#76 S3 EP 38 A Tapestry of Faith with TC A Journey Beyond Religious Boundaries

Speaker 1: 0:24

Welcome back God's diamonds in the rough. Thank you so much for joining us one more time. If you don't know who we are, we are your hosts, Catherine.

Speaker 2: 0:36

And I am.

Speaker 1: 0:38

Michael, and we are so glad to be again back with you one more time. We are getting ready to just jump right in, always following the spirit. We have a guest with us today and he's going to introduce himself his name. I don't want to tear it up, so I ain't even going to attempt it. Y'all know y'all can laugh on the other side, but I'm just going to call him TC. But we're going to pray first and then he's going to jump in and we're just going to get down into it. All right, let's get it.

Speaker 2: 1:48

We pray in the name of Jesus that you would touch each one of us, from the crown of our heads to the soles of our feet, in our own areas of life, that you would just open it as you see fit, according to your will and purpose. We counsel any assignment of the enemy that would be sent back into the picture where it came from, for it has no power, no authority and no dominion. But your word say that we do. We pray in the name of Jesus. Your Holy Spirit is lead us, guide us in the direction that your word wants us to go to. In Jesus Holy and Max of the day we say thank you and we say amen, amen and amen.

Speaker 1: 2:37

Amen, I'm sorry. Oh, my goodness, dc, please say hello to our audience. I'm going to tell you what this is so uncrescripted, lord Hemmers.

Speaker 3: 2:53

The first of all. Thank you, captain. Thank you, michael. I'm so grateful to be on this show and just the energy that you had flow through me. You let the spirit enter me. So I'm fired up to be here. My name is Tariq Chaudhry and I just want to invite the audience, the listener today, to identify with where you are today. Are you somebody who has the spirit flowing through you? Are you somebody who needs the spirit to flow through you and have you learned to receive and fully accept the love of Jesus Christ? Or are you someone who is searching to understand the power of Jesus Christ? And I ask you to identify with those areas, because I hit every single one of them and it's my honor today to share the story of how Jesus Christ has created the life that I live today, has solved all the problems of my life, and the entire reason I'm on here today is because of Jesus Christ himself. So with that I will pass it back.

Speaker 1: 4:02

Amen. So those are powerful questions that he has presented for you and we got to really. I mean, he asked that question, he asked those questions so you can really look at your life, really look at where you are and take it seriously, because we have an idea of where this man has come from and we want y'all to understand how he's gotten where he is right now, to the place of just totally trusting Jesus. And we all have a journey, we all have a story, a testimony, and it's up to you what you do with it. And this is his story, just like, I mean, y'all know we've talked he will drive us into the wall. He will drive us into the wall where we got to choose him in so many words. So, tc, before you say something I see Michael got some of his lips to say real quick Before you tell us how it all began for you, and I like that concept.

Speaker 2: 5:16

You just said that he makes you drive you into the wall and sometimes we go through things in life and we don't understand what's really going on, and sometimes God would just make us hit that wall head on. Because sometimes we get stuck in these ways that he makes us to understand and listen, because sometimes we're so busy that we just don't take time to listen.

Speaker 1: 5:51

Alright, so here we go. Let's go TC. Tell us your beginning, how you got to where you are.

Speaker 3: 5:57

Well said, well said. I'm not going to start when he literally had me drive into a wall, but it's quite serendipitously divine that that's how you open it up, because that quite literally happened to me. Just to give you a little bit of background to start us off, I was not raised in a household where faith was present. I was raised in a household where religion was present, and I grew up with a devout Muslim father and a devout Catholic mother. I went to Catholic school for 14 years. I was an altar boy and on Fridays my dad would come pick me up from church and take me directly to the mosque for Juma prayer. And so my identity in life was lacking Because, depending on which God I said that I was going to believe in, I was disappointing one of my parents and I wasn't going to receive the love of one of my parents Because it was religion. And at a young age my interpretation of God was associated to religion. There was no association to God in relationship, god in faith. It was God in religion, and the only God I was exposed to was a wrathful God, and my perspective and interpretation of God was not a good one Because in my home. That God, that God of religion, was the God that, in my child's mind, was the source of all my problems. My parents fought because of religion. My father said he would disown me if I didn't raise Muslim children. My mother would bring prayer groups to pray on me to bring me back to Catholicism. My father didn't speak to me for years because I told him I wasn't Muslim and God was the source of all of my problems, as well as the story that I told myself and that's the story that was needed for me because he had a much bigger plan. He was going to reveal himself to me in the way he was going to reveal himself to me to make my relationship and my faith so profound and so worthwhile. He was going to use me and he did what he had to do to do that. So I just wanted to open up with that.

