Chuck Colson: God Used My Greatest Defeat

The great paradox [of my life] is that every time I walk into a prison and see the faces of men or women who have been transformed by the power of the living God, I realise that the thing God has chosen to use in my life … is none of the successes, achievements, degrees, awards, honours, or cases I won before the Supreme Court. That's not what God's using in my life. What God is using in my life to touch the lives of literally thousands of other people is the fact that I was a convict and went to prison. That was my great defeat, the only thing in my life I didn't succeed in.

Chuck Colson, Sermon "The Gravy Train Gospel," source