Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

Israel’s problem was that it did not have believing faith. The end result was that they did not take the Promised Land but rather wandered in the wilderness for 40 years. They preferred the security of slavery to the risk of freedom. Consequently they tied the hands of God. He wanted to give them the land, but they did not believe enough to attempt to take it, s...

I had the opportunity to spend some time with Harrell Cushing, a fellow pastor, who is the chairman of the Foreign Mission Board of the SBC. He told us what God is doing in China. He has firsthand information as a result of his position in our convention. Thirty years ago, our missionaries were driven out of China. That had long been one of our great mission fields. W...

During the Civil War, a 13-year-old boy was a bugler for a band of soldiers. They found themselves in the midst of a bloody battle and it seemed that they would all die. In the midst of the fighting, the commander yelled, “Tell the bugler to sound the retreat!” Nothing happened. Then in a few moments the orderly reported, “The bugler said he doesn&rs...

Years ago in a church I pastored, we had a faithful member. She was there every time the doors were opened. In a previous church she had been the president of the Women’s Missionary Union. As the leader of that ministry she had often led that church to pray for missions—for the conversion of the heathen and for the church to send missionaries to distant la...

Charles Drew was one of the great black American surgeons and scientists. He made a principal contribution to the American Red Cross blood program in learning and discovering that blood plasma, as opposed to whole blood, was not only acceptable but preferable in blood transfusions. Up until his time, if you wanted a blood transfusion, you could use only whole blood. W...

We must understand that Jesus failed often in his public ministry. You remember when he went to his hometown of Nazareth. The Bible says that he could do no mighty works there because of their unbelief. He struck out in his own hometown. Then he went into the region of Gadarenes and he cast the demons out of the man into the pigs, and then the pigs plunged over the cl...

You could go on and on with the excuses, the reasons that people give for not witnessing. But the bottom Iine is that if we do not share our faith with other people, we simply lack the motivation that we ought to have. I am persuaded that witnessing and sharing your faith with another person ought to be the spontaneous result of being converted to Jesus Christ. When w...

Sam Shoemaker, the great Episcopalian preacher and evangelist, used to say, “Every man is like an island and if you will row around him several times you will find a place to put in.” In every person’s life there is a problem or a need or they live near one. If you can identify that need and begin to talk to them about that need and how God and Chris...

I have been reading a book entitled Marketing the Church. The author of that book asks a question that I think is worth asking to every one of us. He said, “How many of you have ever met an unsaved person who is craving for a sermon? Or how many of you have ever met an unsaved person who has sought diligently a place where they can sing ‘The Old Rugged Cro...