Speaker 1: 8:45

So with you had a lot of, and I don't know if you really want to share that, but I see.

Speaker 3: 8:55

I'll share anything you want.

Speaker 1: 8:57

Well, I mean I'm looking at the things that you experienced before the age of 17. Do you think that played a big part in you just being religious and not relational?

Speaker 3: 9:14

So here's the thing, the first thing I remember in my childhood. Well, first two things. I remember. The first thing I remember in my life I was about three or four years old and I remember being on a walk in a stroller and it was my brother, my aunt and my sister, and they came to the backyard of the house and there was a snake and they ran and the snake started coming up the stroller and in that moment, where I'm staring at the snake, all of a sudden I feel a hand ripping out of the stroller and it was my brother. And so in that moment, after looking back on my life, I realized the first act of love I can remember feeling in my life was also associated with terror and the sense of abandonment, and that first act of love came from my brother. The next thing I can remember was my father beating my brother nearly to death with a baseball bat in a violent rage and taking his body and dragging him into a room in our basement and locking it so that we couldn't go in there. And so my next memory was violence, fear and then abandonment, because after that happened my brother disappeared for about six years, for my life. So the one piece of safety that I had. And I had to work back through all of this to understand the way I think, why I acted the way I acted in the world, how I turned away from God and all of these things. When that happened, that's when fear was instilled in me and I, through religion, was taught to be afraid of God. So everywhere I turned in my life, it was all fear. It was fear at home. It was fear at school. I had nowhere to turn to that wasn't associated with fear. And then growing up, even more, you know I was exposed to an environment working with my father. You know I watched my father get stabbed in front of me when I was 11 years old. I was standing five feet away from him and I was paralyzed with fear. You know I've had guns, had guns pulled on me as a teenager. People try to rob me constantly. I witnessed shootings, robberies, car jackings. I watched two little girls, two little twin baby girls, killed in a car jacking. I just I saw all of these things and in my mind, how could, how could there be a loving God when all of these things happen? And again, the only God I had ever been exposed to was a wrathful God of Islam and a wrathful God of Catholicism, and so I fully believed in the power of God, but my concept of God was so jaded because of A what religion taught me, b my own life circumstances and everything that I saw around me, and so I took that into my adulthood. I was a man who believed in the existence of God but hated God, because I didn't understand anything about him other than what my own experience was and what what religion taught me about him. So, yeah, I mean, god was in my life in every way, shape or form, whether I accepted him, didn't accept him, loved him, hated him. You know, I was surrounded by God no matter where I went. I just refused to accept his love and I refused to give my love.

Speaker 1: 13:20

And would that say? Would you say that's the reason why you turned to alcohol and drugs?

Speaker 3: 13:29

Oh, that's a huge part of it.

Speaker 1: 13:30

Right, so that was a place of safety for you.

Speaker 3: 13:34

Yeah, absolutely, and so that's where I didn't feel afraid anymore. It was the only way I didn't feel fear, and fear was the number one emotion of my entire life. Everything, everything about my life, was fear.

Speaker 1: 13:48

So when did this?

