First Love

Guest (Male): 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: Good evening, everybody, and welcome to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I have the amazing Dr. Robyn Kassas, my mom, sitting across from me. Mom, Dr. Robyn, how are you today?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'm doing fine, thank you.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's awesome. We've been on a very important topic of reclaiming God's story in your life. We were able to walk our listeners through the first station, which is Rest. Rest is so important because God's story and His creation always begin with rest, not work.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, it is. That's how we get to know that He is God—through rest.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We brought out the important scripture last week of Psalm 46:10, "Be still and know that I am God." We also mentioned, Dr. Robyn, through the neuroscience part of it, the different lobes of the brain—the four different lobes—as well as understanding how they work and how that contributes to going on what you know.

That's where we want to pick up tonight. We want to pick up on what it is that you know. So we want to move into the next station of God's story, which I'm not going to say yet because we were talking about this triangle and how when I was mentioning the triangle—and if you got to see the sermon from Sunday, I redrew the triangle—most triangles have the first level at the bottom.

I don't know if people were quick to see this, but my triangle, which is what God's triangle was—the godly order—actually started from the top. Number one was on the top, number two in the middle, and then number three on the bottom. But that's not usually how you build a triangle. You usually build from the ground up.

As I was waiting on the Lord, I was asking, "Lord, why is that?" when I was learning this concept about the three calling purposes. He was telling me it's because when you're at work and you're doing all the effort, it's always an effort to reach Him. What do you think about that, Dr. Robyn?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think that often we build it the other way around because it seems to be if we have the strong part at the bottom, the foundation, it's longer and then we can build a little bit higher onto it. The peak of it doesn't have the strength that the bottom has. That's why we always lean towards the bottom of the triangle. It's always an effort to reach up than to reach down.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Where does that happen in the Bible, where they were trying to reach up?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's the Tower of Babel.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That is literally the Nimrod order. That's "I can reach God through my own self-effort." It's an important thing because when we looked at that triangle, God's order starts with God reaching down.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's what I meant. It's more of an effort to reach up than for God to reach down.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: When God starts at the top and He comes down—for those listening, the *Vav* connection, God coming down—it's God's work into humanity. We are just recipients and receivers.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: When God does it all the way down, it's God's work.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That is so powerful. Isn't it funny that that foundation element of the triangle, when we were bringing out that illustration, was listed as temporary blessing? We think that is the foundation of our relationship with Christ.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: If we do it the other way around, it's such an effort because it's man's way all the way up. But if it's God's way coming down, the effort is God's.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That puts us, Dr. Robyn, in that position where we are at rest. When God is from the top down, it's what you talked about last week; it's a positional change. The rest of man while God reaches down.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It can only be that way. If God's reaching down, man has to rest.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is so powerful for where we are right now in history. You see, the church is coming to that end of its work. I really believe God wants to bring the church to the end of its work.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think it's only God reaching down that the church can be put in the right position.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Let me ask you a question. When God reaches down and He's the one emphasized as the work...

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He reaches down, but He emphasizes first Himself. Then He emphasizes the call.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The "be," the "do."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Then He emphasizes what the temporal blessings are that come with that call.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Dr. Robyn, as I'm looking and I'm comparing in my analytical, psychological brain, the peak of an iceberg is what you see. Whereas underneath, there's quite an amount of ice. But we always want what we see—or what the world sees—to be the signs of blessing, not us being. The Lord wants the peak to be corresponding to us as a human being.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: If we don't allow Him to be and us live in that being, then we can't receive the temporal blessings because we don't trust Him.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I like how you did that. That was a good setup for where we're going tonight because we're coming to the second station of God's story being revealed in our life, and that is the station of Trust.

Once we've entered into His rest, we have to now move to the next station, which is to trust Him. Trust the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. In all your ways, acknowledge Him, know Him, and He will direct your path. It doesn't say He *has*, because that comes with the trust. We see He *will* direct your path.

It's a present and a future tense. It's a dual tense. It's not past; "He has directed your paths." That's more like "the steps of a good man are already ordered." They're already ordered by the Lord, but this one is "He will," meaning it's coming. He will direct your path. Trust in that.

