Latest / True Comfort / Special Episode: A Deep Wound, a Debilitating Lie, and Divine Intervention - with Teasi Cannon

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Special Episode: A Deep Wound, a Debilitating Lie, and Divine Intervention - with Teasi Cannon · True Comfort

• Teasi Cannon (00:00) I'm TC and I want to welcome you to true comfort where it's our desire to live out 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 versus I'm TC and I want to welcome you to true comfort where it's our desire to live out 2nd Corinthians chapter 1 verses 3 & 4 which assure us that we have a God who comforts us in all our afflictions and Encourage us to share the comfort that we've received with others Today I am going to share with you from my story. I want to tell you about a a lie a debilitating lie that has resurfaced in my life since my childhood. But I also want to tell you how God's truth has brought me comfort and victory and healing and why I can believe that God's promises in my life are real and true and how I cling to those promises on a daily basis. I really hope that this will encourage you today. I'm going to share some things that are tender and tragic and might actually be triggering to some of you. So I do want to give that heads up stories from some things that have happened to me since I was a little girl. And so please know that it is not my heart to bring anyone distress or to trigger you, but I do want to let you know the good news is coming. And so I hope that you can. just listen with that expectation. So to get to the lie, I need to start way back in when I was a little girl and just share with you where I truly believe the root of the lie starts. And I'm going to start with one memory that I have from my childhood and then share a few more. I'm not going to go into detail on every memory that I have. but these will give you an idea of what I'm talking about and why my heart was so shattered and broken. when I was, I think I was about five, this is just one example. I was five, I was playing outside in my neighborhood and ⁓ an old man pulls up in a car in the not too far distance and he says, hey little girl, Do you want to come see my puppy? And of course I did. I loved puppies. What little girl doesn't want to see a puppy? And of course I was innocent. I didn't feel any danger. So I ran up to this man's car and I peered in the passenger side window looking down to where I would have expected to see a puppy. And that's not what I saw. This older man had himself fully exposed. and know pointing down to his private parts and say and like petting his puppy and I just looked down and I thought that's not a puppy and I felt fear and it felt weird I did not know at that time of course how abusive that exposure was to my psyche but I knew enough that this was wrong and so I ran home and told my mom and dad what had happened and I think they ran out looking for the man and called the police, but I don't think he was ever found. So that was not physically harmful to me. That was just the beginning though of very weird, very just unfortunate and painful, sexually abusive things that happened to me in my life. So the most abusive childhood memories that I have involve an uncle. by marriage and he lived in another state but when my mom would take me there I was always terrified. I would actually beg her please mom don't leave me here please and I want you to know that my mom and I she's no longer with me she's she's in heaven we had many conversations about this while she was alive many healing conversations about this and we were good and we had so much healing and redemption in this place. But at the time when I was a little girl, she just didn't really believe that there was a true danger. She didn't, she thought I was being overly dramatic when I would beg her not to leave me there. But what was going on at my aunt's house when she would go to work is that this uncle by marriage would have me and my younger cousin, a girl who was two years younger than me, hide-and-seek with him. But it had a twist. When we played hide-and-seek, we were stripped naked and had to find our underwear. We weren't hiding. Our underwear were hidden. And if we couldn't find it, then my uncle said he would get to do whatever he wanted to do to us. And every time we never found our underwear, we couldn't. We were little. ⁓ I think My earliest memories of that were I was probably six years old. We couldn't find him and then he always got to do what he wanted and it included all sorts of horrible abusive things and I was finally believed when the physical evidence was so obvious it couldn't be denied. The last time I remember being abused by that uncle he had actually tied me up and gagged me. And there was physical evidence that you can imagine. And so the sad thing is, the abuse was horrible, but what was even worse for me, for my psyche, for my heart, was that the police officer who was called advised my mom and dad to not pursue any charges. He told them, that it would be far better for me not to have to give a deposition or to speak to a judge, that that would be revictimizing to me to have to go through all of that. But, and this was years ago, I am actually 57 today, the day I'm recording this. This was years ago and there was not nearly as much exposure or help or wisdom out there just publicly for parents to have. And I know my parents. loved me and were doing the best they can but ignoring what happened to me was not good for my soul. It really wasn't. ⁓ And I'll explain that as I get closer to telling you what the lie is that I've had to battle. But that was just kind of the beginning of many things that happened to me in my childhood, teen years and early college years. It was as