Speaker 3: 13:48

shift the first time. The first time was in January of 2020. And that's the first time truly. Now I can point back to other times where, like, oh, I stopped being afraid. Look what I did with my life. Oh my gosh, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But the first time I stopped being afraid of God and the first time I stopped being afraid of asking for help. So for me, I think that's a huge part of where letting go of true fear came from. I had been sober for eight and a half years and I had built a life beyond my wildest imagination on the outside, but on the inside I was still a scared little boy, an angry teenager, a resentful young man, a grieving son, and I tried everything I could to bury all of that, to put on a facade. It was really rooted in disgust, self-hatred, resentment, anger, and I had been sober for eight and a half years and then I finally broke and I relapsed and within 60 days of relapsing, I had completely burned my life to the ground I mean biblical level proportions and I dropped to my knees after coming home from jail for the first time in my life, at the age of 38. And I dropped to my knees and I raised up my hands and I screamed and I said I don't know who you are, I don't know what your name is, but I beg you to save my life. I beg you, I'm dying, I can't do this. I'm living my worst nightmare. And it's interesting because my children's nanny she was the first real positive influence of a person trying to bring me to a relationship with God. And this amazing woman would pray over me constantly, every single day, for the day she entered my life. She would speak in tongues over me, she would pray over me and she is a fierce, fierce, strong woman. And she's praying over me while I'm on my knees. And a couple hours later, I'm just sitting on my couch and it says 1026 on the TV. And so something said Google, bible 1026. And so I Googled Bible 1026 and up came Matthew 1026. Do not be afraid, for there is nothing to fear. There is nothing concealed that will not come to light, there is nothing hidden that will not be made known. Do not fear those who can break the bind and body here. What I whisper to you, shout in the day, what I tell you in the dark, proclaiming the light. Do not be afraid. And I didn't fully understand what it meant, other than you know. All right, don't be afraid. Well, I'm full of fear right now. What if people find out what I did? What if it gets out and I got arrested? What's going to happen to my life? You know, I'm going to lose my children. I'm going to lose my career. I'm going to lose everything that I've worked so hard to build. And the very next day, my face was plastered all over the news. My mug shot went viral in my community. It was all over social media. I was on the front page of the local newspaper. My biggest humiliation, my biggest secret, was made known to the world. And for lightning bolts of a second I was prepared to give up. And then I remembered Matthew 1026. Do not be afraid. There is nothing to fear. There is nothing hidden that will not be made known. There is nothing concealed that will not come to light. But don't be afraid. And then Matthew 1026 made perfect sense. It's all going to come out. Everyone's going to know, but don't worry about them. Put your faith in me. And that was just the first part. That was 1026. I read through 1028. And the other part of 1028 is go and share what I tell you, what I speak to you. You need to go speak. And I didn't get that part right at all and I'm still working on getting it right, but I'm literally doing it right now. I'm sharing exactly what he told me. But it was interesting on Easter Sunday, I had been 90 days sober at that time and I had never said a word about anything that happened to anyone outside of my very close inner circle. And I finally decided on Easter Sunday to post my story on Facebook. And I posted all of it, especially this part of the story, and then the very next day I got a call from somebody that I haven't spoken, a text from somebody I haven't spoken to in 10 years. At that time and I said you saved my life. And I said what do you mean? And he said last night I was finishing off my last bottle of Perkiset, I had my gun in my hands and I was reading your post and right when I looked at your part about Matthew 1026, I looked at the phone and it was 1026. Ooh, and so, simply by me having enough just a mustard seed size amount of faith to do what God told me to do to not fear persecution or judgment or rejection from people, because I wanted to talk about God publicly. By overcoming that for the first time in my life, by actually having mustard seed size amount of faith, it saved somebody's life. And had I not done what God told me to do, what would have happened? And that was the first time I realized God is using me. He's using me. I need to let him. But I couldn't let go of all of my need to prove myself. Over and over and over, I had an inferiority complex that created a massive egomaniac complex, and it all stemmed from I'm not worthy, I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy of love, and that's everything that was rooted inside of me my whole life.

Speaker 1: 21:01

So at the end of the day, and so the first time I go ahead.

Speaker 3: 21:04

I'm sorry.

Speaker 1: 21:07

I was going to say at the end of the day, you have learned to love yourself.

Speaker 3: 21:13

Oh, absolutely Absolutely. When you, when you are in the depths of despair, at the lowest point of your life, where you hate yourself, you're disgusted with yourself, you just want to die. You can't stand the human being that you are, you feel so much shame and guilt and remorse and agony and pain, and an act of love is bestowed upon you. I mean that's profound To feel God, someone I hated and spoke badly of and turned away from In that moment, the man that I was, when I went to my knees to feel the safety, the love and the protection, and not only that, but that he needed me. That's the first moment I ever started down the journey of self love. I made a ton more mistakes after that, catherine Boy. There's so many more stories after that, but that was the first time ever in my life that I had a true spiritual experience of love and there was a lot more learning and a lot more growing and a lot more pain to go through before I arrived at where I am today. But yeah, absolutely, you can't. Only God can fill the God-sized void inside of all of us. No person, place or thing can fill the God-sized void in our soul other than God. I have proven that. I've proven it.

