First Love

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Well, Dr. Robyn, it is Friday and we are ready for the weekend, a weekend of dreaming.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Wow, yes, it’s been a long week this week because we really went in there hard this week.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We sure did. Hello everybody, I am Dr. Nathan Kassas and I have the pleasure of sitting with the prophetic, the radiant—what’s another one I can add?—the wise.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yeah, I like the word wise.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And the tempered Dr. Robyn Kassas. How are you doing, Dr. Robyn? It’s a pleasure to do this with you. It really is, to just sit on here and talk all things Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think I feel really good today. I’ve come to understand something about my mind that I didn’t fully understand. I’m not going to get caught up in that word schema. I’m not.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Schema. I like what you keep bringing us back to: blueprint.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It helps me a lot, the blueprint. Is it my blueprint? No, it’s the Lord’s blueprint. I love that because I can see His hand and I can see His image in it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And so powerful, Dr. Robyn, because now we’ve come into the good part, which is the rhema.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So we get rid of all the other?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is an ancient that can’t be done away with. This is something that’s been there all along. It’s never changed; it’s unchanging forevermore.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So we walk through that ancient door or ancient gate.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Uncovering the rhema of what God said again. I get a picture of so many layers on top of something, like an onion, peeling back all the layers and saying, "Okay, Lord, this is the rhema."

I want to pull us into an important scripture: Romans 10:17. It’s a very well-known scripture, but we’re adding some dimension to the scriptures that have been really known but not known. We’re not adding to; we’re opening up.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: There we go. We’re opening up.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. Now, if you hear that, you think word, capital W, meaning Bible. But that’s not what Paul is saying. It’s actually a little w, and the Greek word there is rhema. Rhema means spoken word, utterance.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: God speaking.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is what Jesus was pertaining to when He said without the Spirit, the law kills. I can have God’s written word, but unless I have the spirit of how that comes alive through His spoken word in my life every day, then it will be the thing that kills me because I’ll never be able to obtain it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And you won’t be able to digest it. We need to digest. Otherwise, you will get a stomachache, let me tell you.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: To bring the comparison in a good way, the schema produces the prediction, but rhema always produces faith.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And we need faith. Rhema, you see? We need a rhema because then we can become dreamers again.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I want to bring out this important example. Joseph is our model today, moving from Jacob to his son Joseph. What happens here is that Joseph dreams, but in the beginning, he’s a dreamer that schemes.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He has to learn how God handles dreams.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: At first he was a dreamer that spoke out too much. He spoke out the way that he thought it was going to happen.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: He interpreted it wrong.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: In the end, if I can make a new word, he becomes a dreamer that rhemes instead of schemes. I don’t know if that’s a word, but I want to make it a word because I need to be a dreamer that rhemes on a rhema and not scheme.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: How about if we make it the word beams? A dreamer that beams on a rhema instead of a dreamer that schemes on a schema.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Joseph has to go through this transition of being a schemer because God can’t really give him dreams until he leaves that identity. Would you say that is correct?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That’s exactly it. New identity.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I notice something with Joseph in the story of Genesis. He has one dream before he goes into slavery, but you don’t hear about him having any dreams in Potiphar’s house. You don’t hear about him having any other dreams until he’s in prison later on. Isn’t that crazy?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It is, because it was through lies that he was put in prison. But that set him up for dreaming.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: What I’m trying to point to is how that scheming suppressed the dreaming. Not until he gets to the place where his scheming is being stripped away does God begin to give him dreams again and show him things of the future.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Because God shows him more than just where he was. He showed him what He’s doing.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I want to bring out a key statement here. We like to throw in these powerful key statements; they’re like little medications, little gems. The first battle is often not the behavior we can see, but the interpretation that made the behavior feel inevitable. That means the real battle is not with the actual behavior.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And again, it’s been said: the enemy does not need to write your future if he can keep your nervous system rehearsing your past. That’s what happened with him. He was panicking. It was his nervous system. He was rehearsing his past.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I'd like to throw another one in here, very important: heaven will not negotiate with the name your wound gave you. Heaven only moves on the name that He gave you. If He called you Israel, you’re not going to negotiate like Jacob with heaven through the name Jacob. You’ve got to change your name.

You’ve got to move from schemer to dreamer. You can only do that via God’s rhema.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: The evidence gathered by a wounded lens can still testify for a lie. He did not see through the right eyes. His eyes were wounded, and he got a blueprint in his mind of how it was going to be done, even with the baker and the butcher.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So here, let’s bring in another powerful statement to classify and categorize what a rhema sounds like. If my rhema makes me less like Jesus, it is not the voice of Jesus.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So we’re talking about locating here. "I heard God tell me to do that and lie about it because I’m doing a good thing." That’s scheming. That’s not rhema.

But as we speak these things out, we’re locating and we’re recognizing. We say, "How can we not do this?" Well, here are some things to recognize, ways to recognize.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Another one here: scheming predicts from experience, but rhema only calls you to respond to what God has already spoken. Rhema is using God’s experience, God’s history, not your history.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: His history. It’s all about God’s story.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We’ll take a break and we’ll come back. Let that gel and land in your spirit. His history is His story.

