First Love

Guest (Male): Welcome to First Love with Dr. Robyn Kassas and Dr. Nathan Kassas, where faith meets real life. In this weekly 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.

Nathan Kassas: There are five ways that God wants to use limitations passed down from heritage. Let's hear them. Here we go. First one: they will direct you. Limitations direct you. Sometimes God will light a fire under you to get you moving. Problems and limitations often point you in a new direction.

And they motivate you to change, especially if you're all set on sticking to the same thing passed down. God will limit you to say, "Listen, we don't want this one to get passed down. Can you gear shift and change direction?" What worked for mom will not work for you. What worked for dad will not work for you.

I get excited, hallelujah! What's God doing? Getting your attention. Number two: inspect you. People are like tea bags; if you want to know what's inside them, drop them in hot water.

Robyn Kassas: God tests your faith with problems or limitations. This is it. You get limited on something, limitations come into the conversation, and you see it sometimes as something bad, really bad. But no, it could turn you around and put you in a right direction. It can align you. Boy, it can do lots of things. And it can warn you: don't get into the hot water; you'll get burned.

Nathan Kassas: Ask yourself this question: what do my limitations reveal about me? Number three: they correct us. Some lessons we learn only through pain and failure and being constricted from our own ability. It's like a child whose parents told them not to touch a hot stove; you probably only learn by being burned.

Number four: protect us. A limitation can be a blessing in disguise if it prevents us from being harmed by something more serious. Limitations number five: perfect us. When responded to correctly, they are character builders. God is far more interested in our character than our comfort. Our relationship to God and our character are the only two things we are going to take with us to eternity.

Robyn Kassas: Reliance and relationship with God. He gains reliance. Hello, Joseph, I'm going to limit you in your heritage in Egypt so that you'll come to me. Come to me! See that? Not come, but come to me. Limitations can cause you to go to the Lord. Let's give it the glory. Don't see a limitation as your enemy anymore.

Nathan Kassas: Your limitations remind you of your dependence upon God to obey His calling that you cannot do it alone. Key statement: your weaknesses also remind you that even your strengths need to be anointed by the Spirit. Number two: limitations empower you by the Holy Spirit.

I'll give you the scripture for this one: 2 Corinthians 12:8-9. "Three times I pleaded with the Lord to take it away from me. But he said to me, 'My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in your weakness.' Therefore, I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses."

There will be times when your limitations get removed through a miracle. It may be healing, removal of a barrier, or a dramatic shift in circumstance. The apostle Paul's story reveals that there will also be times when God chooses to use you with the limitation still in existence. The gap between your weakness and the call of God is filled by His grace through the Holy Spirit's power.

Robyn Kassas: That vacuum there, that place is filled by the power of the Holy Spirit and His grace. You've got your weakness here and you've got the call of God on your life here. In your understanding, because of your weakness, you can't reach from point A to point B.

But the Holy Spirit says, "Hang on. In your weakness, I am made perfect strength. I'm going to use that limitation to draw grace into your life and I will empower you." It's not your strength that you live via; it's the strength of Christ within you, the hope of glory. There you go!

Your limitations are the opportunity for God's power to be unleashed. You've made limitations an enemy, but it can unleash God's power.

Nathan Kassas: Number three: you will testify to the truth of God's word because you were limited. Your experience and testimony of God's power in your weakness point to the truth of God's word and the faithfulness of His promises. Your faith is tested, proven, and strengthened in the process. You come back to, "Hang on, Your word was true. Because You stopped me, You were faithful like You were faithful then. Faithful then, faithful now, faithful forevermore."

Robyn Kassas: God gets the glory. This is the next one: He gets the glory in the story. 1 Corinthians 1:27-29. "But God chose the foolish things of the world to shame the wise. God chose the weak things of the world to shame the strong. God chose the lowly things of this world and the despised things, the things that are not, to nullify the things that are, so that no one may boast before him."

It gives God glory when He can use you to fulfill His divine purpose. He gets the credit when it's easily seen that you could not have accomplished His call in your strength.

