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

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I'm doing fine, thank you. It's a wonderful day outside.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, praise God that he is now releasing the season of summer as it comes into America's time to get hot and shine.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's right. The sun will shine today.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Amen. So, if you are listening for the first time, First Love is all about revealing Jesus as your first love whether you've been walking with him your life or you are just getting to know him for the first time. And today we want to continue our discussion, Dr. Robyn, on Jesus being real, relevant, and relational.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I think that just before we even start is getting to know him, not just his authority. I think that's all we look sometimes at Jesus as the authority of God.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's so true.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Don't see Jesus as the man.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah, like the signature on a contract. Like pass Go and get 200 dollars in the name of Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's a simple way of saying it, but it's the truth. But each time I look at what's going on out there, it's the name of the authority, not the person of the authority.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Very true. And without being too critical, we did observe something that took place on the weekend that was great. It was great that it took place. But in our prophetic nature as God has given us that eagle eye, especially yourself as being senior minister of Times Refreshing Christian Centre, we observed there is still a lack in the United States especially. As someone coming in, I can say this because I haven't experienced this from where I'm from in Australia. It's a different dynamic. There is a lack in connecting with the humanity of Jesus Christ.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's the one.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And I know that Americans desire it because we have shows like The Chosen. We have shows like David. All these new shows on Amazon, Wonder Project, MGM, and they all—the Holy Spirit will have his way no matter what—and they all are about emphasizing the humanity of these characters. Especially The Chosen, it's all about the human part of Jesus and seeing that. So many people resonate with that show because of that reality.

I know American hearts are crying out for it as well as every heart in the world, but there's an anointing in this time, in this year, for God to connect with the United States of America as Jesus the human being.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and I think it's time for God to reveal his son, Jesus Christ the Lord, to America because all we ever hear is speaking God the Father, God the Father. But God the Father speaks through Jesus.

We don't see him as something of his own. We see him as something added on through authority. That's what we see with Jesus. When people get the reality, they get it because it's the authority, not the humanity, but the authority.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's so true. And unfortunately, when you only connect with authority, you never connect with the reality of love.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's correct. Because you can have no authority where you have no love. But if you only know the authoritarian part of God, then everything else becomes task-oriented. Do this, do that, change here, change there, don't do this, don't do that.

As a psychologist, someone that really goes into the depths of the heart, this is where I believe part of our relationship with God does lack because we've only connected with Jesus as authority. We haven't connected with his heart for humanity. His heart for humanity is that he loves humanity so much that he came to be a human.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's right. It was God that spoke himself out into Jesus. And so when you are recognizing the humanity of Jesus, you are recognizing God's way of doing this.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: This is so good, Dr. Robyn. So many people are running away from their humanity because they think it's the curse.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. And so we try to live this ultra-state of being divine. I'm just going to suppress that, bypass that and just faith, faith, faith, faith, faith. But yes, faith is what pleases God, but the Lord knew that we needed a conduit to touch.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, it had to come through.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, and so Jesus is the conduit because he is the channel of God. If you know what God wants, he wants you to see Jesus because if you see Jesus, you see him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's what he said.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's right. If you've seen me, you've seen the Father. And so to begin unraveling this real element, John 1:14 says the word became flesh and dwelt among us, manifested and dwelt among us.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And he used the word flesh.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Flesh, yes. Human.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Human flesh, divinely directed by the Holy Spirit for the will of God, is a blessing, not a curse.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And this is what we want to talk about as we come back and we dive into it. Before we do, I just want to give a little story. I was watching a testimony from one of the originators of the Jesus Movement in the music industry, Christian music industry in the 1960s. I can't exactly remember his name, but it really landed in me.

Actually, Natalie my wife brought me this testimony because it was what transformed her relationship with God. This gentleman had grown up in the church. He had grown up under a father who was a minister, but he did his thing as we all do as pastors' kids. He rebelled and he got into all these bad lifestyles.

But unfortunately, he was in the Vietnam War and he was stationed in Thailand. He began to say that the things that he had to engage in began to show him his disdain for humanity. He hated it. So he actually went seriously insane, so much so that they put him in a psychiatric hospital. He began to think to himself, "I hate humanity," because he saw what humanity was capable of when it's not channeled through the love of the Father.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's the one.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And so he got to this place where he was ready to give up on humanity. He became like that demoniac. He walked around with no clothes. He just gave up on life because if there's no reason to have humanity, then there's no reason to have no clothes. So they put him in an insane asylum.

