First Love

Nathan Kassas: Well hello everybody and welcome to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas and I have sitting with me Dr. Robyn Kassas.

Robyn Kassas: Hi Nathan. Well, it's probably nighttime, but I'm feeling good, very good. Yes, we've got a new venture going on.

Nathan Kassas: We are actually coming to you live from our new broadcast studio that God has blessed us with to be able to do First Love every Monday to Friday. What an amazing opportunity that is, Dr. Robyn.

Robyn Kassas: It's a very, very good opportunity. We can just do it at home and get it to where it needs to go.

Nathan Kassas: So we introduced this week the Fish Gate.

Robyn Kassas: Yes, we did. We started that, I think, the last episode. We opened up with the Fish Gate and we mentioned a lot about Peter.

Nathan Kassas: Today is actually Monday, Dr. Robyn, and we finished on Friday before the weekend with the Fish Gate and the biology of following, as well as moving into the biology of hearing.

Robyn Kassas: Yes, we did. And Peter didn't seem to really click into that too well.

Nathan Kassas: Unfortunately, you can't really become a follower of Christ until you start becoming a listener.

Robyn Kassas: And Peter had opportunity, such opportunity because he was with Jesus, but he didn't let it go in. It stayed on the surface and all the way through the first part of this whole thing was him doing that. He never let it land.

Nathan Kassas: When a person is actually repeatedly choosing obedience, it actually begins to affect the nervous system. It actually begins to change not what we hear, but how we hear. Because of our own predispositions through pain and perception and even deception, sometimes it's not the content of the words being spoken, but it's the context that we presumably add before someone speaks. So it actually becomes an interpretation of what we hear. Sometimes we actually interpret before we even hear.

Robyn Kassas: I think that was Peter’s problem, the way he interpreted it.

Nathan Kassas: To go along with what the Lord has been revealing about becoming solidified in our identity before the assignment, and also solidified in our purpose and not just our position, I think this is an important thing to bring out to the listeners: that identity is formed not by speaking. It's actually formed by listening.

Speaking is something that comes later on. You speak from what's already formed within you. But identity is formed from listening first, so that what is being received can actually gel and marinate in you.

Robyn Kassas: I think if you're going to allow the Holy Spirit to show you true identity, you have to let go a lot of mindset.

Nathan Kassas: That is so true. Discipleship is a retraining of the mind. It's a retraining of the supply that we're living from. It's also a retraining of how we think and how we operate. How we listen is even discipleship.

Robyn Kassas: Hearing is not listening.

Nathan Kassas: Why don't you explain that further?

Robyn Kassas: The greatest example is Peter. And again, I'm not picking on Peter, but he tended to always jump headfirst in impetuously and then have to back out again. Jesus said to him, "Peter, I'm praying that when it comes to this point that your faith won't fail you." What's that? That must have been a weakness that the Lord saw with Peter that he was so impetuous that he will jump in before he thinks.

Nathan Kassas: A very important scripture that we all quote is John 10:27, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." I think we'll come back after the break and we'll expound on this a little bit more because there is a difference between sheep and fish.

Robyn Kassas: That's what we need to look at tonight. We did the sheep gate.

Nathan Kassas: The sheep are a different makeup physiologically and in their created function. They function different. We want to be sheep, but sheep tend to be led astray quite easily.

Robyn Kassas: Sheep are definitely different. They tend to want to go wandering, whereas fish just go around and follow the other fish.

Nathan Kassas: Very true. We start with the sheep. We start being led, and we're never not led by the Lord. He's never not our shepherd. It's not that we exchange one for the other, but it's that we add on top of what God builds as foundations.

So we start at that sheep gate. He begins leading us and we begin to follow His lead. Then He leads us into those waters that are still. He stirs those waters, then He brings us to a new supply and He starts to say, "I want to change what's been sourcing your life."

I love this statement that was said in one of the comments. I think it was actually my comment to someone that said that they really love the episode about Bethesda and the pool. It was Jesus saying, "Get up and carry your mat." And I said, what is a mat? A mat is memories, attitudes, and trauma.

