First Love

The following transcript was professionally curated for the Christian digital media show *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: Hello everybody, and welcome back to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I am sitting with the amazing Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, how are you doing today?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Oh, I'm loving this sun.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, it's a beautiful day. Summer is starting to reveal itself. It's always been there, but it's beginning to reveal itself.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, like everything else.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So today, Dr. Robyn, we are continuing the conversation on meeting the man Jesus. We've had the fortunate privilege in the last couple of episodes, based on the revelation revealed to you about the Father wanting to introduce His Son, Jesus.

We talked about the authority last week, the name in which all things are done, both in deed and in will.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And word.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And word. And then the week before we talked about transformation is a person, not just a process, and that person is Jesus Christ. So today, what are we going to talk about, Dr. Robyn, to continue the conversation?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, I think that what we need to look at is what Jesus really is to us. He's real, He's relevant, and we know He's relational. And that, I think, we need to explore today.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow. So if you are listening for the first time, this is actually the mission and tagline of our church: real, relevant, relational. And it's actually something that you're going to see as you're driving into New York City very soon on a billboard that we're going to be adding to advertise: Jesus is speaking to you, real, relevant, relational. Because that's what we are bringing to New York City and the world. That's the message that we've been given to share.

So, Dr. Robyn, when we talk about Jesus being real, relevant, and relational, just to begin the broadcast, what is your heart on that statement?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, we know that He's real, and we need to have a look back to—and I don't want to use the word when it began—but when He was more or less revealed in God's story. When He was revealed, it showed the realness of Him. Even in the Garden of Eden, He was the tree, the Tree of Life.

And that is where we were supposed to even find out that He's real, relevant, and relational even back then, and eat of that tree and not of the knowledge of good and evil. So that would show the realness of Him. But there are other times too, when in the Old Testament you see Him being revealed.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The word "revealed" is very important for what we've just discussed because He's always been there. He's never stopped being there, but at this time in our lives, the Holy Spirit and the Father are bringing in an emphasis to Jesus being revealed like He's never been revealed before.

And this goes along with the prophetic theme that we entered for 5786, which was the Year of Man. The six, God doing the work through man. We always look at six as a bad number, but six is God's number and it represents the humanity. So it was just right on time that you declared at the beginning of the basic Hebraic New Year, which was Passover. At the beginning of God's New Year, He wants to reveal the man Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and that's the part that has to be revealed now as a part of the continuation of God's story. In the beginning—and we don't even say that, we say in the beginning of mankind—He was more than just a man, He was of the Godhead. But now, for Him to be revealed to us, He needs to be fully God, but fully man.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And that's the thing that I've been challenged with in my own personal relationship. I've always seen Him as fully God, but to know Him as fully man does something. It removes the accusation and the excuse because when He's fully man, He's been through what I've been through.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And when you say that word "relevant," that's because He's fully man. And you see, we're not having that part play in our lives. We are not.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: To go back to your point, Dr. Robyn, scripturally just adding some good foundation here. John 1:1, "In the beginning was the Word."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And He was the Word.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And the Word was with God, and the Word was God. So there is no beginning to Jesus. An important statement here is that we the church, we have fallen not into rejecting Jesus, but we have fallen into minimizing Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I totally agree on that statement.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And so the minimization that has occurred has actually underplayed Jesus's importance and of His humanity and His deity in our life.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's right. And let me just say, not just was He the Word, He is the Word.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And again, John says and all things were made by Him, for Him, through Him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And He also says, the Spirit says you have to do everything in word and deed. So Word was there in the Old Testament and Word is there in the New Testament.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And so again, John 5 declares, "These are which testify of me." Jesus says, "These are which testify of me." So He's saying the whole First Testament, every covenant, every law, every pattern, every story, every life account that God has begun to unravel from David to the patriarchs to the prophets, these are which testify about Me. It's all been rehearsal for Me.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and He now comes into God's story as that man to be revealed now with great relevance.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And so here's a couple of three, maybe power statements, because we like to work in these statements to get people thinking. When does Jesus become real in our lives? Well, here's the key: Jesus becomes real when you stop hiding from Him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yeah, that's true.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Jesus becomes relevant when you stop filtering what you give Him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And what He gives you.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And Jesus becomes relational when you stop protecting yourself from Him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, you can't have two masters. And we always look at that as something evil, but no, you can't have you and Him as master.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The Lord said to me last night when I was preaching this sermon about part two, about when God is silent, eat. He said to me, "How can you trust me and protect yourself from me in the same breath?" Wow, that's a challenge, isn't it?

