[metmom]

EXACTLY.

I have a friend who has quite the past, drug use, drug dealing, extortion, promiscuous, violent.

Got saved in his twenties and gloriously converted.

Now, some 40 years later, he’s involved in a very fruitful jail ministry and can relate to these people wand where they are coming from and they KNOW that he’s been where they are. It gives him great credibility with them.

[trebb]

Yep - and some of the most effective carriers of The Word started out as atheists and came to believe through trying to disprove the existence of God. The experiences of being seriously flawed and then saved has a lot of useful merits that those who have "been holy all their lives" can offer.

He surely does work in "mysterious" ways.