Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

The church is the only movement Jesus left on earth to represent him. If, therefore, we would advance his kingdom we must strengthen the churches we already have and they in turn must establish new churches where they are needed. The church exists by mission like a fire exists by burning. When the fire stops burning it goes out. It dies. And when a church loses its se...

Buckner Fanning, pastor of the Trinity Baptist Church, San Antonio, said that early in his ministry that he was preaching a revival meeting at one of the churches in Bogalusa, Louisiana. In the last service of that revival they asked a young man who had not been a Christian for a long time to give his testimony. As he stepped out on the platform Buckner said it was as...

When I talk about working in God’s vineyard I do not mean that you are necessarily employed directly by the church. I mean in your chosen vocation, as a doctor, as a lawyer, as a merchant, as a teacher, wherever you work and whatever you do in that capacity. In that office, in that place, you have a marvelous opportunity to labor in the vineyard of God and to be...

Some time ago the Baptist preacher Carlyle Marney quoted Herodotus as saying, “The greatest tragedy that could come to any person’s life is to aspire to do much and then to achieve little.” And Marney said, “No, that is not so. The greatest tragedy is to aspire to do something, and to do it, and then to discover it’s not worth doing.&rdqu...

I had the privilege this week of meeting Stanley Tam, the president of US Plastics in Lima, Ohio. He is a Christian businessman. I would have said a few years ago, and he would have said too, that he was the owner of US Plastics. But now he is only the president of US Plastics, because he has given his business to God. In fact he has written a book about his life enti...

Maybe I’ve shared with you the experience of one of the greatest football coaches I’ve ever known. He was the athletic director at Southwest Texas State University in San Marcos, where I pastored, and he was a small college Bear Bryant. He had the kind of record, disposition, and reputation that Bear Bryant had. Most everybody was afraid of him. But he cam...

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...

Have you heard about the country preacher who went to a conference in the city one time? He heard all the preachers talking about lethargy and procrastination. He didn’t really understand what the words meant, but they sounded good. He went back to his own church the next Sunday and he preached about lethargy and procrastination. When he finished, one of his de...