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 back to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I have the privilege of hosting this podcast with Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, how are you today?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'm doing fine. I'm learning more and more about what God is doing by the Spirit.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Amen. We want to welcome those that are listening for the first time. Welcome to First Love. And those that have been following us since the beginning of the journey, it's nearly been 12 months now, Dr. Robyn, that we've been on the air bringing us back to our first love in Jesus Christ. What a privilege it is.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And wow, doesn't time fly?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It does. We're excited to announce that God has blessed this broadcast so much that we're going to be moving to a new time slot—the drive hour of 5:00 PM to 5:30 PM every Monday to Friday. Dr. Robyn, you and me, five days a week on radio, equipping and allowing God to speak into people's hearts about bringing them back to their first love.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I thought when it was offered to us, "Wow, have we got enough in us to be able to run a five-day-a-week podcast?"

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I thought the same thing.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But I think every time we sit down together, we could possibly go for a lot longer than that.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. We like the idea of having half an hour just to give people this bite-sized buffet, if I could claim it as that. It's a bite-sized buffet, being able to share all the years of your experience with walking with the Lord in prophetic ministry, deliverance, all the things that you've launched and pioneered, not only just in Sydney, Australia, but in New York City as God brought you here in 2009.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And around the world.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And around the world. Every continent you've visited, prophesied, and ministered over kings, diplomats, queens, princes, heads of state, and now also combining with what I've been learning in my doctorates of Christian counseling, psychology, and also functional medicine and naturopathy.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And people. People are important. We're able to marry all that together—not marry each other because we're son and mother—but marry all that we have together: the truth and that whole clinical picture, every piece of the puzzle coming together to form that perfect picture of healing and what Christ is doing in our lives.

Yeah, and I think we're not going to go back over things today. We're going to jump straight into a subject, like Jesus did not wait for the water.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. To inform those that have been listening and all those that have not listened and are tuning in for the first time, we are talking about the Pool of Bethesda. We are in a series called "The Gates." We're following the gates of Jerusalem and how each gate is a conversation with God that we need to have.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's right. It really is a conversation that needs to be had. Every experience that Jesus did created a conversation with the Father.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And conversations are starting points for transformation. So we've got to have that conversation. Just giving a little scriptural background here, we're coming out of Nehemiah 3 with the rebuild of the wall. These are all gates that were in Jerusalem's rebuilt wall, as well as some that have been taken away from the actual structure through the conquest of Jerusalem over the years. Some of these gates are not there today, but they represent the spiritual gates that God wants us to go through.

We started at the Sheep Gate, and what a powerful unfolding we did there. Now we're actually not at a gate; we're at the Pool of Bethesda, which is right near the Sheep Gate. As you go through the Sheep Gate, you come to the Pool of Bethesda. We've been talking about healing and stirring of the waters and what that represents in the believer's life and anyone's life that goes on that journey to know Jesus as their Lord and Savior and their healer. He doesn't just offer healing; he is the healer.

I'm going to come out of John 5, mainly verse seven, but let's just quickly read this. It says, "After this, there was a feast of the Jews and Jesus went up to Jerusalem. Now there is in Jerusalem by the Sheep Gate a pool, which is called in Hebrew, Bethesda, having five porches. In these lay a great multitude of sick people, blind, lame, paralyzed, waiting for the moving of the water. For an angel went down at a certain time into the pool and stirred up the water; then whoever stepped in first after the stirring of the water was made well of whatever disease he had.

Now a certain man was there who had been infirm for 38 years. When Jesus saw him lying there and knew that he had already been in that condition a long time, he said to him, 'Do you want to be made well?' The sick man answered him, 'Sir, I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up; but while I am coming, another steps down before me.' Jesus said to him, 'Rise up, take your bed and walk.' And immediately the man was made well, took up his bed and walked. And that day was the Sabbath."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Pretty crazy, right? I think it's really incredible when you look at it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We want to come a little bit from a different angle. We've been following this account in John 5 for the last three weeks and we've been bringing out different angles. Today we're going to come from a different angle, Dr. Robyn.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We tried to go to the Fish Gate, but God isn't finished with this. There's so much to bring out. He's not finished with this one yet.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So he says there, this man says to Jesus who's been infirm for 38 years, "I have no man to put me into the pool when the water is stirred up, but while I am coming, another steps down before me." This really shows that this man's idea of being healed and touched was still not in a place where God could affect him because he believed that his healing depended upon water being stirred, someone helping him, his ability to arrive there first, and all of these behaviors of everyone else around him.