if The wounds of my childhood made me a bloody fish in a pool of sharks. Abusers of every kind just were attracted to me or found me. And ⁓ that included a female babysitter when I was eight years old. That included middle school boys in coat closets and backyards and parties and date situations that were forceful and on and on but What it all led me to what had started in my earliest years? The messaging that came into my little girl soul Was that well there were two of them one of them was that my no meant nothing? Because no matter how often I said no it didn't it didn't do any good But the other one that was even more harmful to me is that myself who I am on the inside didn't really matter. And even though my parents did the very best that they could, they raised me in a home that was filled with laughter and Jesus and love and fun. And they told me all the time how wonderful I was, how beautiful I was. They poured on legitimate ⁓ affirmation and love. It just was never enough to silence. the lie that I had believed somehow at such a young age. I believe that when we are vulnerable, when we are being abused or when we are in distress or when we are going through something heartbreaking and destabilizing, we are so vulnerable to believing these lies. And I don't know exactly how that's happening metaphysically or in the spiritual realm. I don't know how a lie is implanted into our psyche. And, but I do know this, it happens. And for me, the lie, the tonic note lie that stuck is that TC, you don't matter. Your pain, your wounds, what people do to you, it doesn't matter. You are disposable. It led me to a desperate need. to feel like I matter. It was as if my soul was not okay with that and on autopilot sought to disprove it, but in the wrong ways. I went to counterfeits, counterfeits that would say, you matter to me, TC, but maybe it was only for a moment. And I'm sure you can imagine the types of counterfeits that I settled for in my brokenness. I remember watching a survivor show once where people were lost out in a desert for like just a few days, but their lack of water, they were so thirsty that they settled for drinking their own urine. That's what my life was like. I was so desperate to know that I mattered. that I accepted far less than what God had for me. I accepted counterfeits. But I will tell you this, over the years, as I found the Lord was truly saved and dedicated my life to Him, I experienced levels of healing, levels of what God's supernatural love can do to heal and to restore. incrementally over the years and it still continues. I'm still being healed. I'm still being saved. But what happened was I would begin to turn to God with this with my questions with my pain. I would instead of just only going to these counterfeits. I began to go to God with questions like why why God when I look back at my childhood and then even other things that have happened in my adult life that have been abusive. Why have you allowed all of this abuse in my life? What is it about me, Lord, that is so disposable, you know? And when will this feeling go away? Why? I don't like feeling that. When things in my life would happen that would be, you know, anything from an innocent ⁓ exclusion. you know, maybe I wasn't invited somewhere and there was no malicious intent at all involved to just, know, your children growing up and having a life without you and any type of thing that would appear to be rejection to me or being left out, that lie would come right back in. CTC, you don't matter. C, you don't matter. You don't matter. So this has been a lie that has continued to try to rob me of joy. of peace, relationship, of all that God has for me. And so I would continue to say, God, when is this going to go away? I don't want to feel this anymore. I don't want to wake up in the morning heavily burdened by how wounded I feel or trying to understand why I don't matter to people when they matter to me or, you know, on and on and on. It's As we begin to know Jesus and we know the freedom that's there for us, any lie that we're believing becomes something that we want to be rid of. We just want to be rid of it because we know that it is keeping us from the fruit of the Spirit. So I would pray, Lord, take this away. Help me understand what is going on here, God. And I wish that I could say that every question I've ever had has been dealt with in this once and for all tidy way and that God has shown up every time I've prayed in such a distinctly tangible way that it was immediately comforting and immediately resolved every question of my heart, but that is not how it has been for me. There have only been a couple of times that I can remember in my entire life of walking with Jesus, which is now going on. four decades that I can remember actually having an immediate sense of resolve or God's presence as I was praying. And those moments have been amazing. But that doesn't mean God hasn't answered me. God has answered me. He continues to answer me and he answers me with truth. All the freedom I've ever experienced, all the healing. present and I know to come boils down to this. It happens when God's truth obliterates the lies. There's nothing else more. It's not some big magical thing. There's not some complicated process, although it is a journey and it is a process and it does take time. For me, if I could just boil it all down, what is happening at the molecular level here, if I could put it under a microscope. What is happening when I'm healed, when I am feeling set free? It is when truth takes the place of a lie. God's truth takes the place of a lie. It sets me free. Now, that is spiritual warfare. That is spiritual growth. Truth replacing lies. And God has redeemed so much in the process. replacing this