Nathan Kassas: That landed in me. Finally, God gives you the gift of others by limiting you. We don't want that gift! He limits your ability and your strength so that you will have to rely on the gift-mix of somebody else. That's what happened with Paul.

He thought he could do it all. That's what he did when he was Saul; he thought he could do it all. And then he had a road to Damascus experience and suddenly his eyes were closed and he wasn't able to see. Guess what? He couldn't take that off and do it all. He had to get someone else to come and pray for him. He got the reality, the revelation, that he needs the body of Christ.

Robyn Kassas: Now, your going it alone will come to an end. You and your little me-myself-and-I type person here, it's coming to an end. He gets people to come around in your life. Why? To complete you. He puts limits on it. You have to have someone come into your life, and they come into your life to complete you.

You can't complete yourself. It's either God or people. You can't complete yourself, so get rid of that lie. Me, myself, and I has to die.

Nathan Kassas: Oh, I like that; can someone put that on a t-shirt, please? Me, myself, and I has to die. Your limitations allow for your Father to bring other people around your life to complete you. These are the ones who provide the necessary help and teamwork that is needed to fulfill your commission, the doing call.

Guess what? If you don't want people, you will not complete your mission. Cannot do it! You can run away, but if you run, He'll find you. You go to the bottom of the sea, He'll be there. You go up into the air, He'll be there. You stay where you are, He's there. You'd better surrender because He's there.

Robyn Kassas: God sends people that will connect us to the mission and we tell God they're not good enough. But we have a network of people that we want to connect us to the mission. Moses had Aaron and Joshua; Deborah had Barak; David had his mighty men; Paul had Barnabas, Timothy, and Silas. Do we need to say anymore?

Jesus had Peter, James, and John, and eight other people. No one did it alone. A lot of stuttering, and he had to get someone to help him, Moses. Do you get what I'm saying? You can't go it alone. And the ultimate is God. If you don't accept that one, you won't accept that you can't go it alone, you need God.

Nathan Kassas: God won't let you use your limitation as an excuse. "Lord, You've limited me, what can I do? You called me, now I can't even do what You want me to do. You called me to do it, but I can't do it because I can't speak; I'm stuttering." Moses! What did He say? "I will be with you and help you. Go."

Because what's the limitation? Moses, you're not going to rely on the vernacular that you learned in Egyptian university. No way! I'm going to limit your tongue so much that when you speak, it will only be via the Spirit of God that you will have confidence to even open your mouth. So don't tell me your stutter is an excuse. I've got that stutter there for a reason; it's driving out Egyptian language in your heart.

Robyn Kassas: What is the Holy Spirit putting His finger on today in you and saying, "You must give up the right to allow your limitations to stand in the way of your commission from God." Give up that right. You might feel as though you are the most unlikely person in this room; you might feel ill-equipped.

Key statements: limitations can become your excuse not to live actively toward the inner Christ-life in you. But the reality is that limitations should be the very indicating factor that reminds you of your finite state, pointing you toward the infinite one of the One inside you.

Nathan Kassas: When we believe the lie that we haven't been gifted with any kind of heritage or that we are lacking in what we have inherited, we will look to use the limitation of our lives as a crutch to stay crippled. This is when something that God has divinely designed in your life to point you toward Him and His glory is usurped by the enemy to point you toward him. Your limitation has now become your accusation.

Your limitation has become an accusation when you focus on circumstances rather than on God's power. Your limitation has become an accusation when you are comparing with others. Your limitation has become an excuse when you're not spiritually disciplined. How does that work? You might say things like, "I can't do it because of my situation," when in reality, those limitations could be opportunities for you to lean into God's strength.

"I can't do that part of the call. I can't fast because I've got a disease. I can't go to that prayer meeting because I've got to work." You're missing an opportunity to lean into strength. This spiritual passivity eventually stifles growth, leaving you feeling distant from God. And what do we get? We get this victim mentality.