Speaker 1: 23:10

God was tired. I know that's right, Come on somebody.

Speaker 2: 23:13

I gotta say this, and you know, with just what you just mentioned, you know, even when the 1026 and the Google Bible 1026, I did that on my own just now, and at the time I looked at the clock it was 146. And by the time I got to it, you know it had already been four minutes. I mean, so that mean 10, I mean 146 to 150. And the first thing that came up to my phone was Luke 1, verse 46 to 50. And this is key and spot on what you just said. It says in Luke 146 to 50,. It says, and Mary said my soul do magnify the Lord, and my spirit have rejoices in God, my Savior, for he have regarded the lowest state for his handmaiden. For behold, from henceforth, all generations shall be called blessed, for he that is mighty have done to me great things, and holy is his name, verse 50. And his mercy is upon them that fear him from generation to generation. So that's letting us know that, look, sometimes we got to get to that point in life, to the lowest state, to the point that we have nothing, absolutely nothing. And I try to be PG when I say this and not a potchopee in and the one that throw it out, because sometimes we have to get to that level in life that nothing can look like it's going to make it for us to turn to God. Amen, because we're so stuck in being it's my way or the highway, but what about God's way?

Speaker 3: 25:07

Amen.

Speaker 1: 25:10

Amen, okay, so tell us how. Let's just say what were you now? I mean, where has loving yourself brought you to?

