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.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Hello, everybody, and welcome to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I have the privilege of co-hosting this broadcast with Dr. Robyn Kassas, who is my mom as well as our senior minister of Times of Refreshing Christian Center. Dr. Robyn, how are you doing today?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Doing quite well. I like the sun.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We're excited for the season of summer. Unfortunately, it's coming to a close, but not yet. If you're listening for the first time and you're saying, "What is First Love and who are these people?" We've been on Monday night on WMCA from 9:00 to 9:30.

But God has expanded us, Dr. Robyn, to be able to host this time slot for the driving home with First Love. We are honored to be coming into your car or coming into your home wherever you're listening from. What is First Love about, Dr. Robyn?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's in the Bible, Revelation. Let's get back to our first love because of certain circumstances in our lives, we have walked away from that relationship. Jesus being our first love. Too many formulas, too many principles, too many different things will pull us away from it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I believe that in this time of where the church is at, God is calling us to come back to our first love with the zeal of first love but with maturity.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yes, we must be more mature. The maturity of last love is what I like to say.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Just to give a quick elevator pitch for those that might be listening for the first time and for those that have followed us—we actually have a bit of a following now—so if you've moved over to listening to us from Monday nights, welcome back. We're so excited to come to you every day and bring a message that's prophetic, personal, real, relevant, and relational.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think we're a podcast with a difference because one of the things in all the years of ministry that I've had and been involved with is to see this freshness about my body and how that is truly the temple of the Holy Spirit.

How God made us and how that comes in with science. You're the one that brings that. I've been teaching for 40 years, and I'm your student when it comes to this. If you share some of that with the people, they'll get a realization of how real Jesus is.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's what we want. To go back to your experience, Dr. Robyn, you've had over 40 years of experience in ministry as a senior minister, as well as a traveling and ordained prophet, and also a missionary to Africa and other places.

You've been to all the continents. I grew up with you on the mission field. You have ministered to heads of state, kings, queens, senators, and statesmen. You've received an award from the United Nations for your contribution to community building in Australia.

It is quite an impressive list, and yet God is giving you this new venture of putting us on radio and coming to people in a personal way to affect their relationship with Jesus Christ. That's what First Love is all about. It's about helping the listener to come back to their first love and build a real relationship with Jesus Christ, going beyond the religious performance and actually coming into a real relationship.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: You also received an award from the United Nations.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Stop it. Just to give a little credentials: I have a Doctorate in Ministry, a Doctorate of Divinity, as well as a Master's in Prophetic Ministry in the Arts. That is something that you have willingly come to New York City, where our church is based, to equip people in learning how to hear the voice of God correctly with maturity as well as with gifting.

My credentials are that I have a Doctorate in Christian Counseling, so I like to bring out a lot of the neuroscience and the psychological truths that accompany the words of Jesus and how they can be played out into our neurochemistry.

Also, I'm in the current process of getting a Doctorate of Functional Medicine, a Doctorate of Naturopathy, and learning how holistic healing and coming back to that original design of how God created our bodies to function.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: The original plan.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: That's it. To give you the elevator pitch, First Love is the broadcast where we combine the scientific, the spiritual, the emotional, the prophetic, and the theological all into one big package of 25 minutes of deep conversation.

What we hope is that if you could just hear one thing out of this broadcast that could help you in your day today in your conversation with the Lord and deepening your relationship, then we've done our job. Isn't that right, Dr. Robyn?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I think so, very much so. I also know that you will understand the love of the Lord.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So important. As you listen with us, whether you're tuning in for the first time or you're a continued listener, we welcome you to join the journey of First Love. We are on Monday to Friday, 5:00 to 5:30. Each time, we're going to speak on something different and we're going to open up the scriptures.

Each broadcast will be different. We might even hear, which I'm really excited about, some testimonies starting with yours, Dr. Robyn, about how God healed you out of a wheelchair and being a paralytic and gave you back your legs. I can't wait for the listeners to hear that.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, we won't do that tonight. We'll actually introduce First Love and talk about that, but I will bring it out sometime.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Maybe someone out there needs to hear it so that they can walk again. As we go into the break, we're going to come back and we're going to start with our series called "The Gates." I'll give a quick overview of what the gates are about and how they can apply to the people listening in their relationship with Jesus. We'll be back.