lie with truth and he continues to replace it with truth. So my tonic lie is TC you don't matter. Here is what I find when I go to God's Word. What is some of the truth that I find in His Word? I'm just going to read a few of the scriptures. There are many but I'm going to read a few. Luke Matthew 6 7 says, why even the hairs of your head are all numbered. Fear not, you are of more value than many sparrows. Matthew 6 verse 26 says, look at the birds of the air, they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns and yet your heavenly father feeds them, are you not of more value than they? Matthew 6 8 says, do not be like them, for your father knows what you need before you ask. And Psalm 139 verses two through six say, you know when I sit down and when I rise up, you discern my thoughts from afar. You search out my path, my lying down, and are acquainted with all my ways. Even before a word is on my tongue, behold, oh Lord, you know it all together. You hem me in behind and before and lay your hand upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me. It is high. I cannot attain it. So when I read those types of truths, it tells me that I matter. And it actually answers the most important question that I've ever had for God, because I have asked him, why me Lord? Why don't I matter to so and so or so and so, or why don't I seem to matter to these people? But the most important question to my heart, the one that I, when I get really brave to ask is, I even matter to you, Lord? Do I matter to you? And these scriptures say that I do. They say that he knows me. He knows the hairs on my head. He knows what I need before I say it. So I can find truth there, but I want to tell you. where I am finding the most substantial truth, the most substantial ground into which I am anchoring my freedom. It's still asking God, I matter to you? And the truth is, yes, I do. And I can see it in like the scriptures that I just read you. But here's something even greater to put my trust in. Here it is. This is just kind of like in a almost in a syllogism. Here's the truth. If Jesus matters to God and I am in Jesus, then I matter to God. And if God is the greatest possible being and I matter to him, there's nothing greater. That is easy to say, but to let that penetrate, literally just allowing that to percolate into the fiber of my being. If Jesus matters to God and I am in Jesus, then I matter to God. And that's even better than knowing like that I matter to him on my own merit. because I am always gonna feel this side of heaven, I'm always gonna feel unworthy. Even though God has loved me so much, I'm gonna battle that, but I'm never gonna ever doubt that Jesus matters to God. I'm never gonna doubt that. And we have scripture that reminds us of that as well. Let me read just a few. John 10.30 says, I and the Father are one. And John 3.35 says, father loves the son and has given all things into his hand. John 5.20 says, for the father loves the son and shows him all that he himself is doing. And Matthew 3.17 says, and behold, a voice from heaven said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. I don't know about you, but I don't ever sit and have doubts about whether the father loves the son, especially in light of the doctrine of the Trinity. I don't ever doubt that. know and Jesus never doubted that. When we read through the gospels, we never see Jesus saying, I wonder if my heavenly father loves me. I wonder if I mattered to him. We don't ever see that. He lived a life of confident assurance that he was his father's son and he was a beloved son. So number one, if Jesus matters to God and I am in Jesus, let's take a look at that. What does that mean? How can I know that I am in Jesus? Well, I'm gonna read a few scriptures that tell us that Let me find them over here Okay, first Corinthians 1 verses 30 and 31 says and because of him you are in Christ Jesus who became to us wisdom from God righteousness and sanctification and redemption So that as it is written let the one who boasts boast in the Lord 1 Corinthians 15 22, for as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive. 2 Corinthians 5 verses 17 and 18, therefore if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation, the old has passed away, behold the new has come. All this is from God who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation. And Ephesians 2 10 says, for we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them. The Father loves Jesus. I am in Jesus. I matter to God. Therefore, I matter to God. And He is the greatest possible being. He is the one who knows me, who made me, who knows you, who made you. He is the one who, and the only one who knows exactly what we need, how we need it. the way we need it to flourish in this human life. I have this analogy. It's like, if you think about even something as simple as an electric car or maybe even a phone, we have these electric things and we are told, like I know for my phone, I was told, look, in order to preserve the life of your phone and for it to function the best, you need to use the products that are made for your phone. You need the charger that is made for your phone. Now you can go get counterfeits that are cheaper, but you're going to run the risk of your phone dying sooner than it should or it not running the way that it should. Now just imagine that on our level as human beings. If there is a source of life that is the legitimate source, that is the one that when we when we are plugged into that source, we will run the way we're meant to run, we will function the way we're meant to function, we will flourish, then why would we want any other source? And why would God let us go to them? Why would, so I guess what is clicking in my heart