First Love

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Hello, everybody, and welcome back to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I have the amazing, beautiful, and radiant Dr. Robyn Kassas sitting across from me. Dr. Robyn, how are you doing today?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I am doing fine. What a way for my son to acknowledge me and introduce me. Thank you, son.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: You are all those and much more. It has been an incredible week of First Love. Last week, we actually got to walk through the depth of the Old Gate.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We are going to walk even deeper tonight.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We are going to go so deep. If you thought the Fish Gate, the Sheep Gate, and the pool were deep, oh my Lord, this is on a whole other level. To give a quick recap as to what we walked through last week, what I was so impacted by was the episode especially that really impacted me, Dr. Robyn, which was all about the law and how the law is love. We are coming away from the God that I feared to love to the God that I love to fear.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I was catching up on some of the comments that were being made after it. People were looking at the law in a different light than they have ever looked at it before, not fearing it, not running from it, and not being angry with it. I never saw it from the place of love.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It was so powerful. Especially when Dr. Tony joined us, shout out to Dad, that was incredible to have him on the broadcast. We began to discuss that God did not come because of sin. Jesus did not come because of sin; he came because of love.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That was going to challenge a lot of people because a lot of people came through hellfire and brimstone. Turn or burn, this is the one.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It is still being preached today. It is a starting point, but it is definitely not an ending point.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It cannot be the ending point. It can be a starting point, but it cannot be the result of what comes forward.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I think that ties in with the scripture. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, but it is not the end. You are meant to go on a journey. It is not just meant to be the fear of the Lord. It is the beginning. It keeps you in line, but you are meant to go on a journey to find all that is meant to be added to that journey.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: You can see all the possibilities and all the hidden things in the law that will cause you to go on a journey to explore.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We are going to dive even deeper, as we like to go for swims in this broadcast—quite deep swims. We are going to dive into a topic that is centered around the Old Gate. It ties in how when God brings us back to the ancient truth, he also has to begin to expose the things that have masked the truth and the things that have disconnected us from the law in a good way.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think they are the ones that we have to give away, get rid of.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: There are some things that we have to keep, but there are things that we have to put off. Ephesians 4:22 says, "Put off the old man." It is funny because we are talking about the Old Gate, so does that mean I put off the Old Gate? No. You put off the old man, but you always go back to the Old Gate.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: The old man at the Old Gate would be one that you would need to have a look at to see if we keep these. Do they go beneath what we have on top, or do we get rid of them?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Later on, hopefully during the week, we will come to a point where we provide some important identifiers and markers for people to discern. The Fish Gate was all about adding discernment, so we have got to use that discernment that you so wonderfully walked us through with hearing the voice of the Lord and understanding what real discernment was. That is discerning between your voice, God's voice, and the devil's voice.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Also, God's word, will, and way. Some people just do not know that is the way we do it. We will have no trouble at all if we do God's word. We hear God's word and we know God's will, but we do not resonate with God's way. That is the biggest challenge because it really becomes a challenge for us. We start to question the way.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: To again go back to the reference of scripture that we are pulling from, it was Jeremiah 6:16: "Return to the ancient paths." Another translation says "the ancient way." It is funny how you just said we do not like God's way, because God's way has never changed, Dr. Robyn.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: God's way is true, but God's way brings rest to your soul. Everyone wants rest to their soul, their mind, will, and emotions.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It is not necessarily the conflict of fighting God's word that I might be going through, or fighting even his will. Maybe the real wrestle is with his way. When I can surrender how I think it should happen.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think that is the key thing here because you are going to talk about something to do with thinking. That means we are going to talk about the brain.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It is my favorite subject, the brain and the heart. They are my two favorites.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I have learned through you that our brain has got a language.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It sure does. I can quickly tie in what we were just saying: God's word, will, and way. I think when we surrender the way, which is going to link into where we are going for this broadcast, it removes the "what should happen." I said this in a couple of episodes ago. We talked last week about the predictability factor. The predictability factor is going to work in two ways. This is starting to expose how our brain works before we go into the deep part of schemas, which we will come to.

I am always predicting what could happen out of fear or what should happen out of control.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Do we come to the place where we say not "should happen" or "what would happen"? Do we come to the place with the positiveness and say "what will happen"?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I just literally said this to Karen, my daughter. She said, "I am always moving by what could happen via fear." When I wrote back to her in our little comment thread, I said God wants you to move from what could happen, not even what should happen, but what will happen. For that, you have to move from a schema to a rhema.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: You are going to take us there. We are going to go there, but explain what a schema is in layman's terms, please. I do not have the education like you do. I have a lot biblically, but I do not have all this science and everything that you have. Tell me, is it like I understand that it is like a blueprint?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: A schema is how our brain develops these special neural blueprints, or another word would be stencils. We interpret information through these blueprints because otherwise, our brain has to take in a lot of stimuli—over 30,000 stimuli every second—and it has to all at once process this information.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That would explain why my brain gets so tired sometimes. I have got a reason.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Your brain is constantly working. There are constantly synapses firing. God, in his grace and mercy, knows our frame and pain. He developed these schemas. I am going to spell it: S-C-H-E-M-A-S. Schemas are really a powerful part of the brain and psychology because they help us to process huge amounts of information all at once through repeated patterns. When we come back from the break, I will begin to dive into how these schemas work, both positively and, of course, negatively. God made them to work for us, but when we develop our own way of interpretation, they end up working against us.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We can maybe see the one about against us first.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I would love to. Let us go to a break. We have given you a good little introduction, and we will come back.