Guest (Female): Looking for a real relationship with Jesus? Join Dr. Robyn Kassas and Dr. Nathan Kassas every weekday for First Love, where prophetic insight meets real theology. Learn how God's voice activates your mind, body, soul, and spirit, helping you renew your mind, transform your life, and return to the one who loved you first. Catch First Love Monday through Friday, 5:00 to 5:30 PM. Learn more at torcc.org. The one who loved you first is still loving you best.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Welcome back. That was a great break and a great introduction, Dr. Robyn. I don't sound American, and neither do you because we are living in America—we've been here for 17 years—but we're from Australia. You might hear an accent come here or there, but it's slowly weaned away. It's not as thick as it used to be when we first arrived.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And you have Lebanese and Jewish background, and I have Jewish background.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: If there are any Jews out there listening for Jesus, we are Messianic Jews. We believe that Jesus is the Messiah, Yeshua HaMashiach. He is the one coming and has come, and he's coming again. Let's dive into the overview of these gates.

We actually got to share this in our Monday night broadcast, and we're going to give you the first gate as we walk through our listeners. I would encourage people to go and listen if they can to the Monday night broadcast on WMCA or oneplace.com because it really ties in the other parts that we might have to just quickly overview with more detail.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Very intense study.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We're talking about the gates. As I was studying and doing a little research on the geography of Jerusalem and understanding what each gate represents spiritually, physiologically, and even archaeologically, it's an important thing because gates are meant to be walked through.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Not stood at.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes. There's a Psalm that David says: "We have stood at the gates for too long; let us go up into the presence of the Lord." If you understand anything about Old Testament or First Testament culture, gates were where a lot of activity took place. Trade would take place there, commerce, and even fellowship; people would meet at gates.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's like the local shop, the local market.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Because it's where people are conversing. It's where they're crossing different types, different paths. We also see in the Old Testament, as well as the First Testament, when there was some not-so-good activity that happened at gates. The city of Sodom and Gomorrah—the men said, "Bring them out that we may have our way with them," and that was at a gate of the city.

Gates represent a lot in scripture. But to our day here and now and our relationship with the Lord, I believe that the Lord wanted us to talk on this because gates represent an entrance point to a conversation that we need to have with the Lord on our journey of becoming like Christ and getting to know him in a real way and a relational way.

These important gates come from Nehemiah's rebuild in Nehemiah 3. This is after they've gone back after the exile of being in Babylon and Nehemiah's been sent back to rebuild the wall of Jerusalem and the city of Jerusalem. If you go to Nehemiah 3, you'll see the specific gates that have been noted and listed.

There's the Sheep Gate, the Fish Gate, the Horse Gate, the Fountain Gate, and even the Dung Gate. Some of those gates would not be there today, Dr. Robyn, because through conquests and through different empires coming in and doing what they do, they've probably removed some of those gates or even added different gates.

There are some gates in Jerusalem that are present today that aren't in scripture. But even that is a representation of what we do in Christianity. Sometimes we remove the gates that we need to go through to have that relationship with the Lord.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's not just history here. This is leading every time something happened, it had a purpose. It's got to have a purpose, and the purpose is to go through the gates for a conversation. You go through the gate, you're going on a destination, you start talking. But when you're coming up to the gate, you're wanting to go through it. It starts the conversation.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The gate is an entrance point to a conversation. It's where the journey begins. If you stay outside the gate and you just stay as an observer and you don't become a participant—this is what the Lord really wants from us; he wants us to participate in what he's doing, not just observe and not just spectate—walking through that gate, walking through that conversation, having those days where you ask those questions with the Lord and you search.

