Road To Redemption
Road To Redemption
Dr. Rachael Cannon - From Jail to Joy
What happens when decades of addiction disappear in a moment without withdrawal symptoms? Dr. Rachael Cannon's extraordinary testimony reveals the transformative power of encountering divine love after 25 years of severe drug addiction.
Growing up as the granddaughter of a Baptist preacher and daughter of a minister, Rachael understood religious principles but found herself trapped in a cycle of addiction that led to eight felony arrests. At her lowest point—weighing just 100 pounds, battling suicidal thoughts, and facing another potential prison sentence—she reluctantly attended church where another woman's testimony sparked a flicker of hope. Three days later, when told she "didn't have to suffer anymore because Jesus already suffered for her," every chain broke instantly. Nine years later, she remains completely free without a single relapse.
The heart of Rachael isn't about will power or rule-following but about identity transformation through love. "Once I realized God loved me, all of a sudden I could make my bed. All of a sudden I wanted to obey the rules. My desires changed when I fell in love with the Lord." This revelation led her to prison ministry just four months into her recovery, where she helps incarcerated women see themselves beyond their circumstances. Rather than focusing on wrong behavior, she reminds them "what God's done right."
Connect with Dr. Rachel Cannon on Facebook or explore her five devotional books on Amazon, including "The Woman at the Well." Her story proves that no matter how hopeless your situation appears, transformation is possible when you discover who you truly are in the eyes of love.
For more information contact us at
rtrdestiny@gmail.com
Welcome to Road to Redemption, a show sharing powerful life testimonies, giving hope to those on their own road to redemption.
Speaker 2:This is Road to Redemption. I'm Valerie Peterson and I want to welcome you to the show today. John Martin and I have been talking about having Rachel Cannon back on the show and I have her here in the studio today and I just want to welcome her. Welcome, rachel. Thank you so much, val. It's so wonderful to be here. It's so good to have you here. You know, can we start off and talk about your testimony today?
Speaker 3:Yes, I would love to share my story. I do want to say that I love you so much, val, and the way that you value people and believe in people is so important, and it's what God sees about people also, and I love your heart to help people get their story out there and to help people.
Speaker 2:Well, thank you, and I want to say to you, because we are so connected in different things in the community, is thank you for being a lighthouse on the hill, thank you for the way you minister to people so well, and I can't wait for our listeners today to hear about what you do.
Speaker 3:So share your testimony All right, I'll just jump right in. I would like to start off by saying I'm a super happy believer. I have a lot of joy. I was dead and now I know what it feels like to be alive and I am just living so free and in union with Father, son and Holy Spirit, which is the source of my inward joy that comes out this joy truly is my life.
Speaker 1:It is joy unspeakable and full of glory.
Speaker 3:It is my life. It is joy, unspeakable and full of glory, yes, and I just love it so much. And now that I know what the glory is, the glory is the opinion of God and I really like what God believes about me. It makes me very happy. It's so good, you're right. So nine years ago I was strung out on drugs again.
Speaker 3:I was a drug addict for 25 years of my life. I was born basically on the front row of Baptist Church. My grandfather was a Baptist preacher, my father is still in the ministry over at Destin Methodist now, and I was born into the family of church, the family of believers. I was raised knowing God and believing in God. But growing up is hard to do it is super hard to do really.
Speaker 3:And so somewhere along the way in my teenage years I kind of had some wounds and some hurts and started going with the wrong crowd and began to numb myself with drugs and alcohol. And so for 25 years I lived a life of severe addiction. I'm talking so severe that I went to jail eight different times, I was arrested eight different times and charged with eight different felonies within a 25-year period and cut to the chase the redemption road, so to speak. The Lord was really following me and chasing me down from the inside out. I will say I love it. And so, nine years ago, I met the love of my life. I met Jesus Christ, and he changed my whole life Really in a moment. I was delivered and set free from drugs and alcohol in one instant and had no withdrawals. And now I think for the rest of my life I'm on this journey of knowing what love is and discovering this love of God. I feel like love is the only thing that can change our behavior.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love it. Would you be willing to just highlight the point where you were at one of your lowest points and someone invited you to go to a church? Can you talk about that? Yes, absolutely.