You can't. I said to one of our ladies that I was talking—He gave me the visual and I was going to demonstrate it before we go to the break. He said, you know that trust exercise when you do trust and you stand and you let someone catch you?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, you fall back.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: He said to me, "Your protecting yourself from Me is you protecting the fall. You're putting your arm out saying I'm just going to protect myself from falling this much." But physically, from understanding the body, when you do that, you're putting yourself in the line of injury because you'll pull a shoulder, pinch a nerve. It's actually the fact that you let go that makes it actually safe. But here's the key: you have to trust that that person is able fully to catch you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, to hold you. If you put your arm out and you protect the fall, you get more hurt. That's the injury right there. That's when you injure yourself, not the person. You injure yourself because you're resisting. You resist. Your body resists. And when you resist like that, you stiffen. I know that because I've fallen and I've just cried out to the Lord Jesus and I've let my body just flow into that fall. It was less painful and less damaging for me.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So as we go to the break, just ponder on those three statements. Jesus becomes real when you stop hiding. He becomes relevant when you stop filtering. And He becomes relational when you stop protecting. We'll come back and we'll get into this even deeper.

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're back and we're not going to protect ourselves from anything God is going to say in this broadcast. You were saying to me during the break, He's always been there.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Always. There is no beginning, there is no end.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So the First Testament, or as the world knows it, the Old, is Him concealed.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's correct. And now in the New Testament, He's revealed. But what is He revealed as? Fully God, fully man. I want to look at some of the things that we know Jesus as. He's the Light of the World. We're always asking for light. He is the Word, and nothing is done in word or deed that isn't done in the name of Jesus. He was the tree of life in the garden. He was—what else was He? Let me think for a minute.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Well, it's very important what you said because He is the tree that they were eating from.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And He still is the tree.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And He is the Tree of Life. And I believe in the New Jerusalem, that tree that John sees, he sees that tree of life, that's going to be Jesus that we eat from. It says the nations shall come and eat from its fruit and healing is applied. But very importantly to understand now, let me tie it in with the science of psychology, which is the science of understanding us.

When they stopped eating from Him, that was when the dilemma of them knowing themselves via themselves became the thing which the enemy used. He presented this option to Eve to eat from something other than Him. And that was the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And I've been saying to our church in this sermon series, you are not the author of you. And when we get to this idea that it's Jesus who's the centrality of our lives.

In psychology, we build identity from two different formats. Let me break it down. We build identity from one format called central identity and central focus, and then we build identity from what is called peripheral focus, periphery. So it's important to understand this because when you start to think that Jesus is in your periphery, what you build centrally, your identity on, is what you emote, it's what you behave, and it's what you express. And if He's in your periphery, Jesus, He's not attached to you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So we make Him distant. That's what we do. But I also want to say He's the truth. He doesn't just exhibit the truth, He is truth. He is light and life. And we need to see this, and so we can't make Him distant. Because that's what we need to walk this Christian walk: life, light, truth, love, all these things.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The light of the world, the life of the world, the truth of the world, and the love of the world.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Jesus doesn't play roles, that's His character. He's light, He's truth, He's life, He's love. He's all those things and many more. I did a whole teaching on the names of Jesus, the character of Jesus.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Every book of the First Testament and the Second Testament is a revealing of Jesus. It's an unveiling of the Father's heart of His Son. There were two things that make the heartbeat of God beat: His love for His Son and His love for the church, His Son's bride. And that's the whole story.

So to tie this in, I want to just quickly explain what I was talking about to do with peripheral and central. I'm going to read a couple of things here, and I'm going to write about this in a blog that will have more science attached to it, so go and read that blog. When something is added to your life, it remains in your peripheral understanding. It doesn't shape who you are at the core of your identity.

