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 everybody, and welcome back to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I'm here with Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, how are you tonight?

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

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We want to welcome you to this broadcast. We are here to take you on the journey of unraveling and reclaiming God's story for your life. We've just come out of the Tabernacle series. We wrapped that up. Before that, we did our Yada, knowing God, going through learning how to communicate with the Lord in an intimate way.

We are taking you into the next step of the journey, which is reclaiming God's story for your life. We began last week with a powerful replay of one of the sessions from the actual seminar, Reclaiming God's Story for Your Life, recorded at the TORCC New York last year, 2025.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: The purpose was a big, important thing that we needed to start with as a starting point to do with reclaiming the story because we always go looking for purpose. That's not the way to live, looking for purpose. If we would remind ourselves of how it all began, in the beginning, it was God's story, and it was Him that made the move to take a hold of us. Out of that, we find a purpose. If you find that purpose, you don't go looking for it because it's already been established in you.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Last week we began talking about the three different types of purpose located in scripture. We're coming out of the scripture where Paul says, grabbing a hold of Him for which He first grabbed a hold of me.

This seminar revealed that some people believe we're just to be in God and just to have the purpose of Kingdom being in God and just being this creative expression of God. Other Christians believe we're meant to do for God; we have been put on the earth for a reason. There are also people that believe God wants us to be happy. Well, we want to change that statement. The Lord never wants you to be happy.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Happy is not in the Bible. It's all about being fulfilled. That brings rest.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: In order to come to that fulfillment, we have to have a threefold purpose, very succinct with the Trinity: Father, Son, Spirit. Everything with the Lord is done in threes because it's a witness. The first purpose is to be in Him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Why that? Because it's all about abiding in Christ. Not Christ abiding in us. First, it's got to be us abiding in Him.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The scripture says that we were in Him through the foundation of the world when He was slain before the beginning and the foundation of the world. We were in Him. So there's a really important emphasis here on it's first human being. Then the second purpose, as a result of being in Him, He begins to reveal to us our Kingdom value. From being in Him, as our Kingdom value is revealed, it causes us now to want to be moved to action, to take that Kingdom and have rule and reign with dominion, as was what He gave Adam and Eve.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: To put that in a bit more easy terms for anyone listening that doesn't fully understand, it's first us in Him. Next, it's Him being in us. Us realizing that because we're in Him, He is in us. Out of that realization, also, that it's Him that is going to do the work. We're going to be available for His ability to bring His Kingdom into our lives.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The Kingdom being brought into our lives is through the work that He calls us to. Our first call is to be in Him. Then He reveals He's in us. And then He reveals where He's called us.

Now our purpose becomes twofold in the sense that we live and move and have our being in Him. By Him, all things created for Him. Then it comes back to now He wants to reveal Himself in us and the reason why He put us in the earth for the very first reason, which is what Paul says: taking a hold of why He first took a hold of me. That is now moving beyond being a human being. It's a human being that does.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: When you get that reality, it becomes a point where you can be introduced to another level of knowing Him, which will bring us tonight to being still and knowing that He's God. We're going to go there tonight about that. But it's all about if you know that He is in you and first you are in Him, then that reality becomes that it's His work.

There's a relationship that begins to develop out of that. It's not striving anymore. It's not hoping that I'm doing this correctly. You begin to take something and you realize it's not about you.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Interestingly enough, it's in Him and it's Him in us, but both are the focus of Him. The third style of purpose that God wants to attach, after we're in Him and from that He reveals where He's called us, not just to be in Him, but to be worked through. I don't like saying used. He attaches to life temporary happiness.

