Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

Ours is not a religion of payback. It is of grace. However, out of gratitude we do owe the Lord something. This psalmist understood that spirit of thanksgiving.   Psalm 116 is a peculiarly personal song. It is personal testimony of one man who was seriously ill and almost died. The Lord heard his prayer and delivered him. He now writes this psalm of gratefu...

Two friends chanced to meet on the street one day. One said to the other, “Friend, how is it with your soul?” His friend replied, “You know, I’ve been so busy lately I had almost forgotten that I had a soul.” In the early 18th century, the Church of England was spiritually dead. Thomas Carlyle described the period as “soul extinct,...

Some fantastic claims are made for Jesus Christ. How can we be sure that they are true? 1. Because of reliable historical records. The life of Jesus, like the life of any historical person, is established on the testimony of reliable witnesses. To be a reliable witness a person must have first-hand knowledge of the event, be able to remember and report it accurately,...

Robert Louis Stevenson wrote a story about a handsome, kindly Dr. Jekyll who discovered a drug that had the supernatural power to change a person’s personality. When taken, it immediately transformed him into Mr. Hyde, a monster who delighted in evil deeds. He spent the rest of his days living the double life of the good Dr. Jekyll and the evil Mr. Hyde until he...

A newspaper article once told how the 83-member crew of the USS Pueblo, who had previously discarded faith as excess baggage, turned to prayer and the Bible to sustain them in their 11-month imprisonment by the North Korean government in 1968. The article said, “A symbol of both their faith and their unity was the ‘Pueblo Bible,’ scraps written...

I once read an address delivered by Dr. Douglas Freeman at the dedication of the library at the University of Florida. Dr. Freeman was for many years the editor of the Richmond News Leader and the author of a Pulitzer Prize–winning biography of Robert E. Lee. At the close of his address he made a rather startling observation that the most important thing ab...

Running can be good for you—both physically and spiritually. The apostle Paul expresses this truth when he wrote to Timothy, “Flee these things; and follow after righteousness, godliness, faith, love, patience, and meekness” (1 Timothy 6:11). The word flee means “to run away from.” The word follow means “to run swiftly af...

The fear of death is one of the greatest fears we face. Saul Bellow, the famous novelist said, “The real problem is the problem of death. If people don’t know how to come to terms with it, souls have no preparation. Then the only thing is to be eternally young and in pursuit of pleasure and further sexual and hedonistic horizons.” English essayi...

Smiley Blanton, a Christian psychiatrist who helped pioneer better relationships between Christianity and psychiatry, said that one day a patient visited his office and saw a Bible on his desk. She asked, “Do you, a psychiatrist, read the Bible?” He said, “I not only read it, I study it. The Bible is the greatest textbook on human behavior ever put t...