First Love

Guest (Female): Welcome to First Love with Dr. Robyn Kassas and Dr. Nathan Kassas, where faith meets real life. In this week's 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 everyone, and welcome back to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I have across from me Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, how are you tonight?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'm doing fine. Thank you very much.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Good to hear. Well, Dr. Robyn, we have been on a very important subject: unpacking and unlocking God's story and reclaiming God's story for your life. Last week, we started at the first station, which was rest.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Rest, yes. Rest is so important.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, and we heard a lot of good feedback from people about how this helped to actually change their understanding of what rest is. Rest is not stagnancy. It's not being at a halt or being at a stop. It's not inactivity. It's a change of posture.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Definitely. I think that when we rest and when we're still in that rest, then we really will know God. We do everything to know God, but it's all about rest.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. We came from that important scripture in Psalm 46:10: "Be still and know that I am God." That word there is still, not stop and know that I am God. Stillness is not inactivity. It's when the inner argument comes to a close.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And it's not over. It was just finished.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Well, we want to dive in tonight to the next part of rest to give our listeners a greater understanding that rest is a positional change. It's a positional change because rest has a purpose.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And we want to know the purpose of why God would say rest. And I like what you said, and I'd like for you to start immediately on the eighth day.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah, I wanted to say this last week. When we were talking about the seven days of creation, on the seventh day, God rested. The eighth day was meant to be a day of dominion.

In Genesis 1, it actually says in verse 28, "Fill the earth and subdue it," or another word is "take dominion."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and be caretaking. Now you get to go into a different position.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Exactly. But from rest. Not from tilling the soil, working the sweat of the brow. From "I've created everything for you. I've set up the order. Don't change the order. Just keep it protected." So when God sets up an order, rest actually keeps God's order protected.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So what did we do? In the beginning, we actually broke His rest. Now let's talk about that.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Unfortunately, because of sin entering, we forced the hand of God out of rest and out of that relationship intimate state of communion. Now He is at work, and He will be forever at work until the end of the days when He says, "Now the tabernacle of God is with men," and He will rest. Rest and tabernacles are synonymous. The Feast of Tabernacles is a rest feast. It's all about resting with Him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And when I think about that and I think about, wow, what we did caused God to have to work now up until the very end.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah, but it's also a very big contingency for the Lord because this is why He gets to tell man, "I don't want your work. Because you stopped My rest, I will not accept your work as enough ever." And this is why we talked about it with open eyes, the son of the flesh, Ishmael. It was Abraham's work. Because man broke God's rest, God will not accept man's work.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And this is a big, big understanding of how things work.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Very much so. And when you were talking about the importance of God did not rest because He was tired, that was so powerful. I've been thinking on that all week because I think we think of rest as recovery and rest as rejuvenation from an exhaustion. But rest, you're helping me to understand, is completion.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and that's what He said to Jesus. He said it's finished. He didn't say it's all over. He said it's finished. His work was finished. And so the rest now of the work is through the Holy Spirit. See, Jesus finished what God wanted Him to finish. Jesus came to finish what God wanted Him to finish.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And now the Holy Spirit came and He's doing the work now until the end. And then when the Holy Spirit is taken from the earth and He finishes what He's been called to do, that's when you don't want to be around, by the way. Hopefully, we'll be caught up as the scripture says because we don't want to be on the earth when He's not here. But then the final work is left to the Father.

So they each play their role and they each take their part. And what's important here is that when we talk about rest and we talk about coming into this posture and this positional change, we have to go back to the garden because it's where it all started. And you talked about this in the seminar about the correct order. Why don't you bring out this revelation about how we've been living in a backwards order?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, I was just thinking about it's all about being first. Being with your heart, being in Christ, being in Christ. And so that's the first thing. Be still and know that I am God to know, to know something about what that He is God and to rest from our works. It's all about knowing that He is God.

So the first part of this is being, not doing, but being. So we have, say, a triangle, and then we have the second part is what we're doing in this being. We're being missionaries. Attaching a kingdom mission to the being person. That's right. And then, of course, the last one is the temporal well-being in the lifestyle.