So it's important that when God says, "I'm stirring the water," as we've been talking about, Jesus is not going to compete with our systems that are in place to stop the water from touching us. What do you think about that, Dr. Robyn?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, he had his faith in the stirring of the water. He had his faith in someone putting him in the pool, but he didn't recognize the one who would heal him was standing before him. He looked at the wrong place.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And that's what we do sometimes when we've developed—and we're going to talk about this a little bit later in the broadcast—when we've developed a coping, a compensation, an adaptation to not being healed. We let the systems stop us from moving forward. These systems that we've set up are in place of security in Christ; they become our new security. So it's interesting that Jesus doesn't compete with the man's system. He doesn't actually answer the man's system. He reveals himself like you've said.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Because he was the source.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: There it is. And he actually doesn't even help the man crawl faster to get to the water.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, he commanded him to rise, so he was already touched.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So again, he doesn't place him in the pool.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, because he stood before the one that healed him.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So he brings the authority of healing directly to the place where the man had been lying. That is the theological center of Bethesda as we go into the break. The man had been waiting for movement in the water, but the one who moved upon the waters was now standing in front of him. And this is the same movement of water that we see in Genesis 1, and the Spirit of God hovered and moved over the waters.

So these people were gathered around this pool waiting for the waters to move, but the one who makes the waters move was standing right in front of them.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: You see, the one that moves the waters didn't need the water to move. He moved the waters. The waters didn't move him.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow. So let's go to a break. We'll come back and we'll discuss how God wants to be the source of our healing. Please.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Hi, my name is Dr. Robyn Kassas.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And I'm Dr. Nathan Kassas. We'd love to invite you to join us every Monday at 9:30 PM for First Love. God is bringing us back to his original plan: a relationship with the fullness of the Godhead: Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. And this is the full package of salvation and it's available through this broadcast. Join us for First Love every Monday at 9:30 PM because the one who loved you first is still loving you best.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: All righty everybody, we are back with First Love with myself, Dr. Nathan, and Dr. Robyn. Right before the break, Dr. Robyn, you landed a heavenly punchline. What did you say about the waters?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I said he didn't have to move the water; he was the creator of the water. It was his presence that moved the water. They were waiting for the waters to move him, but the one who moved the water was standing before him.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And how does that apply to our life?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Very much the same way. Because sometimes we're waiting for the waters to move God, but God is the one who moves the waters. And he's waiting for us to see him, not the water.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. He goes right to the core issue. He doesn't answer the man's systems. I want to keep reiterating this. He goes beyond the man's systems of compensation that he's set up and adaptation, and I would call it autopilot. These are autopilot systems of how to get through: coping mechanisms. And he says, "Do you want to be made well?"

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He said that to the man. The man said yes, he wanted to be made well, but he didn't recognize he was standing before the one who could do this. Because look, we were talking about people going into the water and the angel came and the water was stirred, and some received healing depending where their hearts were. But he wasn't standing before an angel. He was standing before the one that created the water and the angel.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So Jesus was confronting something here.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: His identity. Who he was. Both were being confronted: the Lord's identity and the man's identity. For him to see who he was and for him to see who Christ was.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And I think that's a key for real healing and the stirring of the waters after the Sheep Gate to occur. When God confronts us at a healing moment, he's really confronting the identity that we've set up as a system to cope without being healed. He's asking who is more powerful: that identity or my identity? It's that Christ in me. What is the identity that you will cling to?

That comes out later because healing would require that this man would have to surrender. Last week we talked about paralysis, the analysis paralysis, but the paralysis that happens around your analysis. He would have to surrender the mat that had carried him, the location that had defined him, the excuses that had explained him, the routine that had structured him, and the identity that had formed around his so-called incapacity.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Wow. Sometimes dysfunction becomes so predictable. Predictability can be safer than transformation. That's where that DFM, that default mode of our brain, kicks in. When something feels safer, our brain clings to it automatically. It could not be the right thing that might feel safer. It's our old condition. It seems to have pain in it, but we come to accept it because it's familiar.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. And so I love this because learning about the brain and learning about the different nuances of mental health and neuroscience, something that healing does is it introduces responsibility.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yeah, and it also requires new movement.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And I love that responsibility here is defined as not something that you have to own. Responsibility, I'll give you a new definition for it: it is the ability to respond. When we look at responsibility like that, when God says, "Take responsibility," he's saying you have an ability to respond in this moment.

You are not paralyzed. You are not incapable. You are not an invalid. I've given you the ability; my grace has enabled you to respond. So respond in this moment. And that's what he asks of this man. He says, "Rise up, take your mat and walk." He's literally saying, "I'm giving you the ability to respond. What will you do?"

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But do you know healing removes the explanation for remaining where you are? You can't remain where you are when you are receiving that healing. You can't. He couldn't stay in that pool. He had to get up, rise up, and walk.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So Jesus didn't ask the man whether or not he disliked his pain. He asked him, "Are you ready to leave the identity that your pain has formed for your life?"