David said, "Search me, Oh God, and know my heart." You allow God to search within you. What's in this conversation with me? It begins to pull out all of the religion that we've allowed to come into our relationship with God.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And it also leads us to identity, which is so important. As we go through these gates, we will show the identity first of yourself, but also the identity of Christ.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Of Jesus as the fulfillment of all things. That's so important, especially for a Jew like you and me, especially for a Messianic Jew. Jesus has to be the fulfillment of all things. He said, "I didn't come to abolish the law, but I came to fulfill it." That word "fulfill" that he uses in the Greek means to become the reality of it in the flesh. He's literally the reality of it.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Well, that's the introduction. How about we walk through the gate?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The first gate that Nehemiah mentions in his rebuild in Nehemiah 3:1 is: "Then Eliashib the high priest rose up with his brethren the priests and built the Sheep Gate." The first gate that we want to talk about, Dr. Robyn, is the Sheep Gate.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Because this is the beginning of our walk.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The Sheep Gate represents that before you can walk in the man of God, you have to become the lamb of God. What does that mean for the believer today? It means I have to be able to lay down my old life.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's another form; it's a real crucifixion.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The Sheep Gate historically was the gate that all the lambs that were being used in the sacrifices in the temple would go through. They would have them go through this gate on a daily basis because of all the sacrifices that were taking place. This represents a laying down of oneself.

When we come to Christ and we have that salvation moment, our old nature is done away with and God gives us a new nature. But that nature is in its potential until we choose every day to activate that. I always tell people when I counsel them, it's like putting a credit in a bank account. You have the credit in your bank account; it's there.

Its potential is there. But until you take the money out, cash it in, or spend it, the money doesn't become a reality in your life. When Jesus died at the cross and he allowed himself to become that lamb, he laid down the foundation. In 2 Corinthians 5:17, it says: "Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation. Old things have passed away; behold, all things are new."

If we get into the theological argument around this, that's actually a mistranslation because it should be "all things are becoming new." That's a present indicative active verb tense there.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So it's a process. You cannot have it all in one go. You are promised it, but you have to walk through the process.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Which mirrors the first testament when they took the land of Canaan and the Lord said to them, "Bit by bit, I will drive out the wild beasts and the animals, otherwise they would overcome you."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And they would nip at your feet and your heel. You can't hold the land all at one time. We have a big house with acres, and it takes every ounce of strength to keep it going. It's not instantaneous.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The Sheep Gate is really important because some people enter their relationship with the Lord and they get saved and then they start going to church and they start doing and they start serving, but they don't understand why the old life doesn't fade away.

They don't understand why their habits don't change, their emotions aren't changing, why their behavior isn't new behavior with better fruit. It's because until we go through this lamb—we've concentrated on the Lord being the man of God, Jesus the man—before we can be the man, we have to lay down and be that lamb.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: The Lord is a man, but he is also the lamb. He laid down his life. We have to try to understand this. When we first come to Christ, we're to understand so much.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's that "first work of grace" that you always talk about.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: The first work of grace is that you don't even understand God's love. How can we understand the true meaning of the cross? You can't do that. So it's a work of grace that takes place, learning to understand.

Then once we understand salvation, we can then go into the second work of grace that will teach us to understand what's the true meaning of the cross in our lives and the true meaning of the cross with Jesus being crucified.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: A lot of us fall into the trap of thinking that when we get saved, it's all done. We get frustrated when those things that should be done—old habits, old fears, old wounds, old thinking, old emotional responses—are all still there.

Have we been made new? Yes, our nature has been redeemed. But we have to exercise that newness. We have to work it out—work out your salvation with fear and trembling every day. "By reason of use"—this is what the scripture says.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: This is a very important statement: "by reason of use." You can't just say "I've got it" and then not exercise it. It's like you; you've got to exercise your muscles, otherwise they'll atrophy.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It's not that salvation has failed us; it's that we've misunderstood the journey. The journey is about becoming progressively sanctified every day. I become more like Christ every day.

2 Corinthians 3:18: as if looking in a mirror, I behold him with an unveiled face, being transformed from glory to glory. The word "transformed" there is from the Greek *metamorphosis*. It's past tense—being transformed—but it's also present tense. I have been transformed, but I'm being transformed from glory to glory. I can't get into this trap that the enemy tries to put me into.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: What does this trap do to us?

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It creates frustration and hopelessness. Failure.