Paul W. Powell Legacy Library

Polish poet Stanislaw Jerzy Lec once wrote: “You will always find some Eskimos ready to instruct Congolese on how to cope with heat waves.” That fellow must have had in mind the meddlesome people who are always trying to tell others how to take care of their business. Meddling in other people’s business is an age-old sin. Back in Solomon’s day...

A Look article raised the question, “Can we still be shocked?” The author, William K. Zinsser, pointed out that gusts of outrage swept this country when the movie Gone with the Wind came out in 1939 and Clark Gable spoke his final line: “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn.” To use such language in a movie in those days was considered m...

1 O foolish Galatians, who hath bewitched you, that ye should not obey the truth, before whose eyes Jesus Christ hath been evidently set forth, crucified among you? 2 This only would I learn of you, Received ye the Spirit by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith? 3 Are ye so foolish? having begun in the Spirit, are ye now made perfect by the flesh? Intro...

Among all the disorders of the soul, none brings more distress than doubt. It can be a source of misery and discomfort, fill your life with anxieties and fears, and rob you of peace. There are two kinds of religious doubt. One is sincere doubt; the other is insincere doubt. Some doubt is a cover-up for sin. Many people look on doubt as a badge of learning, and so the...

When Jesus called Matthew the tax collector to be his disciple, he expressed a profound faith in a person’s ability to change. Tax collectors in Jesus’ day were political traitors, notorious crooks, and complete outcasts in respectable circles. Nonetheless, Jesus was a constant friend to them and even called one to be among his apostles. After Matthew beca...

Someone has said that Jesus "died on the cross to save us from our sins; he arose and lives within us to save us from ourselves.” We need to be saved from our sins of the past. We also need to be saved from ourselves in the present. We are our own worst enemies. It is from our own lusts and desires that all temptation and sin arise. In every life there is a spi...

One of the most pressing issues of our day is that of moral standards. What absolutes impose the limits of freedom? What givens determine what is right and what is wrong? There are some people who say that there are no absolutes in life. They reject all moral standards completely. They claim freedom on all matters of morals and live only for pleasure. Their motto see...

Anthropologist Margaret Mead once said, “We are living in the period of greatest change ever known in the history of the world.” Amid all the changes and decay of life, it is encouraging to know that God is unchanging (Malachi 3:6). How so? First, God is unchanging in his demand for meaningful worship. Cheap sacrifices and empty formalism never have and...

The king of all sins is pride. It is the sin that made a devil out of Satan. As English author John Milton once wrote, “He would rather reign in hell than serve in heaven.” Not only was pride the devil’s problem, it is also our problem. We all face the temptation to strut around before God and to look down our noses at other people.  Pride asse...