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I can tell you, he located the pain wasn't the problem. It was his identity. That means that when God says responsibility, we have to rise up, take our bed, and walk.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And that means, Dr. Robyn, I'd like to go into that three-step breakdown if I can. Rise means that we have to actually—the position that we have accepted can no longer be the position that we are permitted to remain in.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's the key here. We are not permitted to remain in this position any longer. Because he set the boundary now. He's saying healing is removing the explanation of staying in the same position. And it also confronted his passivity and it interrupts the resignation of his inner self resigned to "this'll always be this way."

This is a new word the Lord was giving him. A new word. Not "I feel sorry for you, I can help you." It was nothing to do with that helping him to stay in his position. It was get out of your position. Rise up. Rise up. Confront the passivity in you. Rise up.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. Take up your mat. Take up the thing that's carried you for 30 years and carry it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: The thing that had you bound, you take up. You take up and you carry it, not it carry you.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And that is literally, Dr. Robyn, that's that object associated with the limitation. That's where his weakness now becomes, which you're going to share on later on in this series, a part of his testimony. So give us some science, because I'd like to hear some science on it now.

Sure. Let's address something that was going on in this man's life, and it goes on in all of our lives, and it's like what I call DFM: default mode of the brain. It's called autopilot. And autopilot is our way of pretending that healing has occurred. It's a compensation mechanism. It's when we learn to cope or adapt.

So we start to have these repeated thoughts, emotional reactions, behaviors become increasingly automatic. And even research into these habit systems describes this form as a behavioral autopilot. This is where we learn responses and continue unless conscious attention or goal-directed control interrupts them.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, we know what it's like to interrupt goals.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. And autopilot, when the body uses it in a good way, God created it to be used in a great way so that we don't have to wake up every day and learn how to drink water again, right? Or we don't have to wake up every day and learn how to be nice and say hi, how are you? Our body goes into these autopilot system reactions.

But it's dangerous when the route is formed through brokenness because we learn to put autopilot into life, and brokenness becomes the autopilot.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And you know that autopilot sounds like, "Well, that's just how I am. I've already dealt with this. I'm already new." These statements, they're just autopilot. They just come out of our mouths. Or here's a very, very famous Christian one: "God knows my heart." Yeah, but do you know your heart? See, the question wasn't, "Does God know?" The question is definitely, "Do you?"

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Maybe the whole time he's been trying to show you, "Do you know your heart?" David said, "Search me, oh God, and know my heart." "I don't need anyone to help me"—that's another autopilot. "I already forgave them." "And I've already moved on." Another autopilot statement is, "I've gone through the wilderness." You haven't even acknowledged you've got a wilderness, let alone going through it.

But the problem with autopilot is that the fruit of autopilot will always reveal that the water of Bethesda has not yet reached your wound. And what that means is the problem is not merely that people are broken; the problem is that you have swallowed the lie that this doesn't affect you and that you've already become.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's true. So all these excuses bring an auto-reaction. Auto-reaction is a good word. And this is the problem when we believe as believers that we start to mistake salvation for maturity. Or we start to mistake compensation for healing.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's true. And the Lord says to this man, "You have to rise up. You have to get up out of your funk of your current system-based living and take up your mat and walk." Still waters always reflect your image. Stirred waters distort it. Very good. And so why is that important, Dr. Robyn?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Because you have to see differently. You have to let God show you what your true identity is. This is what it's all about. This is why we talk about first love. We need to get back to that first love, that love that God had with us before even we were formed in our mother's womb. It was our actions after our mother's womb that caused all the distortion of identity.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And I said last night in my sermon, Dr. Robyn, the still waters have to be marred because if we look into the water and see our reflection, then it's still our self-image that is reflected back. God has to distort sometimes. He has to let us lose control of the image that we've trusted, our own self-identification. Lose yourself. And it's not that God wants you to lose yourself in him, it's more that he wants you to find yourself in him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And it's also, when you lose yourself, then you learn to not protect yourself anymore. Because that's what you've been doing in that image. You've always been protecting yourself. And those excuses have to go. And that's what Jesus said to this man: "You have to carry the thing that's been carrying you for the last 38 years."

That's the sign. Healing is the sign when you begin walking. Salvation is where the journey begins, and Bethesda, the mercy, is where it's applied, healing is where it's applied, but the everyday walking in the new, that's where the sanctification and the transformation and healing is not just released, it is sealed into your being. The movement has to be there. There has to be movement. You cannot just return back to the familiar anymore. It has to be moved.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So your final words, Dr. Robyn, as we bring this part of the Pool of Bethesda to a close?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, recognize not the stirring of the water, but the one who created the water and the one who is standing before the water. And you will be the candidate for a new identity. 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.