Speaker 3:You know, being raised in church and then kind of falling away from church and doing my own thing. Every time I tried to go back to church I just never found what I was looking for and so I had kind of thought I'll never go back to church again. And I had a gentleman in Birmingham Alabama, from where I'm from, and I told him he was counseling me and I him I'm. It's really bad this time. I'm strung out really bad. I'm addicted, I'm suicidal. I weighed 100 pounds, I was gay at the time and I had another felony pending in Birmingham Alabama and I figured for sure I was going to prison. It was bad, I'm telling you. I was at the rock bottom of the rock bottom and I was hopeless. And he said Rachel, I met a woman and she has a story a lot like yours and she's speaking at our church in Birmingham Alabama, church of the Highlands, and she was speaking to the prison ministry team there and he said you should come hear her testimony. Now I look back and I realize it was Holy Spirit. Thank you, holy Spirit.
Speaker 3:I went to church and I sat in about the fourth row and I got up and listened to this amazing woman give her testimony. And what she said was if God can do it for me, he can do it for you. And I just started crying. I thought I want him to do it for me. Oh, I believe that he would do it for me. And I felt this little flower of hope really just spring up in my heart and I thought, maybe I just believe again. And that's faith, that's faith. I had just a wee bit of faith and, oh man.
Speaker 3:So I met the lady that evening. I found out that she had women's homes, like discipleship homes for women like me. And the next morning I text, I got up and I got high, I got real high. And then I text the guy who invited me to go listen to her and I said I've got to have what that lady's got and I'll do whatever it takes. And he said Rachel, I'm sitting across my dining room table with Dawn and she said she would love for you to be a daughter in her home. And I said yes.
Speaker 3:And so three days later I packed my bags, I got in the car with her and I said I'm going to be really sick. You know, I've been doing this for 25 years. And she just leaned her hand over on me and she said you don't have to suffer anymore because Jesus Christ already suffered for you. On me, and she said you don't have to suffer anymore because Jesus Christ already suffered for you. And when she said that every one of my chains were broken and I never had one withdrawal, it's like I just believed instantly. I don't know what it was that got through to me, but I believed it, you know, and it changed my whole life. And then the fact that I didn't have withdrawals. I thought, wow, god really cares about me, he really loves me, he really has listened to my heart, he's listened to my cry.
Speaker 2:I bet I can't imagine. And I look at you today. You know, john, and I talked about having you back on because you've been nine years sober, nine years, yeah, and you know we would love for you to tell, like what has helped you to the word is live in freedom. Right, you know, I'm going to just let you talk. Talk about living in freedom.
Speaker 3:So for me, I feel like there is life after addiction, life after the trauma, life after the wounding, and to me, enjoying this love of God changes everything. Most of the time I just sit back. You know it says be still and know that I am love. God is love. Be still and know that you are loved. Be still and know that God is love. God is love. Be still and know that you are loved. Be still and know that God is love. And so I sit back and I just think to myself wow, I am so darn loved. That's why enjoying this love is essential. Part of my daily routine to this day is still getting up and enjoying that time with the Lord man. It is my life, it is where all my books come from. Is this morning devotional time.
Speaker 3:You know I'm an, I'm an author. Now I'm working on my sixth book and these books are all about the love and the relationship and what love does to change our behavior. You know I'm falling in love sure beats like just trying to white knuckle yourself through the rules. It's the difference between willpower and love. Because for me, what happened in the discipleship home is once I realized that God loved me, all of a sudden I could make my bed. All of a sudden I wanted to obey the rules. My desires changed when I fell in love with the Lord and I realized that he was in love with me. I wasn't white knuckling or trying to be obedient anymore. My whole desires changed. My whole life changed.
