David Powlison died peacefully at his home in Pennsylvania on 7 June after suffering from pancreatic cancer.
Growing up, Powlison attended a liberal mainline church and in high school he thought Christianity was a polite veneer for people who refused to face life’s hard real-ities. During that time he was confronted with death and depravity, including bully-ing, the murder of a classmate, suicidal friends, exposure to pornography, and drug use. Later, he had an interest in radical pol-itics, protests, and New Age religion.
Conversion
However, whilst working in a psychiatric hospital, his friend Bob Kramer had a candid conversation with him: ‘David, you are destroying yourself.’
David said: ‘I knew he was right. The Holy Spirit used his words as an armour-piercing shell. I came under comprehensive and specific conviction of my sinfulness, uncleanness, unbelief, and unacceptability before Christ. I felt the weight of many sins. I beseeched God for mercy. God was merciful. Promises from aeons ago proved true. God willingly saves, forgives sins, creates a new life, gives his own Spirit, promises great help to obey. He did all this. He found me and led me home. I was surprised by joy and by the love of Jesus. It was as though my entire life had been walking hot, dusty roads looking for something which wasn’t God, but he was looking for me, and then finding myself at home, and finding that I had been found and loved.’
Legacy
Powlison became a writer, editor and coun-sellor at Christian Counselling and Education Foundation (CCEF) in 1968. Tim Keller said of him: ‘His groundbreaking work on idolatry showed that the Bible speaks to both corporate, systemic evil in family and social systems and also how sin distorts the inner life, creating denial, false identities, a “delu-sional field”, and harmful motivations. David put the biblical teaching about the deceit-fulness of the heart back into the centre of biblical counselling. He will be deeply missed as friend, counsellor and teacher.’
