Where Did I Go Wrong?

There are times when I think I am in a tough place; times when I actually think that I am accomplishing nothing; I have wasted my life and God has nothing left to work with because I have taken what He made and now, it is useless! Basically, I'm feeling sorry for myself because the things I had planned just aren't happening.
The Apostle Paul was a man who had many things to look back on, and not so many of them were quite so glamorous as many nowadays try to romanticize about. We tend to look at the great things he did for Christ, in the name of God, the sermons, the Churches he started...etc. Paul was a man that ended his ministry in prison waiting for execution; I have to imagine that he spent at least some of that time going back over his life and wondering "what if....?" What if: he had been able to continue his life the way it started? He started by learning at the feet of Gamaliel (?) which left him with a great education that was heavy with tradition. He believed, when Jesus came along, that He and His disciples were a blight on the Synagogue that needed to be, not just dealt with but, eradicated! They all needed to die, just like Christ did, and he set out to do just that; He intended to kill all that he could get to and he was going to do it with the "blessings" of the religious leaders of the day! Paul had set out to murder good people, put God's name on it, go home and call it "good". If Paul had been able to do what he had started out to do, he would have been able to keep people from knowing what freedom in Christ meant by the sheer power of fear alone; they would have been afraid to proclaim His name anywhere for fear that Paul , known at that time as "Saul the Persecutor",would come with their death warrant in hand. In stead of being the one to start so many Churches, he would have ended them long before they even had a chance to meet the first time. The sermons he gave to so many people,Kings included, would never have been heard, instead, they would have heard his pronouncement of their deaths and the legal reasons for them. People would not have had the opportunity to know of God's grace, they would have known, instead, the pain of stones on their bodies as they lay dying. All this is to look back on!
I can imagine that Paul would sit in his cell (o.k. the backroom he was allowed to borrow from a man in town) and think: Only You, God, could have used me like this. I am not worthy to even be in the presence of Your Name, and You used me to take Your Word to the people and show them what Grace is really for; Paul was using his own understanding of what God had done and what He had given to people, Which is what I try to do on so many occasions and usually find myself in a position of self pity and feeling that God had nothing to work with; Paul was a man who killed people and found a way to do so with the Churches backing, and God used him to proclaim the Good News of life eternal trough Jesus Christ! God is never without something to use; He created all that is, from nothing! What could He do with such as "me", a "me" that He has already made and taught and gifted and...., and ....., and....;When Paul was using his own understanding and reaching out, he failed (epic fail); when he gave all he had, including "bad things" that most people would rather no one ever know about, to Him, he was able to be used in such a way that the world is still experiencing today. Makes one wonder what He is doing with "me" now, with the things I think are not happening the way I think they should? What plan does He have that could probably work, if I just allowed Him to work in the first place?