While he was in there, Jesus came and spoke to him and said to him, "You have looked at humanity and thought how disgusting and how despised you are by humanity." But then he said this—and it's properly paraphrased in my words—he said, "I love humanity that much that I as God came to be a human being."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And to choose to come in the form of humanity.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, you want to do everything that you can to escape being a human, but I as God love humanity so much that I came to experience it and be like you as a human being. And that was what set him free. It set him on a new course. He fell in love with Jesus and he fell in love with Jesus's love for humanity and he began to write songs from that place and that was what fueled the Jesus movement and fueled those songs that have shaped our worship.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And of course, just before we go to the break, I'll just tell you this. Jesus people had a truth, but they took it to the extreme and they became like one of those swinging...

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Pendulums.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Pendulum that go too far to the right or too far to the left. But it's the truth if you stay in the middle.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Ooh. So when we come back from the break, we are going to discuss how Jesus becomes real in our lives to the degree that we let him see us in our humanity. We'll come 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: All righty everybody, we are back and what a great introduction. That story was very powerful because it resonated with me. Dr. Robyn, you actually were coming up in the Lord in those times of the Jesus movement.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and this is something that I know for a fact that if you try to take Jesus into your movement, then it won't work. The human side of Jesus won't work in your form of humanity.

And that's what they did. They had a truth, a very big truth about Jesus being the man, but then they started to incorporate their way of humanity to do with the drugs and finding Jesus. But then you start to mingle with all sorts of spirits and you mingle with the Holy Spirit trying to mingle with the spirits that they were introducing through their drugs and hallucinations and such like that and it lost it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And it's very important that you said the Holy Spirit because again, I heard another prominent minister say—so this is not my own but I'm going to quote her—there are nice spirits out there, there are good spirits out there, there are lovely spirits out there, but it's got to be the Holy Spirit.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, there's only one spirit, not many. There are many demon spirits, but there's only one Holy Spirit—God the Holy Spirit. And that's the one that works with Jesus and brings about the Father's will through Jesus and activates Jesus in our lives.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And it's important because the Holy Spirit will only testify of Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's again another thing that we need to talk about here. They never promote themselves.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: No, the Godhead is always other-promoting. The Father promotes the Son, the Son promotes the Father, and the Holy Spirit is the agent that promotes the both of them.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's right. And just like God gave Jesus the role of the intercessor in our lives and we are not seeing him as that. We think the God's our intercessor. It's not true.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, Dr. Robyn, you're rightly, correctly saying this. You're mentioning that we don't see the role of intercessor and mediator being emphasized in our walk with Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, we don't. And that's why we don't associate with the humanity of Jesus because we can't see him and we don't see him as the role of the intercessor that leads to the throne of God on our behalf.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow. And just to give you that scripture there, we know this scripture: there is one God and one mediator between God and man, the man.

Pastor Tony rightly said this last night—I love how he brought this out in the sermon—he said Paul could have said "the God Jesus Christ" (1 Timothy 2:5), but he says "the man". So it's the mediation that comes through humanity. Humanity is the conduit at which we touch God, which is crazy to me because it's like in our Christian walk, we get to this place where we're human, then we have a gap, and we jump to immediately divine in our transformative process.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's right. It's true.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And that's the gap that the enemy uses in our life. It's like we have the old life put away which we know, the dead man that's in the ground and we're raised in Christ, with Christ, but there's some kind of gap every day between reaching that place and living that as a lifestyle.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Because I look at it like this: Jesus is not an added-on. Jesus is who he is. The Lord God gave Jesus to the body of Christ. He spoke himself out into humanity for the purpose of being touched. We can't touch God unless we go through Jesus.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And again, so true because we please God the Father with our faith.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And faith is the thing that pleases the Father.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, the children of Israel cried out for 400 years, but nothing pleased him except the faith. Despiration does not move God, emotion does not move God. And this is what we try to do. We fall into manipulating God with our human emotion rather than letting our humanity and our human emotion become the thing that we touch Jesus through because he's the conduit so that Jesus can intercede for us on our behalf to the Father to move him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And we even give the role of Jesus to God and God gave the role to Jesus. And also, we also give the role of the Holy Spirit to God. God's will is done by allowing Jesus to be the role he placed in this whole plan that he has for humanity and for the role of the Holy Spirit to activate what is being done in the name of Jesus.