Speaker 3:If you're in addiction for 25 years, your mind is pretty jacked up and you don't have to tell people that their mind is messed up. They already know it. You know, they already know my thinking is really getting to me, my thinking is bringing me down, and so part of this journey of discovering love is the enjoyment of my mind. Now, now that my mind has been renewed, I really like the way that I think Awesome. And so it's been renewed, obviously with the Bible, but mostly with the word of God, who is Jesus Christ, yes, yes. So this living relationship I realize.
Speaker 3:Now, if I search myself, I'm like there he is again. There's Christ again. I found more of him inside of me. When I search myself, I don't find junk anymore. I find Christ, father, son and Holy Spirit living inside of me, and that makes me very happy. You know, no longer am I picking myself to pieces, scrutinizing every little thing in my life. I'm like man, christ is in me, he really enjoys living here and so I'm just going to enjoy this life also. But I do find, like this, understanding love has changed my whole behavior, because now that I know what love is, it's easy for me to say I'm not doing that, I'm not doing that. If it has any stench of my old life on it, I turn up my nose and walk away. I'm serious, like I just know, and I know what I'm called to do, and so it doesn't keep me busy in all these other lanes. I pretty much stay in my lane of what I'm supposed to do.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know the verse in Nehemiah 8.10, the joy of the Lord is my strength. It's like you get that and can you talk about it Like just joy unspeakable. Every time I see you, every time we are in ministry in some capacity together, your joy is contagious.
Speaker 3:Wow, you know I love that. It should be. And I'll tell you the reason for my joy. Number one I'm clean, all by God's doing, all by Christ Jesus. He has paid my debt and forgiven all of my sin past, present and future, let alone the sins of the world. He is the Lamb of God who has taken away the sins of the world. Number two he defeated the devil, which makes me very happy. Which means you know, if you know, what the word devil means, it is the accuser. He defeated all accusation right here. My mind no longer condemns me. In fact, there is no condemnation anymore. No more, no more condemnation, all right. The third thing that I realized is he defeated death. We are eternal beings. That makes me very happy. I mean eternally loved, whoa, yay. That just makes me so happy.
Speaker 3:And all of this is, I mean, the joy is on the inside. It's not something that I'm looking forward to in the future. I've got it now, which is all that faith is. Faith is just simply agreeing with what God believes. God believes that I'm clean. God believes I'm righteous. I can't get any holier than I am sitting right here because I didn't do it. God did it, that's good, that's good.
Speaker 2:Someone needs to hear that.
Speaker 3:Right, and so what I do now is I go into jails. I started prison ministry four months into my new life, really just by accident, and so I started prison ministry. I've been doing prison ministry now for, I guess, eight and a half years and what I've realized is that to see people the way that God sees them, which is what you do to see people beyond their human behavior this is our joy, man. This is my joy comes from knowing that my human behavior can't mess up what God did. It can't, and the proof of it is my life. Look at my life. A disaster in the past, and God said I will come into that life and I'll meet you in your darkest, gayest, most addicted place and I'll meet you with my love and I'll bring you out of it. And that's the gospel. But he saw me as me, as me in this girl. Do you see what I'm saying? He saw the me that I am now inside of this woman right here, and that's what I do.
Speaker 3:I go into the jail and I see these ladies who are trapped in addiction or toxic relationships or whatever it is that has them caged in their mental prison, right. I see them for who they are. And I say you know, actually, you're sitting here right now, but did you know that you're also enclosed in Christ? Which one would you like to believe more? You're sitting here right now and you may have been accused of a crime and you may have even done it, but did you know that God sees you as blameless? This is the faith dimension, this is the spirit. You know. Faith is a spirit dimension, reality. Righteousness is a spirit dimension, reality. And so we walk by faith, right, not by sight how boring would that be. We walk by faith and remember. Faith is simply agreeing with what God already believes about people. He doesn't see their human behavior, he sees them as the person that he created them to be Flawless, beautiful, radiant, joyous. And so I just go in and I remind ladies not what they've done wrong, I remind them what God's done right.