How do I trust in that? Knowing that God swears by Himself that He will make a covenant with me. I can't trust me, but I can trust Him. He's made a covenant with Himself for you. You are just a receiving recipient. There is no work or no involvement of your own effort or your own liabilities or your own surplus. You're not an equal partner in that covenant.

If I allow Him to do what He should do the right way around, I can trust the covenant He made with Himself for me. I think we've given them enough to wet their appetite and get them stirred. We're going to go to a quick break, and then when we come back, we're going to talk about this next station, Trust, and we're going to start with Abraham and the importance of that covenant. We'll be back.

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: Well, Dr. Robyn, that was a very powerful first nine minutes. I don't know if people can get off the floor after that. Let's go straight into what you were talking about before the break because this is what sets us up for Trust as the next station. You mentioned a statement: He swore by Himself. Please explain.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He made a covenant with Abraham.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: But with Himself.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He made it for Abraham, but it was with Himself. That's so important because in Genesis 15, the evidence of that is Abraham is actually asleep when he sees the vision of God coming and cutting those animals and walking between them, which was the ancient ritual of making covenant with someone.

If we look at Abraham's life, in the beginning, he had a different understanding because of growing up with his dad. It needed to be something beyond just God saying something. He had to show him something and show Abraham He was making the covenant with Himself for Abraham because He was introducing Himself to Abraham as something that he inherited. That was a journey for Abram at the time to see that God was keeping His word by making this covenant with Himself for Abraham.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That is so important because when we talk about trust, the acronym is Totally Relying Upon Something True or someone true. Let's bring that into this discussion. When we talk about "go via what you know," what could Abraham do except go via the fact that God had made this covenant with Himself? He could not lie to Himself.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Trust in the Lord with all your heart and lean not on your own understanding. Abram could not lean on his understanding because he didn't know Him until God had to reveal Himself to him and then show him who He was. Because of his background and how he grew up with his dad, he had all that to unlearn.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: He didn't have a knowing of God in a perception, because our perception becomes our deception of who God really is. But he also had this place where he knew that God came to him, and He gave him this amazing emotional dream experience where he saw the God of heaven and earth making covenant with the God of heaven and earth, and he just got to be a witness of it.

Something was so powerful in Abraham's understanding: "This has nothing to do with me. This is beyond me, but I can trust it."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's the thing he trusted, because I know it to be real. It's like Paul when he saw the Lord: "Who are you persecuting?" He saw Him, and you can't deny that. That's not just a knowledge of your own. This is not a worldly knowledge. This is not any soulish knowledge. This is from within. It's like I know that I know that I know that I know. I know something in me is deeper than something in my head.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Trust in God's story, totally relying upon someone true, means that when we go via what we know, it has to be greater than what we feel, what we think, and what we see or even what we've heard. That's that Proverbs 3:5.

Trust is very closely linked to direction, which brings my statement in here: Rest is what regulates our spiritual system, but trust is what redirects the will. You can't have your will in a restful state still alive. Once God gets you to put your work to an end, He will say, "Now I want to redirect your will so it's in line with the will that I have in my story."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: If we would allow God to come down and allow the Lord to show us that He is to be trusted—and not our understanding—then we will see that we had the right theology.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: You were talking about lived theology, how our lived theology is so off. We have been living to try to go up. I look at my own Christian walk right now and so many places where I can see that as the theme, that effort, that self-management. Trust is the next step because it brings you out of self-management into what you taught in Abiding in Christ, which is interdependence.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: If you're looking up, it looks too big. Way too big. But if you're looking down, you're looking down on something. You can see that it's not as big as it seems to be. If we would allow God to look down on us, we would see that the right way to do this is to put our trust in Him and let Him direct our path.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Dr. Robyn, we're going to talk about next week trusting in the legacy that is already within you through Christ. We're setting that up because trust has to come before we can talk about that. Abraham had to trust that the story was bigger than himself.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's it. Abram had to come back to that. This wasn't like we've always believed. Why didn't Abraham believe? Because he's the father of faith. But he started his journey in learning how to trust because he was of a different culture with his father. He had to unlearn all that. That's why he had to go on a journey.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I believe it's the Apostle Paul who says it was credited to him as righteousness because he believed. It wasn't credited to him until he believed.