Word and deed, do you know what that means? Every word that is supposed to be spoken should be done in the name of Jesus and every deed should operate through the authority of Jesus.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow, so powerful. And an important thing here that I want to emphasize is that Jesus never ever lets Satan use his humanity against him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's right. He doesn't.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: But we let Satan use our humanity against us all the time.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's why he is the prime example of humanity. Humanity is not evil.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: No, it's a gift.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's a gift that we've been given. Satan wanted to be human. He couldn't. God only gave it to us.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is what he hates about us. He can't express in a bodily form his desires.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, he can only possess it, but he can't express.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So because we have been given the gift of humanity, we are like the scripture says: we are above the devil, he is the dust beneath our feet. Well, he's the serpent rummaging around in the dust, a constant reminder that God gave the ultimate gift to dust.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and Satan hates that because that is the dust that he worms around in.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. And so what he does is rather than getting us to see, "Wow, we've been given something, a higher elevation than he'll ever receive," he distorts it. So, three ways he distorts our humanity against us is, number one, he twists legitimate emotion into sinful conclusion.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's right, he does.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So we have legitimate fear: unbelief; anger: hatred; desire: lust; sadness: despair. It's a twisting of that human limitation that Jesus stepped into.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, and instead of seeing if you allow the direction of the Holy Spirit through that authority and that life example, you'll see the will of the Lord done. The Lord God is done through your humanity.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Number two, he isolates us. So he convinces us to hide what we feel from God. Genesis with Adam: "I was afraid so I hid myself."

Number three, he pushes us to react to the emotion that we have not yet surrendered through Jesus. And I'm not going to say to Jesus, I want to change the way we think and say through Jesus. I have to surrender my emotion to the Father through Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And not perform for the Father.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's the one.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's the one. We cannot do it. The Jews could not do it. It was when they recognized their humanity and said, "We can't do it," that's when God moved on behalf of them through the Spirit of God.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And unfortunately when we live this human experience on the back foot, always catching up, we only ever allow Jesus to be mediator when we're being rebuked, when we're being changed, when we're being in that position where Jesus has to come and counsel us and he has to tell us you did it wrong again.

And so again, this puts a complex in our understanding of Jesus and our relationship with him because Jesus is only ever interested in changing me, fixing me.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But I've got to say something. That's not even his role to rebuke you. It's his role to love you. It's the Holy Spirit's role to bring a rebuke, if needed, to your action.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Because he's God on earth. That's correct. So key statement here that we need to tie into the idea of Jesus is real, okay? Jesus, again, we're reminding you, felt everything human beings feel but never let feeling become Lord. Humanity is not your weakness. It is God's gift to you.

Another key statement: when you don't let Jesus see that human part of you, he cannot become real in it. So he is only real to the amount that you let him see and that you let him touch.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And Satan could not conquer Jesus's humanity.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah, so true. He surrendered his humanity.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But he didn't conquer it. Satan didn't conquer.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: No, never. And again, another important statement is that Satan hates your humanity because he was never given the privilege of carrying God's image in the flesh. So the parts of our humanity that we end up hiding become the parts that the enemy exploits.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And uses against us. And it's against us all the way. And we should not embrace our humanity through our own beliefs and actions. We should embrace our humanity by seeing Christ Jesus's humanity will lead us because he's in us and he will lead us into a better way.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. And again, the Apostle Paul says that he was tempted in all things, but he did not give place to the devil. And so it's very important: your humanity is not a threat to God. It is divine expression.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He gave it to us as a gift.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: But the threat is when you allow humanity to be given to the devil instead of to Jesus. That's right. So Satan takes something that was meant to be the connection between you and the Father and you and Jesus and you and the Holy Spirit and you build a connection with him through the human experience.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And you channel it the wrong way.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Jesus is Lord. I've never appreciated being a human being, but I'm starting to.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And I think if we are led by the spirit, we will enjoy the humanity that God has given to us as a gift because he says we're made in his likeness.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's it. That's it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's what he refers to when he talks about being fully God, fully man. That likeness is there.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Wow. And again, I would like to throw some science into it, but we don't have time because we're coming to a close.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Add it in rather than me having the last word.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Well, what I'm going to do is I'm going to put it in my blog because I need to provide results and studies around the psychology with it. But I want to just bring this to a close because we've come to the end of our episode with the statement that I'm learning that the reality of Jesus real in my life is not real in the supernatural part of me. It's real in the natural part of me.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's what we need. And we should not run from this real Jesus that lives inside of us because he leads and directs us and moves through it in humanity—our humanity.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Real, relevant, relational.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Totally.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: In the everyday you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: In the everyday you.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Not the Sunday you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Wow. I got to let that one marinate. My last word is you're only meant to despise your flesh, not your humanity.

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.