Speaker 2:And that's where your joy comes from. Yeah, if there is, there's probably people listening today, that are watching today, that really there's a lot of self-condemnation, they're going in and out of addiction. What would you say to them?
Speaker 3:If you're looking to be free, part of it is if you've been in addiction for a while, go somewhere and let somebody help you change your mind. Go somewhere again. I went to rehab four times and got kicked out of every one of them and the fifth time was the charm. Baby, the fifth time was the charm. I went to jail eight times and then I never went again. So like when people kind of say, oh, I've relapsed again, I'm back in jail again, I'm like, yay, maybe this is the last time you know.
Speaker 2:If someone today really would love to get in touch with you or find out more about your ministry, can you share how they can?
Speaker 3:Actually my name is Dr Rachel Cannon. I'm on Facebook as Dr Rachel Cannon also, and on Amazon. I've got five books available on Amazon and they are devotional books, they are musings and they are filled with love, innocence, likeness, redeemed.
Speaker 2:I have to say my favorite book is the Woman at the Well. Oh, thank you. And I'm just sitting here thinking, as we all are willing to sit at the well. Yeah, john, chapter four, that's when we're transformed, right, that's right Into his image.
Speaker 3:That's right. One look in his eyes and her whole life was changed. You know, something happened to that woman and supposedly she was glowing when she ran back to her city because the men who wouldn't give her the time of day she ran back to the city told them come and meet a man. He's told me all about my life and it must've been pretty good news. If somebody gives you bad news about your life, you're like I'm not listening to that. It must've been pretty good news. And so the men in the town drop everything they're doing and they come out to meet this man who is the Messiah. And then this is the first group of people who announced that Jesus is the Savior of the world.
Speaker 2:I want to swing back around, because I think you said something important to our listeners today, to our listeners today find somebody, or a facility or a small group that there's going to be people that are going to speak into your life, right? Yes, absolutely. Can you say a little bit more about that? I mean you know, there's Celebrate Recovery, there's AA. What would you recommend? How to start?
Speaker 3:I would say find someone who believes in you wherever you are at. You know one thing about Dawn at the discipleship home that I went to, she was constantly believing in me. She wasn't pointing out where I was right or wrong, she was telling me who I was already. It's kind of like how God sees us. And so find somebody who will believe in you and remind you over and over. You know, we've been brainwashed in a way. Our addiction brainwashes us. So you actually have to come in, have somebody come in and rewash your mental brain, to wash your mind clean, and to have somebody who knows the truth. It's only the truth that sets you free. So to have somebody who will speak the truth to you and I'm not talking about what you're doing wrong, I'm talking about what God's done right. You know, I feel sometimes like we've got it backwards. We go in and talk about all of this behavior stuff, but really we should be talking about what God has done right, because that would actually change our behavior.
Speaker 2:Love it, yeah. So I want to add how important it is to be in the word yes, because you know he watches over his word to perform it right. He does Find a good, bible-based church, that you're going to grow, you're going to learn, and those are the things that I just wanted to say and we just so appreciate you coming on air today, isn't she wonderful folks that your, your willingness to, to minister, not only here but beyond. Rachel, thank you. Thank you that you're fulfilling what God has called you. Jeremiah one five. He knew you before, he did you in your mother's womb and you're willing to fulfill the call. Thank you, thank you so much. Thank you for coming on today.
Speaker 1:You've been listening to Road to Redemption, sharing powerful life testimonies, giving hope to those on their own road to redemption. If you have any comments or questions, we would love to connect with you. You can reach out to us at destinyradiolive. Thank you for listening and we'll see you next week on Road to Redemption.