Can you carry your memories instead of your memories carrying you? Can you carry your attitudes instead of your attitudes carrying you? Can you carry your trauma instead of your trauma carrying you? And that is all to do with source and supply. When we're feeding from the right stuff, our memories won't carry us.

Robyn Kassas: I think that sheep are always looking for greener pastures, whereas fish learn to follow.

Nathan Kassas: And they get quite satisfied quite quickly, unless they're aggressive.

Robyn Kassas: And they have very good bad memories.

Nathan Kassas: Well, actually, that's a myth. Fish don't actually have short-term memory. Some species do, but most fish actually have good memories.

Robyn Kassas: I think my little clown fish have bad memories. They tend to go around the tank, and when they come back to the other side, they think it's a new journey.

Nathan Kassas: I think some believers are like that. But I also think that believers need to be like that. We need to forget some things quicker than we are to remember them. But sheep do wander.

Robyn Kassas: And they have to be pulled back into the pen. That's why the shepherd has the crook.

Nathan Kassas: So, "My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me." There's a following added to the sheep there, but it's from a different place. Then we also hear Jesus constantly saying throughout the Gospels as well as in the Book of Revelation, "He who has ears to hear, let him hear."

This is an important part of discipleship. You can't get a new supply until you start listening. When you begin to listen, you actually begin to hear the source of what's been sourcing you.

Robyn Kassas: When I'd like to just bring out what Jesus said about coming and then following and then abiding, this is powerful. This is important, so important because a lot of Christians are coming and some are following, but very few are abiding.

Nathan Kassas: I think some people are not even at "come." They're still deciding if they'll come.

Robyn Kassas: Because they don't understand what coming is, and they don't understand what following is. But when you abide, that's the ultimate place to be.

Nathan Kassas: Just as we're going into the break, it's funny because at every Billy Graham crusade in the past, they used to play that famous hymn, "Come As You Are." They would play that as people would come down the aisles and they would want to give their hearts to the Lord.

I think we got so used to coming as we are and staying as we are. I think we have to come as we are, but leave as He is. So that's that progression that you're talking about: come, follow, abide. We'll go to the break right now, and then we'll come back and we'll dive in even deeper over the subject of the difference between the sheep and the fish, their biology, their makeup, and how we need to attach more to the fish lifestyle.

Nathan Kassas: All right, Dr. Robyn, we are back from that break. We're about to learn about fish and the significance of how fish are important to this journey and this conversation and gate.

Robyn Kassas: Yes, that's our supply.

Nathan Kassas: So fish are very important for this journey because fish don't actually take in information through their eyes. They actually take in information through their ears. I'll just read a couple of little important points here. Fish do not experience their environment through sight alone. Water carries mechanical vibrations and pressure changes extremely well. Fish possess an inner ear system.

This is a biological thing. Many species also have a specialized sensory structure called the lateral line. The lateral line contains sensory organs called neuromasts whose hair cells respond when surrounding water moves. I just thought it was important bringing about how the water moves and the fish responds to the movement of the water. The water is what we've been talking about—the movement of the water.

Robyn Kassas: The water is the Holy Spirit. The stirring of the water.

Nathan Kassas: It's the Spirit moving that the disciple responds to, not the circumstance. This allows a fish to detect nearby motion, currents, predators, prey, obstacles, and the movement of other fish, even when their visibility is poor. This gives us a powerful picture of discipleship. A mature disciple does not have to see everything happening before learning how to respond to the voice of God.

Robyn Kassas: Because we're supposed to hear the Master's voice.

Nathan Kassas: This is it. At the Fish Gate, it's very important that the Lord begins to refine our hearing because we move from the outer ear to the inner ear.

Robyn Kassas: I'm very interested in that statement about the inner ear, the lateral line. This is something that we need to have: spiritual ears. We have the five natural senses—hearing, seeing, smelling, tasting, touching. But we don't have the spiritual hearing.

Nathan Kassas: There are five spiritual senses.

Robyn Kassas: So there's five senses that are spiritual. Now you're saying that fish have that inner ear to hear.

Nathan Kassas: They sense. Rather than hear, they sense what is around them through vibration. How this correlates to the believer is we have the Holy Spirit living inside of us. He's constantly moving and brewing on the waters as in Genesis 1. The Spirit of God hovered over the waters. So, like a fish immersed in that environment—fish are constantly immersed in that water environment—when the water moves, the fish move. When the water is still, the fish are still.