Speaker 3: 25:24

Oh where has loving myself brought me to Let me? Let me say this so that was the most profound and first spiritual experience in my life, but it wasn't the biggest one, Because I didn't appreciate the power of God's love enough. You know, in that moment I decided oh, I'm going to start praying before I eat, I'm going to wake up and thank God, I'm going to start attending church online, and that's all I need to do, and I didn't do anything beyond that. I didn't think about it. The one time I read a Bible verse, it saved my life. Yet myself will decided well, what do I need to pick up a Bible for again? And I didn't pick up a Bible, even though the one verse I ever read saved my life Because I was still stuck in my own way. So I ended up relapsing three months later and going down a rabbit hole and completely lost the relationship with God, because I was so ashamed of myself again, to the point where I took my massive painting of Jesus down and I put it on the floor because I didn't want him to look at me because of the sin that I was living in again. And I hated myself even more because, oh my God, god saved my life, god showed me his grace, god showed me his mercy and look at me. I'm still doing this. And I dropped to my knees one night and instead of asking God to save my life, this time I asked God to take my life, and I didn't want to take my own life. I have two beautiful little boys who I love with all my heart. But my heart was broken. So what kind of love could I give? And I had lost custody of my children because of my relapse and I had nothing left to live for. Every all the other stuff didn't. I was already gone. The only thing I had left was being a father. And now I was at a point I wasn't even allowed in the same room alone with my children and I begged God to take my life. I truly begged him as hard as I've ever prayed in my life. I begged him to kill me and instead of killing me, he did take my life. He once again took my life under his control and I ended up going to rehab and there was a chapel there and I decided to just start going to that chapel and sitting with God and I would start opening up the Bible and just reading random passages from the Bible to see what kind of message God would deliver to me. And I started doing that more and more and more. And then I started seeking to understand God more by talking to men of faith not necessarily men of cloth, but men of faith, and I did that more and more and more and I started to try to listen and I finally gave away the belief that all of the things on the outside that I possessed were more important than the things I didn't possess on the inside, and that I had to heal. I had to heal, that's right, and I had already lost my kids, so what was the point of even going back geographically to where I lived? So I decided to dedicate as long as it took to heal and walk away from everything. I haven't looked back since that day. Catherine Right, and prior to that, I was an executive in corporate America. I was a Fortune 100 executive leading very large organizations for software companies, and I built that career over 15 years. I got no education. That was my identity. It was what I dedicated 15 years of my life to and I hated it because it made me a miserable person distressed. The pressure, the anxiety, the constant fear that I'm not good enough, what if I don't perform? What if I don't deliver results? What if I make the wrong business decision? All of this stuff. But I kept wanting to go back to it because it's all I was good at. And in this last round I said whatever God tells me to do, I'm going to do. And I got out of my own way. I let go of my self-will and all I did was seek to understand God's will for my life, in powerful prayer every day, every day, and reading my Bible every day, listening to what God is saying. My life story is in the Bible. Are you going to Proverbs? Oh my, all my sins, all the consequences of my sins it's all there. Somebody wrote it down 2000 years ago. They said this is what's going to happen. It's all going to happen. And so I just started to step outside of myself and truly try to do what God is telling me to do listening to God, to other people speak to me. And that's how I'm here on this podcast today, catherine, because I took a true leap of faith and I said I don't care what I lose as long as I can pay for my children's needs, and I trusted that God would provide. I had true faith and I decided to talk to this gentleman about six weeks ago because my one passion in life has always been helping people, because I felt like no one ever helped me in my life and I found a way to overcome and persevere. So I wanted to give the gift that I was never given, and whether it was helping people get sober before I relapse, helping people transition in their careers, learn how to make money, learn how to believe in themselves, all those different things. Whatever it was, I wanted to help people, but I wanted to help people before because I wanted to buy their love, and now I want to help people because I want them to learn how to love themselves and to receive God's love is the way to learn how to love yourself. I've done all the research, ladies and gentlemen 41 years worth of research. The only conclusion that I finally come to is there is no person, place or thing that can love you the way you need to be loved, other than you and God, and you can't love you how you need to be loved unless you accept God loves you. God loves you as you are, as you came to him. Whatever you were when you came to him, he loved you for who you were in that moment. And now I'm just out trying to be someone that helps people learn how to love themselves and have a relationship with God, and one that they create themselves, and I believe in the power of the Holy Spirit to the point where I want to be able to open somebody's heart and soul enough for the power of the Spirit to be able to enter, and the rest is up to them and God. I can't do the rest, just I want to be able to open your heart and your soul just enough to where the devil's grip loosens up, just enough for the Spirit to be able to enter you, and the rest is up to everybody else. So I walked away from everything. I took a leap of faith. I took 40% of all the liquid assets I had left and I dumped it into going down this career path of motivational speaking and coaching. And I want to come to the most recent God is great story. So the day after I made that decision and I made that decision because I asked God for a sign so I moved all my furniture around and I said this person I speak to, I want them to see that my faith is my identity and that I'm not ashamed and that I'm not going to put God on the back seat of anything I do. So I put on my Jesus T-shirt. I got my eight foot tall painting of Jesus behind me. So when that camera turned on, all they saw was Jesus everywhere. And I said God, if this is the right person, you'll show me. And the first thing that this man said to me is that's the most beautiful painting of Jesus Christ I've ever seen. And then he lifts up his cross and he shows me his cross, and so I said I'm in, I don't need to know anything else, I'm in. Tell me where to send you my money. I'm in. And I did. And now I'm a disabled veteran. I was in the army and I've been in a battle with the VA for almost a decade and I couldn't understand for so many years, I why? Why did I get hurt so early in my career that I wasn't able to do what I signed up to do and be? Why? Why won't they recognize my injuries? Like, why am I being treated this way? That morning after I made that leap of faith, a voice in my gut when I was on my knees praying that go, go, check the VA. And so I went online and I checked my VA benefits and everything had finally been approved. I haven't heard a word from the VA or from my lawyer in four years. And then that voice said check your bank account and I logged into my bank account and more money than the average America makes in three years was deposited into my bank account. Check it out. The day after, I made my biggest leap of faith and truly surrendered to God and truly listened to his will for my life and truly acted on his will for my life in true faith, listening to Matthew 10, 26, not being afraid, making my faith loud in everything I do. And the next day he showed me. This is why you got hurt, how you got hurt. This is why you didn't get the money when you didn't get the money because you weren't who I've been building you to become, and this has been my plan all along. And now you are the man I've been building you to be, and any risk of financial insecurity that I had going into I haven't worked in almost two years, because all I've been doing is working on my healing, my sobriety and my relationship with God. That was. There was nothing else in my life. There was no work, there was no friends, there was nothing. And for one year of that, there was no children either. And one year to the day, I lost my children. My ex-wife gave them back to me. I never asked for it. Every opportunity she gave me to show up, I did and, as a result, one year later, just doing the right thing every day, expecting nothing in return. One year to the day, I got my kids back, the greatest gift that she could have ever given me. She had every reason in the world to keep my kids away from me as long as she wanted to, but she didn't. And so I'm here today because God put me here, and the only reason I'm here is because I actually welcomed and chose to believe that God's will will be 100 times better than anything I can will for myself, because if I know I'm fulfilling God's will, it doesn't matter if I make $1 or $1 billion. The fulfillment of doing God's will is greater than any dollar on earth, greater than anything on earth. That's a fulfillment that money cannot buy. That's a fulfillment that nothing can buy. To have faith and to walk in faith. I mean I've never felt like this in my entire life. I'm a man who's capable of doing great good and a man who's capable of doing great evil, and I finally chose to become the man that God wanted me to be.

