian people by preaching religious doctrine. His book, Testament from Prison, is characterized by simple joy. There is no word of complaint...

In Shakespeare’s play MacBeth, MacBeth comes to the court physician on behalf of Lady McBeth, whose heart has been pierced by the dagger of guilt over past sins. He says to the court physician, “Cure her of that. Her guilt, her misery, her despair, and her wretchedness. Cure her of that. Surely you can wipe that out of her memory. Surely you can erase the...

I walked into a hospital room several years ago and the patient was dying with cancer. He knew it and I knew it. It was obvious when I stepped into the room that he had been crying. He brushed the tears off of his cheek and said, “Come on in, preacher. Let me explain why I am crying. I want you to know that my relationship with God is in good order. Everything i...

The story is told of a woman who said to the evangelist D.L. Moody after he preached on the thief on the cross, “Do you mean I have to be saved like that poor crook?” “No, you can go on to hell if you want to,” Moody replied. “But if you are going to be saved at all, you come like this fellow came.” The real people of God are those...

Some time ago, a man came to Norman Vincent Peale to share with him the problems of his life. The man was the manager of a hotel. He had a nervous breakdown early in his life, and he was afraid that he was about to have another one. He began to share all of his problems and his burdens with Dr. Peale. The more he shared those problems and burdens, the more uptight he...

I read about a slave woman, just out of slavery, holding the hand of her little grandson when the body of Abraham Lincoln was being transported up Pennsylvania Avenue where it would lay in state in the Capitol building. And as that body passed by, that old grandmother said to her little grandson, “You take a good look at that man. He died to set you free.”...