But the big thing is, Pastor, that we've turned that triangle upside down.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Like an Illuminati triangle?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's correct, like an Antichrist spirit. And so now we've made the temporal thing, the temporal well-being, the lifestyle, the most important.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The main one, the number one.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And then the second one is the mission of that. And the last thing, the last thing is what their purpose is: the being. And because of that, it doesn't work. It doesn't work. We have misinterpreted what God's plan is all about. In the beginning, God wanted us to have the eighth day where we would have dominion.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And actually, Dr. Robyn, in the Book of Revelation, as most theologians will correctly say, we are kind of in the seventh day right now of creation, the sixth to seventh day. Why is that? Well, remember each day is like a thousand years to the Lord. So the earth is actually, evolution-wise, we're not 500 million years old. We're actually in the 6,000th to 7,000th year of creation.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So why that's important is because when the Holy Spirit is removed and when we're given that millennial reign, you know, we reign with Him for a thousand years, that is the eighth day of creation. So He gets back the eighth day what was meant to be in the beginning.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: But then it's not over. Because remember, we have to subdue. Subdue, if I could just bring this up, comes from the Hebrew word "kabash," and that means bring chaos under divine order. So the eighth day is when the enemy is bound for a thousand years and we reign with Him. And then it takes place again because He has to give another generation another chance to know Him because He has to be fair.

But then that's when we are called to rule and subdue. And so God, again, He gets back the story that was lost.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But isn't that unusual because think about this: we didn't see what the plan was. And man didn't see what the plan was, and so we lost that eighth day and we made it hard for ourselves. And so therefore we need to see this. We need to see this. God wasn't proving Himself all the time, making sure that man knows that He's God. He wanted man not only to rest but to take dominion. And we changed it around. We changed it around and we had to go the long way around instead of getting to go straight.

We had to go the long way around. And I want you to share a little bit about because we went the wrong way around, we had the wrong order. Sometimes we do have the wrong order, but we've misinterpreted the scriptures. We've misinterpreted God's word. And when you misinterpret it, you start to build a whole theology on that. And if you keep on doing that, you start to build your life on that.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: You're calling it out. You said the word "proving," and it stuck in me and it rang like an alarm system for a statement that I wrote down here: We stop proving when we rest. Real healing doesn't come until you stop proving.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And now you're going to show me how that happens with the body.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And it's just funny that you said the Lord didn't have to prove He was finished. But man's work is always from a proving position. And that's why rest never is rest for man. It actually becomes recovery. It's always about getting back what we lost. It's never about creating from the new. It's always about having to re-catch what we threw out.

And so I think that's an important one. Recovery is only a byproduct of rest. It is not rest. Rest is about attachment. So rest is about God securing you, not proving to you that He can do the work.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I think also rest is involved with you having your lamp lit. It's not that you are sort of looking for something to make you come alive again, it's just that you have let your light go out. And rest will help you to get your light back again because it's a positional thing. It's not resting from hard work.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And from an understanding of myself as a psychologist, recovery's underlying statement is: "I pushed too hard, so now I need to heal." Whereas rest says, "I'm safe enough to stop because I belong." And I don't have to worry about missing out because I belong. So therefore there's nothing to miss out on. Belonging is more important than even becoming and doing.

And so again, John 15:4, let's just add some scripture here: God doesn't rest you to recover you. He rests you to secure you. That's "abide in Me, and I will abide in you." Abiding is not a recovery state, and we need to say that. Abiding is not a recovery state. It is an attachment state. So living in abiding is living in a constant attachment.

And that comes to when we talk about the understanding I was giving my cornerstones of communication class in Sydney, an understanding of how the brain works. Because when we're talking about communication, we have to talk about certain things about the brain. And I was talking to them about the four lobes of the brain. Little neuroanatomy here, just quickly.

So we have four lobes in our brain. We have the frontal lobe, which is the main motor lobe. Then we have the parietal lobe, which is located in the middle, and that's where we add information and we add significance or the word that you just used: interpretation. And then we have the temporal lobes, which are the auditory functions. And then we have the occipital lobe, which is what we see and how we add significance from that.

Now, I said to my class: Isn't it funny how God puts at the front—you would think He would put at the front the occipital lobe?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Seeing, yes, because the eyes are the first thing that takes in information. Light enters the eye and we find that information. It goes up to the brain and neurons fire and what fires together wires together. All that happens. But when you look, you don't really see. You don't know what you're seeing.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And isn't it funny, Dr. Robyn, that if you want to know the real depth of neuroscience and even learning about the optical nerves, when we see, we see upside down and our brain actually translates it into what the real image is. So everything we're looking at in real life is upside down. So I can't go via what I see because everything I see is upside down.