Speaker 1: 38:52

Amen, amen. So tell people so they can continue to hear from you and get connected to you. Where can they reach you?

Speaker 3: 39:05

So, again, I just started down this path like a month and a half ago, but I'm working as hard and fast as I can to get set up. So targchadrycom is my website, which should be mostly live by next week. It's T-A-R-E-K-C-H-A-U-D-H-A-R-Ycom, and then my Instagram is targchadry. If anyone just wants to talk, has a question, needs somebody to speak to, feels like they can relate or trust to share something with me, just DM me. Amen, god is great and I promise you all respond. Amen. My book will be out by the end of the year or early January, and then my coursework and the content that we're developing for people. That's all gonna be rolling out very soon. So if you just follow my Instagram, you'll start to see quite a bit and you can DM me and I'll definitely reach out to you that is awesome.

Speaker 1: 40:14

All right, so we didn't hit our time, so I'm giving my final word. God can do it. That's my final word tonight. God can certainly do what it is that he desires to do through you. You just gotta get out of your way and get in. He is he did not give us the spirit of fear, but he's giving us spirit of faith. So just trust him and walk it out, amen. This young man's life is definitely one testimony that the power of God, the man can say no, but God, he'll say yes, hallelujah. So we can just lean in the pen upon him and we're gonna be all right. Michael, you gotta find a word before we're gonna get you to pray us out and Michael's gonna give the final, final word after that.

Speaker 2: 41:14

Yeah, you know, nothing's too big nor too small for God to change, because you know, and as I look at your biography on yours it says former fortune 100 executive. But the one thing that really stood out to me is the former victim. You know it's in all cast because we got it. We got a late claim that we're no longer a victim, but we live in victory. That's my takeaway.

Speaker 1: 41:43

Man amen. So, if you will, can you give your final message and pray out so we can get ready to our time is up in about four minutes.

Speaker 3: 41:58

Yes, man. Oh right, you dropped me to my knees. Now, father in heaven, my Lord and savior, jesus Christ, we pray for all those listening to feel the power of the Holy Spirit, to embrace the opportunity to live with and walk with the love of God, to embrace the love that you have to give, to embrace the opportunity to flee from fear, from sin, from anguish, from pain, from suffering, from loneliness. We pray that they have the strength and enough love and faith that they are worthy to receive your love, to embrace you. We pray for the health of all those who are listening, father, we pray for the health of all those that they love. We pray for miracles to be done in their life. We pray for divine inspiration and the power of the Holy Spirit to flow through them, to leverage the power of God, to embrace opportunities in their life that they wouldn't see unless they had the lens of one who looks for messages from God. Father, we pray for the opportunity to heal together. We pray for the opportunity to serve one of these people. We pray for the courage of one person who listens to this to take an action towards self-love and an action towards serving God in their life and to embrace the power and the happiness that the Holy Spirit brings. Lord, in the name of Jesus Christ, we pray amen.

Speaker 1: 43:28

Amen, amen. Tc, we are so blessed and thankful for you being here.

Speaker 2: 43:35

Definitely.

Speaker 1: 43:38

Powerful stories and testimonies to the power of God. Oh my God, she just. My mouth was dropped open the whole time and I was like, wow, wow, I thought I had a story. Yeah, man, but Lord's will, maybe we can have you back another time.

Speaker 3: 43:57

I would love to.

Speaker 1: 43:59

Okay, well, you hang on, don't go anywhere, michael.

Speaker 2: 44:03

And remember y'all until next time. You are a diamond in the rough Amen.

Speaker 3: 44:14

Amen.