Robyn Kassas: That's like the water being stirred.

Nathan Kassas: Exactly, in the right way. Not stirred for circumstances to change, but stirred for inner transformation to begin.

Robyn Kassas: That inner work to happen.

Nathan Kassas: The inner ear. Moving from the outer ear to the inner ear is the Fish Gate. When you change your source, Dr. Robyn, you've got to change not just what you listen to, but how you listen.

Robyn Kassas: I think that's the important thing here. It's not what we're listening to, it's how we're listening to it. We have to have inner ears to hear, and that goes beyond the natural ear. Again, let me come back to Peter. He didn't listen with his inner ear.

Nathan Kassas: So true. A lot of outer ear commotion.

Robyn Kassas: A lot of time when you listen with your outer ear, you don't hear what the Spirit is saying because you're so conditioned by circumstances and situations. The situations seem to be screaming louder from the outside, so you don't get to hear the inner ear conversation with the Lord.

Nathan Kassas: It's so true. I actually gave a message a while back about the inner ear and the process and how it's not coincidental that part of the ear inside of us is called the hammer or the eardrum, which picks up the vibration and sends it down that auditory canal and literally into the brain. We're the same; we pick up hearing via vibration.

Robyn Kassas: That sounds a bit like what we have happening in our inner ear. I've seen documentaries on this and our inner ear is actually very similar to what the fish have got.

Nathan Kassas: Exactly. We have that system inside our ear, the hammer that hammers it in—what we hear and what we repeat, what we regurgitate. It's very important because when we begin to change the way we hear, we also will change with what we agree with and what we should learn. Hearing causes us to take something in.

The sheep gate is all about that you have to recognize through relationship first the one who you're following. You can't follow someone's voice unless you recognize who they are and trust them. It's like my children: if I'm walking with them on the street, they have to recognize that it's Dad's voice talking to them. If a complete stranger says, "Follow me," they won't because they're not tuned to his voice through relationship. But if I say to my little girl, "Come and follow Dad," she recognizes that voice through who I am to her. So that's that sheep gate.

Robyn Kassas: I think the sheep gate, they do hear but they don't follow. Fish follow and they have a better sense through the inner ear. I believe that each and every one of us need to operate inwardly rather than outwardly.

Nathan Kassas: It's so true, Dr. Robyn. I was talking to someone previously and they were saying with the other episode about how we talked about assignment before healing, healing needs to come before assignment. They were saying this is the biggest key.

They went straight from getting saved into being on a team at church and serving, and they have not really even contemplated why they keep going through these cycles over and over in their Christian walk with the Lord. Something doesn't seem to break. I was beginning to say to this person, I don't think you've ever experienced real healing. You've experienced band-aid healings, but God is bringing us back to the order at which He has this progression.

The sheep gate establishes the relationship necessary for hearing, but it doesn't teach you how to hear. It brings you to recognize the voice of the one that you're following. But before I can discern what He's saying, I have to become familiar with who is speaking.

That's the sheep gate. But now the Fish Gate is now I have to go beyond just being familiar with who is speaking and I have to realize what He's saying.

Robyn Kassas: In the Fish Gate, He's the provider because the fish was being provided at that gate. As you come to that place, you have to change and start to recognize who He is.

Nathan Kassas: And that will cause you to take in what He's saying. You can't listen—you said hearing and listening are two different things. I'm going to add a little bit of biological science to back up what you've just said, because there is a truth scientifically to that process. This is the problem I find in my own relationship with the Lord: when I don't recognize who's speaking, I stop listening.

Robyn Kassas: There's a principle to that, and as we go along, I'd like to share along that to do with the fine-tuning and the rough-tuning as a frequency that we have. We have an antenna that we put up in the spirit, but we have to learn to fine-tune and not just always have the rough tunes, because you then have to work out who's speaking.

Nathan Kassas: This is it. So the goal is not merely to hear spiritual or supernatural activity, it's to hear Jesus.

Robyn Kassas: You have to fine-tune. Fine-tune means you have to fine-tune to inward. And so that's where the spiritual ear is.