even more right now in my life, and I'm going to tell you that, I've, even recently had to revisit this lie. And I've just been before the Lord saying, Father, let this truth percolate to where I see everything so clearly, so much differently, like you are the source. And I made a decision long ago that you are my desire. I think about that worship song, Lord, I'm prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. But what I want is you. I want to make it to the end of my life with my eyes on the prize. And God knows that about my heart, no matter how my fail, no matter what a goofball I can be at times. And because he knows I don't want to wander, he knows I don't want to settle for counterfeits in my life. I don't find my needs met there. It's like I can see every person that it appears like I don't matter to them. in my brain, you know, when I'm believing the lie, like, okay, let's say someone didn't reach out and ask me how I am or something. I'm just going to give a silly example. Well, them not reaching out is a gift from God because God doesn't want me to settle. If everybody called me every day and told me how great I am and how much I matter to them, I would be tempted to settle for that. I would be buying the knockoff charger, so to speak, and God loves me more than that. He wants me to come straight to the source, straight to him, to know that I matter because I mattered to him in Christ directly because he loves me as his daughter. There's nothing better than that. What? So sometimes I can still wonder though, okay, I know I mattered you, but why did you let all those things happen to me? Why did all of that have to happen to me in my life? Like surely I could have learned this lesson without being abused as a child. And I don't have an airtight answer for that. I don't know. And I might not ever know why that had to happen to me or why it happens to you. Why abusive and horribly painful, torturous things happen to any of us this side of heaven. But I do know this. I know that Jesus himself experienced it. that he suffered more than I can ever imagine. And I don't ever doubt for one second that the Father loves him. All that he went through, everything, and Jesus knew he was going to go through it. He knew he was going to suffer. He knew how he was going to die. He knew that people were gonna betray him and reject him and spit on him and rip his skin off of his bones. And yet he never, doubted his father's love for him? He never doubted the perfection and goodness of his father's will. and he went to the cross never asking why me Lord why why why me father why why are all these bad things happening to me of course he did ask if there be any other way which i think we would all do that's human to not want to experience pain but again he said but nevertheless your will be done and he went to the cross for the joy that was set before him. I want to read that from Hebrews chapter 12, verses one and two. Let me read about that. says, therefore, since we are surrounded by so great a cloud of witnesses, let us also lay aside every weight and sin which clings so closely, and let us run with endurance the race that is set before us, looking to Jesus, the founder and perfecter of our faith. who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross despising the shame and is seated at the right hand of the throne of God. For the joy that was set before him. I don't know exactly what that transcendent joy is. I just know that it transcended the pain he was going through. And I do believe and I do know that whatever that joy was in its entirety, it had everything to do with God's redemptive plan for creation. The joy was the redemption that we get to experience, the reconciliation, the victory. The joy was something in the kingdom of God. The joy was anchored to something so much higher than the physical pain that Jesus was going through on the cross and that same transcendent joy that same truth that transcendent reality is there for us as well it is there for us to to see to to grasp and to anchor our hope our truth into There's something bigger than my painful experiences in the past, in the present, and anything that I'm about to walk through around the corner in my life. That transcendent joy is there. The apostle Paul understood it and he spoke about it. And I want to read that here in 2 Corinthians chapter 4. verses and 18. So we do not lose heart, though our outer self is wasting away, our inner self is being renewed day by day. For this light momentary affliction is preparing for us an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison. As we look not to the things that are seen, but to the things that are unseen, for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal. And you know, Paul experienced massive pain when he wrote that he had been shipwrecked and stoned and scourged and rejected and hated. And he was able to see, say all of this. It's transient compared to the glory that awaits us. So I don't know why everything that's happened to me has happened, but I do know who has kept my soul from utter devastation through it all. I do know. that I have hope that God has given me an ability to know him and that he has redeemed so much of what I've walked through. And I know that nothing eternal has been stolen from me. And I just I want to just kind of reiterate the most amazing truth. That is a gift that I have as a treasure. And that is again that God knows that I long to finish my race well. He is the deepest desire of my heart and anything that takes me off the path to him is something I don't want. And he has been loving enough to keep me, you know, I feel like sometimes it's like gutter guards on a bowling alley, you know, the, still am going like this. but