But when something is central, it organizes your perception, it anchors all meaning, and it stabilizes your identity. Jesus, in this time and age, the Father is saying Jesus has to move from our periphery of being an added-on extra, like you've just said, Dr. Robyn, a little baby in a manger He is no more. He is the reigning king, the Lion of Judah, came as a lamb but is coming back as a lion. And we have to allow the Father to move Him from the periphery of our life to becoming the central figure and focus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I think that when you use that word "added," like I said, it doesn't have that importance, so it can't be relevant in our lives. It's like we have to learn how important this is, but we should understand He was never added, He was just revealed.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So a couple of power prophetic statements here to tie this in and back it up. Jesus was never added to your life, He has always been the author of it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And always ready to be revealed in God's timing.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: You cannot encounter a real Jesus with a managed version of yourself.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, you cannot.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Jesus did not come to manage your behavior.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, He came to live in you.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And transform your person into His person. I think sometimes we think Jesus is just interested in managing our behavior.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, that's a good way of saying it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And again, remember He says, "These are which testify of me." He said, "I didn't come to abolish the law, I came to fulfill it." Law and prophets, He says to the Pharisees. And that word there in the actual original text is to be the reality of it in the flesh.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And we must make Him supreme in this. Because this is part of God's story that will reveal all about Him, because when He goes and when it's all finished, God will honor Him because He came to do the will of the Father.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is it. So I want to quickly add these things to those three points. Jesus becomes real when you stop hiding. Hiding isn't just behavior, it is a biological and psychological response to a perceived threat. If you still think Jesus is the threat, then you are going to respond like Adam did: "I was afraid, so I hid myself."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And Jesus is there and He's holding on. He's holding on to us. And you see, even when we let go, He still holds on. But we let go to run away from facing the man. Because if you face the man Jesus, you have no more excuses to run away or be even the way we are, because He's already done that.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And hiding is not new, it's ancient. It's been done all throughout history. But here's an important thing. Jesus to be real in your life, He cannot be real in information exchange. He's only real in exposure. So the amount that you give Him access to is the amount that He becomes real to you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I wanted to bring up that He's the Light. The Light that dispels the darkness. That when He dispels the darkness, you allow Him to continue to be the Light as He reveals the truth in that Light.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And here's the next part of that relevance that we're talking about. He can only become relevant when you stop filtering. Another good word to add to that is when you stop editing what you bring to God. What do I mean by that?

We select what we let Jesus touch. We select, we cut out the bits that we don't think are acceptable. We present the acceptable parts to God. But science and psychology tells us this is called cognitive filtering bias. Because of our own trauma and our own protection mechanisms, we don't believe that if He saw all of us, He would love all of us.

So filtering bias, it actually puts a distorted output on our life, which means we only bring the good thoughts, we only bring the clean emotions, we only bring the acceptable struggles. And Jesus only appears relevant to that part of us. He doesn't appear relevant to the full part of our human experience because we've edited what we've let Him touch.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I think we need to understand He's the intercessor. And we need to stop doing this cleaning ourselves up. We need to—how do we work with this great intercessor? By allowing Him to reveal the truth.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is it, Dr. Robyn. And the truth is this: you cannot become relational and protected at the same time. You cannot. So if you want to build relationship, you have to let down protection. So Jesus becomes relational when you stop protecting.

Protecting can feel like self-preservation at the cost of connection. So when you protect, you are allowing the cost of connection to be sacrificed for the sake of self-preservation. So again, you cannot be protected and relational at the same time. The two states cannot coexist. So if you want Jesus to protect you, you've got to let down the protection that you're giving yourself and you've got to relate to Him in all things. You've got to relate to His pain, relate to His experience as greater than your experience.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I think we come back again to the importance of the real, relevant, and relational through Him being the great intercessor. He has to be these three parts. He has to be to be relational, to be the intercessor; relevant to be the intercessor; and real to be the intercessor.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And that intercessor is the intermediary, the one that stands in your position in the gap, presenting to the Father.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And Holy Spirit, He's the one that presents what Jesus intercedes for.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So again, my final statements are these: Filtered honesty produces partial freedom. Truth requires full access. Jesus doesn't become more present, it's just you become more open. And last statement: The distance you feel from God is often the space created by your own protection. And now to throw to you for your final words.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think that if I could say anything for my final word, you know, He holds on to you. You let go of Him. And now you're getting a reality that He is not only God but fully a man. And He knows everything you felt, but He doesn't act these things out. He always is there interceding for you. That's what you need to do. Allow Him to intercede for your weaknesses.

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 o-r-g 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.