Unless we enjoy this life, we won't actually make it to the final destination of being in Him and building and being called where He's called us. He gives us things that help us to enjoy the process and enjoy the journey. It's not that life is all about having nice things, but the scripture says, "Seek ye first the Kingdom, and then the rest shall be added." It's Kingdom within first, being. Then that works out of where I'm called in the Kingdom to go out from that being. And then He adds the rest. That is literally how we are living on purpose, from purpose, not for purpose.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Even that is so important because we don't have to look for purpose anymore. We will be living in it and on it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: If we're not looking for purpose and we're living from it, then we're living from love and not looking for it. Let's take a break. That was a good recap. We're going to dive in a little bit more. I'm going to mention some key statements from the session and ask you to expound on them, but we'll go to a break and then we'll come back.

Guest (Female): 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: We're back after the break, and that was a powerful first section just to get us warmed up.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Just going back over everything.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Now we're diving into the first station of God's story. We like to bring people upon stations so that they can micro-munch. Everything's a big meal; we need to micro-munch.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think we've done that in the last two series. Especially on the Tabernacle, we had stations. Also, with the Yada times, we had stations as well.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Now we're going to talk about the first station in God's story, because God always creates from rest. It is a little bit shocking to the human brain because it doesn't compute in our finite understanding. Rest first, then work?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He was the example, and He set that example by doing and then resting.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I'm going to read a statement that was made during the last portion of the broadcast in the replay. It says here: "The seventh year He wanted them to rest. The seventh year of rest is when you were meant to get the best."

We were talking in regard to the scripture where the prophet says for every year you didn't let the land rest, I will count that and I will add it up, and that is how long I will carry you off into captivity. Because they didn't let the land rest, which was a sign of their lack of trust. The momentum was hot, and they wanted to keep going while the momentum was hot, which was all of their goodness.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: When the momentum is hot and we don't rest, it's like we're abusing the land. God declaring it to be living, then it must have rest.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Rest is the first place that God begins His story with. Now, why is that important? Because rest is not inactivity. We need to come for this mindset. People think rest and they think they stop working and stop doing everything. No. God's story is not inactive at any point.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Let's go back to the very beginning and understand something. In the Garden of Eden, God created it. Man never did. If God created it and He was resting from His works, how does man then help or do what he's supposed to do with the garden? Adam was there in the garden. What was he caused to do?

Well, we can look at it and say it's already been made, so therefore he has to caretaker what's been made. We're going to talk about this caretaking. If we just come back to the reality, it's God's work. He did the work. So therefore, what are we called to do? We're called to caretaker. Take what's His and look after it, but not do it. That's where we've blown it so much as Christians.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The funny thing is that the first day after He finishes creation, it said He rested from His work and He called it good. He called it very good. Here's something important. That day was a day of relationship. That was not a day of work. He rested, and then He had communion with Adam and Eve.

Rest is what brings us into intimacy and communion with God, because it's the Lord saying, "Right, this is my goodness. This is not your goodness. This is my goodness that we're going to center." The epicenter of our relationship is going to be my goodness. It's interesting because in Genesis 3, when the fall takes place, it's the first day that God's rest is broken when they try to cover up.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Let me go back to something I really want to bring out to do with the caretaking before that, and that is, what is caretaking? It means watering. Watering means something totally different. Not growing; watering. Looking at it, making sure it looks pretty and such like that. That just means caretaking means praying, discerning, enjoying. Therefore, when they didn't enjoy His presence, that's when they knew they were naked.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: My niche is to tie in the biology and the neuroscience. Let's tie in a couple of things here. The Lord gave me this acronym when we were talking about rest: REST. R: Rely. E: Entirely. S: on the Spirit's. T: Timing. That basically is a statement saying, "I am no longer trying to finish myself." That's what we try to do all the time. We try to finish ourselves. We let God start the creation, but we try to finish it. And that's what they actually fell into, or add to it.

Scientifically, the nervous system is actually designed for rest first. We have to understand that. Fight or flight is actually a secondary response. The sympathetic nervous system and the parasympathetic nervous system that turn on, we're actually designed to be receiving, repairing, and resting first. That's God's order.