We are back and we’re diving into these markers and these identifiers of what is a rhema, what is scheming, and what is a schemer. I think that’s really powerful for someone listening. It’s helping me to discern the voice of the Lord.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: All of us, it is. We want to move from scheming to dreamer. We can only do that through God’s rhema. That’s the way it is.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I think here I need to point out it’s very important because we talk about when that schemer becomes a scheme with Saul. But the Lord gave me this saying: with Abraham, fear became a plan that gave birth to a man.

When fear becomes a plan, that plan can give birth to an illegitimate man. You always rhyme these things right on time.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Jesus is the king of all, so rhyme them on time.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Another important identifier that helps us to understand what a rhema is: rhema begins with faith. We know that. But I want to point out Matthew 4:4. Rhema interrupts appetite.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, it very much does.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I want to give this scripture to back up what I’m saying. Jesus said in Matthew 4:4, "Man shall not live on bread alone, but by every word, rhema, that comes from God."

He’s experiencing a real physiological hunger there. His need is not imaginary, but yet His rhema is able to overpower His appetite.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And it also dealt with the enemy. When you have rhema, you can quote back that rhema to the devil. It’s warfare. It will not only tell him what’s going on, it’ll remind you of what’s going on.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Rhema becomes a weapon, the sword of the Spirit, which is the double-edged blade. Logos on one side, rhema on the other. So the rhema of God is pictured as the sword of the Spirit, sharper than any two-edged sword. God’s word will always expose what is operating beneath the surface of behavior.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Beneath is a good word. It goes beyond old to ancient.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Rhema doesn’t merely confront the scheme that we see; God’s truth exposes the schemer underneath the scheme.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: The old gate is where God’s first word becomes louder than your learned interpretation. We have to go through that gate because it’s louder. It’s God’s first word, and it drowns out your learned interpretation. God’s rhema will drown out your learned interpretation.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I love the connection. I love that when we choose to live via that rhema, connecting it with dreams, when we go to sleep, that neural pruning takes place and we can live in new mercies.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Every day. As we wake up, because we’ve disconnected from the schema, our brain is washed over with the word.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I’m going to share about that when we come to the fountain gate because that’s really important about the neural pruning. But I’m holding off for that. It’s really coming to me now, the importance of realizing that every day I can step into the dream that God has for me because I’m letting go of yesterday’s scheme.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And washing away all these mindsets, washing away all these thoughts of failure, washing away the blueprint that was never God’s. All of it renewed. You talk about taking away something. No, this washes away and renews your mind with a new blueprint, which is God’s blueprint.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Christ in me, the hope of glory. That’s the one I want. What’s really powerful that I’m seeing here too is that we always scheme to get the future quickly because of fear.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We scheme to get rid of the past fast.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So true. I scheme to get rid of my past fast, and I scheme to get rid of my present quick. Even my future. But here’s the key: we’re afraid of the future.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Very much so. We really fear the future that we want. That’s why we do it quick.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We scheme, but really our scheming is often an attempt to control the future that we’re afraid of. I want a future, but I’m really afraid of it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It’s the fear of the unknown. It’s not even the future. It’s the fear of the unknown in my future. That’s what it really is.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Rhema does another important thing to interrupt the scheme and the schemer: it overrides our experience. We just came out of the fish gate, and this is when Peter literally says, "I’ve toiled all night. We’ve been fishing all night." Because Jesus said it, now it’s activated. Not because Peter did it, but because Jesus said it.

When Jesus says it, it’s rhema and heaven moves and activates on it. You could toil all night, you could scheme and do all you want for twelve hours straight, but until Jesus speaks it, nothing will move.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And you won’t understand it. Peter didn’t understand putting his net on the other side. He could say, "Well, if we cast it again, then we’ll catch nothing." That’s what his experience was telling him. He had to be obedient to the rhema to see his dream.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Something here we need to bring out about a rhema: rhema is not absolute. It is fluid. There’s ability for adaptation.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It moves like the other word you use: neuroplasticity. Plasticity, it’s got plastic elements. When you’re scheming, it’s absolute. It’s always either/or.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It’s very rigid. Rhema can introduce a possibility that our schemes or schema could never predict because our scheming only knows what’s already happened.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: As I said before, it’s very rigid. It’s not flexible. God’s rhema is flexible for you because God is not staunch. It’s not His nature. Because He is so big and He is so artistic, creative, omnipresent, omnipotent, omniscient—not rigid. Everywhere at all times.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I love it. That really helps me to locate. My scheming is absolute. It tells me either/or. It’s black or it’s white. There is no room for growth, room for movement.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: If there’s no room for movement, Holy Spirit is movement and creativity. There’s no room for excitement, no room for surprise, no room to get excited.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Rhema is the opposite. Rhema is exciting, it’s surprising, it grows as it goes. It doesn’t shock you; it surprises you. I’ve seen you really bring this into our family when we are moving in the rhema and moving in the plans of God for our day. Our plans grow. They’re not static; they’re not stagnant. One thing leads to another, which leads to another, and multiple lives are affected. The scheming only helps me.