those gutter guards are there to keep me from straying so far off. And if he is the best source of life, he is the source that I want. I don't want to settle for counterfeits. I don't want to settle for human affirmation or love. I don't want to settle for being my own hero. Those are counterfeits. There's nothing that can take the place of finding all of our emotional needs and every need that we have met in him. I know that I can trust the promises of God. I know that every verse that I just read to you and to myself, I can trust it. I know I can trust it. I know those are not empty promises because Jesus trusted God's word. Jesus trusted the promises of God. He said it is written It is written, have you not heard, have you not read? And I know I can trust what the Bible says about Jesus because I have studied enough of the beautiful field of textual criticism which helps us understand how scholars can take the manuscript evidence and history and come away with a conclusion that tells us that we can trust the Bible we are reading today with an incredible amount of security because it has been faithfully ⁓ delivered, transmitted, and translated from the first century to today. And I know I can trust who Jesus is. I know I can trust his promises, who he said he is, what he is going to do, because he predicted his death, burial, and resurrection. And then he did it. He died, he was buried, and he rose again. And there is substantial evidence for the resurrection of Christ. There are reports of over 400 eyewitnesses seeing him. He walked to the earth for 40 days and ate and drank with his disciples. And they saw him. And they all told people about it after Christ's ascension. and they never recanted on their story and they were all persecuted for it. Many were martyred for it, but they suffered. And why would they do that if Jesus hadn't really risen from the grave? They had nothing to gain. They didn't get some wonderful cult where they could have power over everyone. No, they didn't gain anything. They suffered loss for the sake of Christ. The apostle Paul. had a radical life change after seeing the risen Lord. He was a persecutor of Christians and he became the author of a majority of the New Testament. He went to his death proclaiming Christ and him crucified. The same with Jesus's brother James, who used to think his brother was crazy. But after seeing his brother raised from the dead, was so convinced, so convicted, and so radically changed that he became the leader of the Jerusalem church, the very place where Christianity started and exploded, which is the last piece of evidence I want to say is I think about when I'm tempted to doubt those scriptures that God loves me, that I matter, I think about the fact that Christianity started in the very place where Jesus was said to have died, been buried and resurrected. And if it wasn't true, it would have all been easy to debunk right there. There is no reason why the whole movement, the whole New Covenant, the whole journey would have been started in the place where the lie would have been the easiest to prove. So I absolutely am so thankful for not only God's promises, but for the evidence, the apologetics that I've said in this, the whole point of this podcast, just to show you that God's comfort is not, his promises are not empty. So this lie, TCU don't matter. ⁓ I'm sure I'll hear it again. I know I will. But when I hear it now, I can quickly go find my anchor, follow that line all the way to the anchor, to the transcendent hope. It's not pie in the sky. It's not avoiding the pain. It's not acting like it didn't exist. It's not some kind of transcending like Eastern mysticism that tries to help encourage us to just pretend we don't have pain or don't have desires. No, this transcendent hope walks us through the pain all the way to eternity. And that is the kind of transcendent hope I want to cling to. It is my lifeline and I hope that it will be yours as well. And I want to end by just saying that this is a hope worth fighting for. This is why I know the author of Hebrews was so insistent and we see it again and again in the New Testament. Hold fast, hold fast to the good news, to the truth that was once and for all delivered to the saints. Hold fast. You are loved in Christ. You matter in a way that surpasses any earthly definitions or distinctions or platforms. And I want to close with just an encouragement from Ephesians ⁓ chapter one, verses 15 through 21. It says, for this reason, because I have heard of your faith in the Lord Jesus and your love toward all the saints, I do not cease to give thanks for you, remembering you in my prayers that the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the father of glory may give you. the spirit of wisdom and of revelation in the knowledge of Him. Having the eyes of your hearts enlightened, that you may know what is the hope to which He has called you, what are the riches of His glorious inheritance to the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of His power toward us who believe according to the working of His great might. that he worked in Christ when he raised him from the dead and seated him at his right hand in heavenly places, far above all rule and authority and power and dominion and above every name that is named, not only in this age, but also in the one to come and also above every lie that we battle. I want to thank you so much for listening to this. ⁓ If you have been encouraged or if you think of anyone in your life that might be encouraged by this message, this encouragement, I would love for you to share it with them. And also I would love to ask you to subscribe, if you will, so that you won't miss a single moment of true comfort. Thank you all so much.