When rest is absent, this is what happens: cortisol stays elevated, our immune function weakens, memory narrows, and fulfillment disappears. Isaiah 30:15 says, "In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and trust shall be your strength." Now, what's important here is scripture does not say, "Be silent and know that I am God." It says, "Be still and know that I am God." Psalm 46:10. Stillness is not the absence of sound.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: No, it's to do with another level. I said before that rest is to do with resting from our attitude. It's an attitude change. It's a posture. You can do something, but if your attitude is different, it's a rest. But now we're talking about coming into something that's going to bring us into His story. We're not just talking about resting now; we're talking about coming into His story.

Therefore, we have to add something now to do with the mind and with the heart. That has to happen now. So what is that? We have to have a remembrance. We need to have a regurgitation of what we've seen God do and memorial stones that will cause us to enjoy this rest as our mindsets begin to change and we are not panicking about doing the work.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I was talking to you about the Jewish culture and how the Sabbath was set up. The whole epicenter of the Jewish household was the Sabbath. From Sunday to Tuesday, it was living off the previous Sabbath. Then from Wednesday to Friday, it was looking forward to the next Sabbath. The Sabbath was literally their whole life.

Why that's important to the listener is because they would live off the goodness of the last Sabbath, the goodness of God in the last Sabbath for those three days. Then they would set their heart on looking forward to the goodness of God coming in the next Sabbath. What is the common denominator here? The goodness of God. They were recalling the goodness of God and then they were anticipating the goodness of God.

Stillness is not the absence of sound. Let me give you something here. Stillness is the absence of inner resistance. God speaks most clearly when your inner argument stops. That's what real rest is. Real rest is when you are still, meaning the argument inside you stops, and you just allow the Lord to do what He does.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: What changes is trust and belief.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's interesting because I was talking to you about those three things: remembering the goodness of God. I said to my class on Tuesday when we were discussing the anatomy of the brain, we have this front lobe, the frontal lobe. Then we have the temporal lobes, and then we have the occipital lobe at the back.

The occipital lobe is what controls our sight. The temporal lobe is what controls our ears and our hearing. The frontal lobe is what controls our intuition, what we know. I said to my class, "Isn't it ironic that God never wanted you going based off what you saw first? He never wanted you even going based off what you hear. He wanted you going based off what you know."

How do you know it? You know it that you know it that you know it. What's that? You know the goodness of God. When you go based off what you know about the goodness of God, you're not working.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Then again, also, you remember the goodness of God. That is a mindset change. That can help you to come into a level of belief. We think rest is something negative because that's the way we've looked at it. It's a panic. If we're going to rest, it's because we're worn out. God did not rest from His work because He was tired; He rested because He was finished.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That leads me to one of my statements that I've got written down here. It's an important statement. It says, "Every Sabbath you ignore becomes a debt your soul will eventually have to pay." Every year they ignored it, and it added up. That's the importance of it because in those years, it was the year that they were meant to learn all over again and remember the goodness of God. He wanted to bring it to them.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That's what happens when you rest: you get to know He's God. Rest is how you actually gain dominion and how you get to know Him.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's important because I'm going to teach this in Torch in one of the sermons that I'm going to preach on. We get so interested in correcting and connecting the dots, but we are not as much interested in collecting the dots. Before you can connect the dots, you have to collect the dots. You can only do that from a place of rest. God collects the dots, then He connects the dots, and then He corrects the dots.

I'm really looking forward to this discussion on rest and its importance in God's story. We're not just about rest; we're going to continue to unlock this concept that's never been preached before in the American church about God's story. It's not my revelation; it's yours. Why don't you finish with your final word?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think that if we just realized why it's rest first, it has to be established that it's His work. That's what has to come. We've made it our story and that we're bringing Him into our story, but we have to go back and see that it's His story and He's bringing us into His story. We can do that again next week.

Guest (Female): Thanks for spending time with us today on First Love. If today's message spoke to you, share it with someone. If you're looking for more teachings, visit www.torcc.org. That's T-O-R-C-C.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.