I learned in my course recently that mental health is the state of living in reality at all times. If we want to be spiritually and mentally healthy, we have to live in the reality of what the Scripture says, not what we've paraphrased it to say via our wrong theology. Let me give you an example.

Matthew 6:33 says, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you." That is top down. But here's our paraphrased version according to our perception deception, the bottom-up version: "Seek ye first to get the financial inheritance that is your birthright as a child of God because you deserve for all things to be added to you."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: How many times have people said that in their mind?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: 1 Timothy 6:10: "For the love of money is the root of all kinds of evil, for which some have strayed from the faith in their greediness and pierced themselves through with many sorrows." Again, the bottom-up version: "For the love of money is the root of all fulfillment. Those who never get rich have pierced their hearts with many pangs."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: There's another one.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I think the final one is the most important one, and it's this: "Yes, and all who desire to live godly in Christ will suffer persecution," 2 Timothy 3:12. But our paraphrased one is: "For none who seek to live godly in Christ will ever be persecuted or meet any kind of struggle or suffering ever."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's a belief that they have that is so wrong. Theology upside down. It's bottom up, not top down.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I think the Lord is calling us. Trust is living top down, not bottom up. I'm really seeing right now where we have literally been living to try to reach God. But why are we trying to reach Him? He's already living in us. It's an abiding state we've got to come back to.

I want to just mention here why trust is so important. We'll expand on this in the coming weeks. We have many keys to go into with trust, but our brains work through pattern recognition and memory comparison. It's also called the Bayesian prediction. We use prior experience to predict future outcomes.

How this works is through a place in the brain called the hippocampus, which holds memory. Also, the amygdala, which is the emotion-tagging fear system, and the prefrontal cortex. When we are trusting, we are not guessing. What we are doing is referencing.

The brain has to go based on what is consistent in someone's life. When I reference, I look in my brain for consistent good, consistent character. Trust is the consistency of character over time.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Would you say locating?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Locating is a good word. Inside, it builds what's called an internal working model. This means that "taste and see that the Lord is good," Psalm 34:8. God invites that experiential memory, not just abstract belief. When I hear that scripture, I literally will go through my brain, locate, and reference: When have I seen the Lord be good?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We have it like a file. It's literally a filing system, and you find the right number or whatever, and then we look and we're able to locate something that's familiar.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: A very important part of neuroscience here is that memory regulates fear. The more I remember the goodness of God and trust it as what I know to be the truth of my actual experience, the fear goes. The hippocampus and the amygdala are right next to each other, so it overpowers it.

Also, when we intentionally rehearse this referencing or locating as you've said—gratitude and testimonies, past deliverances that we've been brought through—it's called experience-dependent neuroplasticity. What we repeatedly recall in our brain as what we know to be true, it actually gains emotional weight. It becomes more neurologically accessible, and it influences future prediction and outcomes of what our life will be.

In a nutshell, if I believe the goodness of God and I remember the goodness of God and I go via what I know Him being good—not via what I feel in the moment—then I actually quiet the fear, I shut down the lie, and I actually prepare myself to experience the goodness of God all over again.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We experience and we prepare for Him to direct our path. When we let Him look down at us, we can accept that He is looking inside us to see that we are abiding in Him. He brings His story into our lives.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Trust is totally relying upon someone true. Final words, what would you say we have to trust in?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think we need to trust in Him and trust in that He made the covenant with Himself. We don't have to trust in ourselves. We need to trust in that covenant He made with Himself because Abram at the time didn't know God like we thought he did. He had to get to know Him on the same level as we have to get to know God. That's made him a man of faith.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We trust in the fact that God made the covenant with Himself for us. That's why we know it's going to come to pass, because He keeps His word.

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.