You can be saved and yet have an inadequate understanding of God until you see glimpses of His vision, said Pastor John Piper. He used the late Chuck Colson as an example to make his point.

Several years after his salvation, Chuck Colson, the Prison Fellowship founder who died in April, underwent a period of spiritual dryness, said Piper as he began his talk, titled "In the Throne Room: The God of Holiness and Hope," on Saturday morning at the three-day Gospel Coalition National Women's Convention in Orlando, Fla.

On June 1, 1973, Piper said, Colson heard the Gospel for the first time from Tom Phillips, even as the Watergate scandal was exploding. That night the then aide to former President Richard Nixon said, "I cried out to God and found myself drawn irresistibly into his waiting arms. That was the night I gave my life to Jesus Christ and began the greatest adventure of my life," Piper quoted him as saying.

Colson was convicted for his role in the Watergate scandal in 1974. He became a committed Christian while the Watergate charges were still pending against him and after a friend gave him a copy of the C.S. Lewis book Mere Christianity. His conversion led him to plead guilty to obstruction of justice while a judge was considering dismissing the case against him. He served seven months of a one- to three-year prison sentence.

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