First Love

Guest (Male): Welcome to First Love with Dr. Robyn Kassas and Dr. Nathan Kassas, where faith meets real life. In this weekly broadcast, you'll discover practical and spiritual keys to reclaim God's story in your life, deepen your relationship with Jesus, and encounter him as your first love, whether for the first time or all over again. No topic is off-limits as we make Jesus real, relevant, and relational. Stay with us; your journey back to first love starts now.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Hello everybody and welcome to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas and I am proud to sit on this broadcast with my co-host Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, how are you today?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'm feeling much better than I was feeling the last few days. My throat is starting to heal.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Praise God. That's been a matter of timing.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Of course. Timing is golden. It's precious.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We usually don't like the word time because unfortunately, we think time is the perpetrator. But tonight we're going to talk about the next part of the journey of unfolding God's story. See how I changed the verb? Not unlocking or reclaiming, unfolding, because that's your revelation.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's correct. And timing is something that we need in our lives. It's not an enemy, but we make it an enemy.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We sure do. And so Dr. Robyn, just to quickly recap for our listeners, we have been going on the journey of reclaiming God's story, or in the next term that we're going to put it, unfolding God's story. And so we've been addressing the certain factors and markers that God brings us into, certain seasons, prophetic seasons that bring a thematic feel, a theming around the work of God in our lives and the work of the Holy Spirit.

So last week we came to truth. The week before that we came to trauma. And the week before that we even were in revisiting rest and transformation and the starting of the transformation process. So today's T, because we said last week there were a couple of Ts we need to visit. Last week was truth. Today is the T of timing. And why don't you just quickly open this up and give the listeners a preview of what this will be about and why it's so important, this episode.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, we need to use the word with timing, framing, because that will be brought out. And also that it's not an enemy. It's our best friend. It really is. Timing is our best friend. And it challenges us to leave it in the hands of God. It's a healing. It's a remembering of the memory thing that we need to do with your healing. You don't re-traumatize yourself to get healed. You allow timing to heal.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We need to have a gem button. We missed it so much. We push timing.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, we don't embrace timing. Oh Lord, forgive us.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And if I could just expound further on what you've already said, we're going to address tonight the fact that when we try to revisit trauma before the time is ready and how it actually re-traumatizes. We re-traumatize ourselves. So we have to understand that God is outside of time. So he's not limited by time. Time is a measurement, a defining of space that God uses to measure the fruitfulness of his work in our life. That's how I would like to define it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I think also we need time for God's ingredients.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. And so in order for the Lord to kind of, like a good clinician, because he is the great clinician that he is, he has to assess progress. And so he allows this thing called time to be inserted into humanity and the story of his story in humanity because time gives us an indication of where we're at.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes. It's our best friend.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And I want to reframe that. It's not an indication of where we're not at.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's the important thing here because we see it as an enemy.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: There you go. So in regard to trauma and timing, a lot of people have been coming up to me and I kind of feel responsible preaching this message three weeks ago about bitter to sweet, stirring the trauma. And I did point out in that sermon a very important fact that you can't stir prematurely what God isn't stirring.

Only God can stir revisiting of what has taken place painfully and traumatically in your life. And when he stirs, it's because he's ready to touch it and to transform it from bitter into sweet. But unfortunately, what we tend to do as human beings is, and you brought this out, so I want to set this up for you because I'm not going to rob you of the punchline, we tend to prematurely stir. We get a little bit of revelation of what the Holy Spirit is doing and then we attack with revelation.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes. And that becomes not a friend. The revelation doesn't become a friend. It becomes pain and hurt.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And you were saying to me as we were warming up for this episode, you were saying when we take something that the Holy Spirit has revealed, but you said in a counseling session this week to an individual, you have to let it land. And you use the example of the sand. I would like you to quickly give us that example of the potatoes and the filling of space because I think this is important for our listeners to understand the process of landing in the correct way.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, I think that if we sort of build it into a story. When God asks us to put him first and then he gives us a family and then he gives us a church and then he gives us other things, right? Then you think how are you going to handle all that and put him first? So I use the example of a bucket of potatoes and fill it to the very, very top so there's not one more potato you could put in that bucket.

And then you could see, I can't do anything more. I'm at capacity. I'm filled to the top with God. How can I love my family because God gave me a family? And then you think there's no room in me left, nothing. But you don't realize the ingredients that God uses. You can fill something up again to the top in that bucket and that bucket can fill to the top with sand.

You can take the sand and you can fill it to the top because sand will creep in between all the potatoes and fill the gaps that the potatoes don't come together and hold together. The empty spaces. And therefore you think, wow, I could put sand in there. My family, I can love them to the top of the bucket.

