Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

Jack Taylor, in his best-selling book The Key to Triumphant Living tells that even as a minister, he came to a point of almost complete exhaustion trying to live the Christian life in his own strength. Jack wrote that after he became a Christian, no one told him about the Holy Spirit. So he thought he had to live the Christian life on his own. His father was a farmer&...

Many people are living defeated Christian lives simply because they do not know about the power and the presence of the Holy Spirit within them. In Pecos County in West Texas, there is a famous oilfield known as Yates Pool. It was called Yates Pool because the oilfield was discovered on a sheep ranch that was owned by Mr. Ira Yates. During the Depression years Mr. Yat...

Can you remember a time when you were washing your car and wanted to move the water hose? You did not want to go back to the faucet and cut the water off so you simply bent the hose together and clamped it inside your fist. By this method you hindered or suppressed the flow of water through the hose. In the same way we can quench the flow of the Holy Spirit through ou...

The Holy Spirit convicts people of sin and awakens them to a newness of life. The Holy Spirit is the communicating factor of evangelism. The Holy Spirit is more important than a PA system is in communicating to your physical ear—he is the PA system of the soul. Dwight L. Moody, the gifted evangelist, once went to London and the entire city responded to his prea...

The Bible often times uses fire as a symbol of God’s work in us. Jeremiah was called to preach, and he didn’t want to. He said, “I said to myself, ‘I will not proclaim the word of God.’ But God’s word was like a fire inside my bones and I had to preach.” God’s word in you can be like a fire. It has to come out. If God&rs...

Paul said to the church at Thessalonica, “Quench not the Spirit.” That word quench means “to put out.” Some of you worked in the yard yesterday like I did. You were watering the yard and wanted to move the water hose from one flowerbed to another. You didn’t want to go back to the house and cut the water off at the faucet, so you just que...

Last week I read A Short History of the Baptists by H. C. Vedder. In the book he told of a pioneer Baptist preacher who came into the wilderness of East Texas down around Nacogdoches before this land was ever settled country. Here is what that pioneer said about his life: “Every day I travel, I have to swim through creeks or swamps, and I am wet from head to fee...

The Holy Spirit is the communicating factor of evangelism. It is more important in communicating the Gospel than this PA system is in communicating my message to you. The Holy Spirit is the PA system to the souls of men. And through the working of the Holy Spirit men are awakened to new life and to conviction of sin and the need of the Savior and they come to him and...