Welcome back after that fun intro. That was fun, a great way to begin the week. People will be saying, "What is a schema?" Again, I am just going to clarify. S-C-H-E-M-A, schema, coming from the tying in with the word "schematic," if you want to understand. What is a schema? Let me read out the definition, and then we will go into some scripture where we find this. Schemas reduce processing load by helping the brain categorize experience quickly.

Rather than our brain having to categorize, reference, or file everything afresh every time, if you are a tech nerd listening, this is kind of like a cache system of a browser. It loads a website, it takes a snapshot of the website, and it loads the website when you revisit the same website quickly so that you do not have to reload the website all over again.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That is the greatest filing system I know.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: As an addition to this, they frame mental efficiency, and that becomes spiritually powerful when the right framework is framing.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: You are going to use an example in the scriptures so people can understand what a schema is in the scriptures.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: When that framework frames the correct way, it is powerful in the spirit. It changes lives and transforms hearts, which is what God has designed the brain to do: to work in subjection to the heart. When the brain tries to lead and those formations form wrong, as you would call "stinking thinking," this becomes a model that is centered around fear and control instead of truth and love. They become lies.

The scripture that I would like to really dive deep into is Romans 12:2. We all know this one, but we are going to really dive into the mechanics of it. I am just going to read it with a different kind of paraphrasing because if you could understand what is really going on here in the Greek word, this is from Strong's 4964. This word where Paul is talking about being conformed, he is actually using the word "suschematizo" in Greek. Again, the word "scheme" is coming from this word. What that means is to fashion oneself or, to paraphrase, to create a blueprint of oneself via another blueprint.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Via another blueprint, not the original blueprint. This is what you are saying, aren't you?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Exactly. It is not the original thing that God wanted you to conform your mind to.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I understood the moment you explained that to me.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The scripture here is Romans 12:2. It is very important. It says, "And do not be conformed"—that word there coming from what I said before—"to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." Let me rephrase it according to the schema: "And do not be patterned to this world via its blueprint, but be transformed via the renewing of your mind."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: This is a schema of the world. It is a blueprint of the world. It is a stencil. You know what a stencil does. It goes and there is something there and you fill in all the marks and the little dots and everything to see the thing in the end. When you start, you just see all the outline. Once you start filling it in, it starts to form something.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The power of this, Dr. Robyn, is another way to explain it because this is deep stuff. This is like superimposing a picture on top of a picture. Like you have said, a tracing stencil. Paul is saying do not superimpose worldly thinking on top of spiritual things and think that that is going to change your brain. He is saying your brain cannot superimpose ideas and become new. Those ideas have to die.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: This is some of the old that has to go.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is what we do. We develop schemas. Schemas are internal gates.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So it is in your brain. It is not something you are doing physically.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: This is a neural network and circuitry. If I could draw with my great artist Jonathan, I would get him to draw a big stencil over the top of your brain. Every day you activate that stencil to bring meaning and expectation, to bring desire and result to your actions.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So we do not take it off. That will help people to understand. How do you work through it?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Schemas are important because God developed them to work for us, so we can never remove them. They are things that we construct ourselves through learned experience. We have a personal schema. What is that? That schema is what we think about our appearance, what we think about our personality, and what we think about our own preferences. I have a schema that is tied to Nathan. I do not like seafood; that is my schema. I interpret every meal through that schema. If something tastes like fish, my brain is going to alert me straight away. This does not align with your personal interpretation. That is just a physical example.

Then we have social schemas, where we have unseen roles. If I walk into a restaurant and I see the waiter, I know that the waiter is the waiter. My role is to be served, but my role is also to not create a scene and be loud or obtrusive. That is my internal schema, my internal stencil on how to operate in that social environment, if that makes sense.

What I am saying here is we develop these ways to process all this information at once through schemas.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: This is tied up with a transformed mind. It is another way to come to that place where we understand how the brain is transformed.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The brain is transformed through renewal, not through removal alone. I want to point that out. A lot of people think if I just remove it, it is enough. Get rid of the bad thought, stop thinking that way. That is not what Christ says through Paul the Apostle.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: That is not permanent. It is a good thought, but it is not permanent.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Removal has to always lead to renewal. There can never be "put off" without "putting on." As Jesus said, if you bind that strong man and you take the plunder of his house, but then you do not fill the house up with new furniture—my paraphrase—new things, and you leave that empty space, well, something is going to move in—something seven times worse. Now, you were speaking about this scripture, so go back to it again.

Paul is admonishing us: do not allow worldly schemas, worldly patterns, or worldly blueprints, which are the blueprints of the world, but be transformed. We talked about in the last broadcast that word "transformed" is coming from the Greek word "metamorphosis."