So I have to go via what I know. And so that is the frontal lobe. The frontal lobe is where we have processing and cognition. And it's the motor lobe, meaning it's the action lobe. If I wanted to reach out my hand to you right now, it's the frontal lobe that's going to send all those neuro signals to put my hand out.

But it's important also because the parietal lobe, which is the next one back in the middle, it gives me the significance and the interpretation of why I'm putting my hand out. And it also lets me know the plane that I'm in. Now, why this is important spiritually is because God wants us to go via what we know.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's why He said "be still and know that I am God." In all your ways acknowledge Him. The root word of acknowledge is "know," and He will direct your paths. So when we go via what we know about the Lord, not what we see, not what we hear, but what we know, then we will hear and then we will see.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So the order is know, then the order is add hearing, then the order is add seeing, and then the order is interpretation. But unfortunately, we've gone via what we interpret God says. And unfortunately what happens is when we turn that frontal lobe off—the frontal lobe, because it's a motor lobe, it can override all the other lobes. It's the most powerful lobe. So when I go via what I know, it actually can affect what I see and how I see.

Isn't that powerful? So if I go via "I know," just a basic example, that God is good, even though I might not be taking information that looks well, maybe we're not seeing. We're seeing upside down and we're not necessarily hearing it. That therefore we have to come back to what we know.

Paul said, "I know that I know that I know." And I believe that's spirit, mind, body. That's also heart, mouth, mind. But I'm going to tie it into this next revelation: it's also frontal, parietal, temporal, occipital.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's it. But you need all three. But you need to be not turning things upside down like this pyramid.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah, that's what the elite do. They turn everything upside down. They counter-Christ.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So we've missed out because we went via what we understood. We missed out on that eighth day of reigning.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And rest is for reigning. And that brings me to another understanding of this. So because the frontal lobe is the motor lobe, it's the action lobe. So this is where faith kicks in. Because faith is action without understanding. And then the parietal lobe, what it does is it attaches the significant understanding, the interpretation of why I'm acting out.

But what we've done is we've waited to understand and then we've considered what we've seen, and then we've decided whether or not we'll act out. Give me an example. Okay. Peter walking on the water. He began by doing. He stepped out.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He interpreted instead of knowing. Then he could have heard and saw, and then he would have known and the "known" would have stopped him from having to be pulled up.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And because he went via what he saw and via what he understood before knowing what he knew about who was in front of him saying "come and walk to me."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And he didn't know that He was God, you see. And if he had known that when he heard it, it would have taken him to the next step to see, and then he would have had all three working the way they should have worked, not upside down. And that's what we've been doing: upside down.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. And it goes back to the power of how God created the brain. The knowing lobe, the action lobe, is the activation lobe. So faith is activation without interpretation.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: You can't wait to believe it. You've got to risk it and take it and have faith and trust.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So faith is activation, then the parietal lobe is trust. How do we get trust? Well, trust comes in through knowing, but in order to trust, we have to have a little bit of understanding. So the parietal lobe becomes interpretation. Then the occipital lobe and temporal lobe, that becomes observation.

So how God wants us to live our life according to the correct order of what you're saying is: activate the faith, step out, do it, walk on the water without even knowing why you're walking. Then He will add the why and how you can build security in trusting that this is why He's got you walking on the water, and then He'll give you all the evidence to support His interpretation. You've said it all along, and Joseph said it: Interpretation belongs to God.

And the problem with the church is we attach our interpretation of what God is, what He says, and how He moves before we act in what He's said to do.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And we believe very much as the church: He has got to move. He's got to move. Well, be still and know that He is God means only in stillness can you know He is God. And it's not in Him moving. It's in stillness you know. Then you will see it and hear it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. And this is where attachment heals. Attachment heals in a rest state because God wants us to attach and not want just attention. And so if we're going to live His story, before we can do anything, we've got to attach to the Author.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I think that what we need to do in this now is to realize this is His story. Okay? This is His story and therefore we have to let Him finish the work.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. Let Him get back the eighth day. The eighth day belongs to Him. All right, Dr. Robyn, we've got 20 seconds. Final words, go for it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I believe if we see what we were talking about tonight, we will come back to God because we will want to come back to His story.

Guest (Female): 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. And as you go, don't forget: the One who loved you first is still loving you back.