The victim mentality says God has deliberately limited you to make you miss out, not to point you back to Him, but to make you miss out. He's withheld from you. Limitations become accusations when misunderstanding God's purpose in your trial. There is a purpose. Limitations become accusations when fear of failure or discomfort drives your life. Limitations become accusations when a victim mentality takes over your life.

Insurmountable obstacles that leave you powerless—that is the sentence of a victim. "I'm facing insurmountable obstacles that have left me powerless." Hang on; there is nothing you face that you have no righteous way out of. God's always made a way to escape that you're able to bear it. Always!

And if you're in a sticky situation, He gives you a pair of legs so you can run from it. I'm serious! Instead of wanting to go and fight, He gives you a set of legs that you can say, "Run! Legs, get up and run!" Limitations is a work of God and we need to see it.

You will let your limitation become an accusation of victim mentality when you think instead of seeing God as the one who empowers you to rise above the circumstance, God is overpowering you in your circumstance. He's become the abuser. We're just telling you these so you'll be on guard. Not accusing you of doing it, but so that you will be on guard, prepped and prepared and equipped not to fall into it.

They become accusations when you have misplaced identity. Believers lose sight of who God has called them to be because of their limitation, using it as an excuse. The misalignment leads them to think that their weakness defines them. It's actually pointing them back to God. While limitations are real, God uses them to build deeper reliance on Him, grow us spiritually mature, and bring about His purposes.

When believers keep their focus on Him, limitations become a platform for the power of God to be displayed rather than an excuse for inaction or reason to blame God. Self-righteous approaches will always have limitations. Why? Because God in His holiness cannot afford to let you believe the lie that you can do it without Him.

If we follow through with that, then we would do it independently, not realizing that independence takes us further and further from His presence. He must remind us that wholeness comes as a result of being connected and fused to holiness. Therefore, limitations are not a means to an end; rather, limitations present as an end to our means. When we come to the end of our own strength, only then can His strength begin.

Limitations is not constriction. Do you get that? I propose this to you. If the believer were to start at the place of his strength from the beginning and not have to journey through the wilderness of self-denial to get to dependence upon God, what would be the result? There would be no limitations. Limitations would not have had to be put on.

You get limited because you start in your strength. Along the way, God's got to do something to get your attention to show you it's not your strength. So He uses those divine things that you think are constricting your life to go, "No, I'm not constricting you. I'm just constraining you." It's the constraining, not the constriction.

The thief on the cross got it straight away. No excuse, no strength. "Today you're with me in paradise." Now, this is an important thing: in the Aramaic, Jesus was actually saying, "You're with me now, right now, in paradise." Why? Because that's the power of no excuse. You get me instantly.

We have settled and we think, "Okay, got to go through the wilderness," and yes, you do, but you choose to go through the wilderness. You made the choice. I choose to go through the wilderness because we give 50% of our strength up. We still got a little bicep that we want to use. The thief on the cross said, "We deserve it, but this man does not deserve it."

So we should let Christ own the moment. Then there won't be any limitation because you will be moving into His story. Let Him own the moment. Remember that it's His story; it's not your story. He has a story, a part of His story for you, but let Him own the moment. That means He owns every moment, and then you will not be constricted and you will have no limits because you will only see Christ coming forth.

When we make the choice to let God reign from the moment of conception, not the moment of birth... See, we think He's in control because we give Him lordship right before birth. But go back to that portal: if He didn't sperma into your womb spiritually, He ain't the father of your child. Come on, that's what it means. Seed, planted the word, in the Greek, *sperma*.

If God didn't input His seed into you, you're giving birth to an illegitimate baby, and then you want Him to come into the room and go, "Look at your child" at the moment of birth. Hang on, that's an Ishmael. That ain't my son; that's an Ishmael. If God was to reign from the moment of conception, natural constrictions would be removed.

Save yourself pain. Do it His way. Why? Because He is the way. You're not doing Him a favor; He is the way, so do it His way.

Guest (Male): Thanks for spending time with us today on First Love. And as you go, don't forget: the one who loved you first is still loving you best.