And then you think, well, how now do I fit in my extended family, my church? I maybe have to pull back on them. I can't give them the fullness of me. But there's something else you could put in that bucket that can fill it to the top. And you think, God, I don't know, but you do. And the Lord says, well, fill it with water.

And so the water absorbs all the sand and it fills to the very top so you find you can have that bucket filled with three different ingredients of love. You can do all that because God made you that way.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow. Now Dr. Robyn, before we move into the break because that is enough to just live off for the rest of this week, let alone the rest of our life, I want to bring that into the perspective of healing. When we fill the bucket prematurely and God is not ready to fill the bucket, the problem is we fill the bucket and we think it's at capacity. We think it's full. But there's always space for something else.

And that's exactly right. And that's what time is, the something else. We got to go to a break. We're going to come back and we're going to go into this deeply because I believe it's really going to help some people.

Guest (Male): You're listening to First Love with Dr. Robyn and Dr. Nathan Kassas. The story isn't finished yet and neither is what Jesus wants to reveal to your heart today. Let's jump back in and pick up right where we left off.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: All right, Dr. Robyn, we are back after that quick break. We've had time to go and let the Lord fill our buckets. And even though we thought they were full, there's a lot more that we can fit in.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We just don't realize how we're made to carry more than just a bucket of potatoes. We can fill in all the gaps when we allow God's leading and his ingredients through time.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So let's just really go in there really quick now and just hit our listeners with this. There's so much in this episode. I don't think we can combust it into 25 minutes. We might have to do a part one, part two. But let's talk about it. So trauma explains what happens to you. Transformation is what you become as a result.

Now this is a really important thing. You can't become until you behold. And so behold is a different perspective. It is a different understanding. We talk about integration and misinterpretation. Beholding is, ah, I get the interpretation correctly of what has taken place.

And that can't be accomplished without time because you said a word that I think is so powerful, it's ingredients. Why don't you explain what those ingredients are referring to? Because space is so important. We can't remove the lie without making space for the truth. And time is that allowance in God's ecosystem to create space in us to allow new ingredients to be added to the truth of what really took place.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yeah, so the ingredients can be reconciliation, restoration, a form of deliverance, healing, miracles. These are God's ingredients. This is the way I think of it. When you want to make something whole, you have to add certain ingredients. If you make a cake, you have to add some ingredients in there to make the cake what you named it to be. A chocolate cake, you've got to put the chocolate in there.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah, and the eggs and the milk and the flour. And it's got to go into an oven and cook for a time.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes. And so God uses the ingredients at the right time to mix the mixture together. You put it in too early for a chocolate cake and it won't be with the flavor that it's meant to be. And I mean I'm not a cook, but I can tell you these things are important to be able to see time. When is the time God adds that ingredient? We can't. When we try to do that, the cake can fall flat. It can be a pancake in the end instead of a cake.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow. And so we often assume that because we recognize trauma, we should immediately process it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes. That's the thing that comes to make it either rise or fall flat.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And the thing about healing that I'm learning in all my years of studying now in this specialty is that healing is not an on-demand thing. It's not, oh okay, I can access it whenever I want. Healing has a process. And so revisiting trauma with the wrong timing is actually very, very re-traumatizing.

You will re-traumatize yourself by touching something that God isn't adding in. And I want to bring up a scriptural example here. We were talking about the story of Joseph because that's a very, very important story when it comes to processing trauma. And the Lord said to me, if Joseph, when he said to that servant, "Remember me," if he had been elevated at that point...

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Oh, I don't even want to think.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Well, I believe I have a key. I believe he would have used his power and position to punish his brothers.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: For vendetta. For revenge.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, because he was not ready. He was not ready for revisiting with the space that he had. He had to create more space. There was another two years that God had to create in him so that when he elevated him to that position, because he knew that his brothers were going to come knocking because of the famine, that he could say, "Well, guess what? You've meant it for my bad, but God meant it for my good."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And even when they did come, he put them to the test. So there wasn't fully all of the ingredients where it was because they were scared once the father died, now they're going to have to pay all for it. But when God adds the ingredients of forgiveness and reconciliation and restoration, it's permanent.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. And so timing is creating space for God's, it's actually a form of God's mercy. It creates space for what you've just said, faith, healing, forgiveness, perspective, truth. And let's talk about this. God doesn't have a perspective. We have a perspective. God is truth. And the reason why he doesn't have a perspective is because he was the beginning and the end and everything in between.

So you're not having time to get God's perspective. I hate that. I hate that saying that preachers say, "Oh, get God's perspective." No, no, no. This is not an equal opportunity where my opinion and your opinion work together. There's your perspective and then there's God's truth.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We get God's perspective. We're the ones that need to get something. We get God's perspective and we need to be reminded. In the Book of Psalms, it always worked that way. When David would forget the perspective of what God was trying to show him, he'd get him to look out there and see what he created and said, "You think you know better than me? You think you could stand with me on this? Look what I created. Get my perspective." And my perspective is from the beginning to the end and everything in between.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And it's complete. It's perfect. It's not faulted. It's not a bias of opinion. It's not subjective. It's the truth. Now let's dive into this very important scientifically. We need to understand that when we are traumatized and we revisit that too soon, that fear center of the brain, the amygdala, it fires intensely and it restarts survival loops.

So we're not ready to walk out of that pattern or that cycle of how we've been living our life. So what it does is it just restarts it. So we think that we're healing something, but we're actually just regurgitating the same cycle that was started through the trauma event. Scientifically, biologically, physiologically, what's happening is the cortisol is rising in our body, which is a stress hormone. And so emotional flooding occurs.

Now because the hippocampus in the brain is so located, which is the memory center, to close space to the amygdala, memory and fear are very intertwined. So unless we have the right timing to integrate the event, organize the memory according to truth and according to emotional regulation, and distinguish past from present... Science actually teaches us that when we remember things, we don't remember them accurately. We just remember our version of them.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes. And that you've got to wait till that unfolds. And time needs to unfold it. It can be an hour, it can be a week, it can be a year. God determines when you're ready to hold the time. And the thing about memory is that the brain, once it regurgitates memory, it is unable to distinguish between a trauma event that happened two years ago and a trauma event that's happening now. So the brain tells itself, ah, this memory is still happening today. What happened to me yesterday is the same thing that's happening to me today.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So space and time, what that allows the brain to do is it allows the brain to distinguish past from present. It allows the brain to go, okay, there's been space here because identity formation is taking place in that space. You talk about an ingredient, so God is adding the ingredient of identity formation. And so as identity is forming from who we are now, it brings truth to the perspective of who we were then.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes. And it also shows you who God made you to be. And you don't know that. And I just thought about something just then. We talk about our boundaries because when we're trying to be healed of trauma, things start flying everywhere, everywhere.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: My God, do they ever. And we have to have a boundary. We have to have a boundary.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's all called to do with our frame. Our frame works our boundary. And he knows your name and he knows your pain, but he knows your frame.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Oh my Lord, this is so powerful, Dr. Robyn. It's so powerful. And we've only got four minutes left and we haven't even skinned on the surface of the power of this revelation. It's very important. When you talked about boundary, trauma, it puts a boundary around the memory. It puts a limiting, wrong focus limiting internalized understanding. So unless we have time to break that boundary down bit by bit with reintegration of truth, when we revisit that trauma event, please get what I'm about to say, we insert ourselves back into the boundary of that event.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, we do. And we become re-traumatized. And we relive according to those boundaries around the memory. But we don't realize a boundary brings constriction. For our sake, it brings constriction. It's the most safest place to be is to have a boundary in your life.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. And when God is putting the boundary, its purpose is to constrict for a good reason. But when trauma is putting the boundary, it constricts you out of growth. You can't move past that event because you're stuck in the boundary of the trauma.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and look, just to tell you, God knowing our frame, when we allow God to frame something, because we always talk about frame as something we got to live through. But when we allow him to frame something, that thing that he's framing is constricted to a certain space. And it works with time. It works with time if we allow him to put the ingredients into that which he's framing and constricting for our sake, then we can see the purpose of the time.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And an important thing that we have to understand about time too is the enemy cannot access God's full story. He doesn't know the full story.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, there's always something hidden, some memory or some record that's hidden that he can't because he can't be everywhere at all the time. He's not omnipresent. So only God. And if you work with someone that's omnipresent, you're certainly going to experience something much, much better.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So I want to quickly put this out there before we throw it to you for your final words, because we've already come to the end of the broadcast and we haven't even started. So because Satan doesn't know God's story, he can only make his next move based off your reaction. Timing allows God's story to unfold beyond the enemy's prediction of your reaction.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And it gives space to work.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It gives the mercy for you to change your reaction and become unpredictable. And space is so important. It's so important to bring that reframing of God's truth for his story. That's it. Final word, Dr. Robyn, take it away.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'm just going to say when you have a look at some of the frames you've got in your house, in your life, let God put the ingredients in to bring his story and to bring you into his story.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow.

Guest (Male): Thanks for spending time with us today on First Love. If today's message spoke to you, share it with someone. And if you're looking for more teachings, visit www.torcc.org. That's T-O-R-C-C dot org for more. We'll be back next week, same time, same truth. And as you go, don't forget, the one who loved you first is still loving you best.