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: So, we're coming back and we're talking about the power of choice with myself, Pastor Nathan Kassas and Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, before the break, we were talking about God's first choice to choose us and how when we grasp this concept, really, really grasp it and believe it, it will change our entire worldview. It'll change our entire journey, our entire life, and our salvation journey because we will stop thinking that we do and we will come into being.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Human being, not a human doing.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yeah. So now I want to kind of flip it into where our part to play is because, again, if we go back to that scripture in Philippians 2:13, it is both God to will and to do. But there's a step in between that.

See, God wills it in you, but you have to choose it. And then God helps you accomplish it, what you choose. And so, again, going back to the science of things, we actually create internal worlds with our choices. And so this actually becomes a change. When we choose different, we create an internal change.

A lot of people are relying on external change to try and help them change their choice. But it will never happen externally first; it has to happen internally. You have to choose different so that the world within you, what's that world? That world is consisting of belief systems, right? Love is a choice; it's not a feeling. I have to choose to love you, and I have to choose to love you every day. If I don't choose to love you, then I won't love you.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: So, my will is involved.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: My will is involved, right. So, God both wills, he gives me his will, he puts the desire in me, divinely directed desire; he gives me that. But until I choose that desire as my own, it cannot collapse from heaven to earth. So, here's the key: your choice is the connection point between heaven and earth. Heaven is at a constant state of potential until someone on earth chooses it.

And again, we have scriptures, and I just want to pull them up because we've got to give it, biblically, about what the Lord is saying here because this is not just prophetic or trying to make something out of nothing. This is actual, the power of scripture coming into play.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's the reality of scripture.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Yes, definitely. Because the reality of scripture, if we get the reality of scripture, we'll actually see the power of it. Okay. So, remember Mark 9:23: all things are possible to him who believes. All things are at a potential possible, but what do you have to do? You have to choose to believe.

Okay, another important scripture here, it says if it is bound in heaven, it's bound on earth, right? But there's a connection point, and I just want to bring this out because whatever you bind on earth, so you have to do it on earth first, then it's bound in heaven. And whatever you loose on earth is loosed in heaven.

Another one here, I call heaven and earth as a witness today against you, that I've set before you life and death, blessing and cursing. Therefore, choose life, Deuteronomy 30, verse 19, that both you and your descendants may live. So, Moses is saying there, heaven and earth are listening to what you choose.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But it's also participation. We get to participate. Most of the time our understanding of God is because we see him as a hard taskmaster, we see him as a boss; we don't see him as someone that we get to participate with.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And this is the key. My choice makes me a co-heir. My choice makes me a partner in the process. I'm not just a robot. Not just a worker. Yeah. And a lot of people want transformation through God choosing it for them, and that makes their transformation robotic. It makes them like a puppet on a string.

And people will settle for being puppets. They would rather God do everything for me, change me. No, there is a "we" in this. It's not just me and it's not just he; it's a "we."

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And if we do it like that, puppet on a string, we're not valuing ourselves at all. Not at all. That's not an "I count me, I count you." No, it's not. See, I have to count myself enough as valuable to the Lord to choose my value. My value is not rejection. My value is not anxiety. I was not wired for fear; I was wired for love. So, unless I choose that, I'm going against my value.

What you were valued for, I want to say that's what you were wired for, and therefore if you go against it, you're going against what you've been made of.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Exactly.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And that's what the fight and the war is because if you just relaxed and went with it, you would find it so easy to come into it.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And again, when we go back to the symbiotic relationship, the scientific, well, not even scientific, I'd say physiological understanding of choice, that internal world is what is going to change my life. It's not the circumstance outside me. What is going to change me? What is going to change my life? It's the choice of change and the change of choice internally. Circumstance does not dictate my life. It's whatever I choose to believe internally and encode into my internal world that I will live. Whatever I think in my heart, Proverbs says, is what will flow out, the issues of life.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And it's our DNA that we are made up of. God's love, God is love, and we are made up of that love. We're made up of that. That's that DNA that you and I carry in us.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Hi everyone, I'm Dr. Nathan Kassas inviting you to Season Casting 2026, October 3rd to 5th. With Dr. Robyn and the talk team, we'll release prophetic insight for the year ahead. Step into the second year of plenty, stake your claim, and connect heaven to your territory. Details at torcc.org. Now back to First Love.

So, Dr. Robyn, before the break, we were talking about love, and you finished with the statement saying that's the DNA, that's God's love in us. And we wanted to throw it over to you because you actually have some important insights about understanding God's love and why we don't understand the fullness of God's love.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Yeah, I think that what the Lord was impressing upon me was we have expectations on each other, on ourselves. Let's say first ourselves, and it's like we come to the Lord and I don't know, maybe we think that we need to know everything, that we should be having all the emotions all at once, that we should have all the faith and all the belief and all the hope.

And that doesn't speak to me about relationship. That speaks to me about something different because relationship is grown. And this is something that I feel that our listeners need to understand, that it has to be grown. I talk to you and I taught on the second work of grace when I first came to the Lord and received him and I responded to his call. I didn't fully understand the cross, you see. I didn't really understand, and one would think why did he have to die? Couldn't it have been done another way? And that's foolish thinking now to think that way.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Very foolish, yeah.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But at the time, a new Christian can feel like that, you see. And so I didn't, because I didn't understand that fully and the power of the cross and the meaning of the cross, it took time. It took time, it did. And so I came to a place where I knew the second work of grace, which was all about the cross and the importance of it, what it means, and the effect of it. And I started to understand then, and I started to open up to a different form of relationship. And that's really what I want to talk about. I want to talk about what our expectations are of ourselves when we first come to Christ.

And sometimes we jump in and we want to pray everything, go really deep, but it takes time. It takes time. And so this is what I believe the Lord is really showing us here, that we have to start the conversation with the Lord on the outside. I'm sorry, what do I mean by the outside? I mean about things that affect us on the outside. That's how you build a relationship. You don't jump into the heavy things straight away, not even in family. You don't, you've got to take your time.

And so I wanted to say that we build from the outside in. We think sometimes we've got to build from the inside out, but with God, we have to acknowledge his creation. What a way to understand the God we serve by looking at how big he made everything and how infinite and how so precise he made everything. And then if we could communicate that, talk about those things, talk about them and talk about the sky and the trees and nature and how it affects us and such like that, then we could start to see our God in a different light. We'd start to see him as the creator. And then if we could do that, then we could move into possibly seeing how he created us.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So that we don't get confused because before the break, we talked about the change comes internally from the internal map. And we talked about it has to be a change on the inside to affect the outside.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Oh, that's further on. I'm definitely talking about the beginning stages, and that is all about our first love, you see. But if you can have a conversation with the Lord about him being the creator and then realize that he created us, you can move from the outside into the inside.

You see, when you meet a total stranger, you don't start talking heavy things with a total stranger. No, you actually, or an acquaintance, you don't give your innermost thoughts. You take time. And now because we're coming to that level where we have to realize that when we first met God, we didn't talk about the things that were outside us to the level that we should have. So we have kind of missed out on building a bond of trust on the outside things, and that's why the outside things are so easily to throw us off course because we don't have that trust with God in the outside level.

Well, yes, I agree with that. But the thing is, once we have to now go back, it's a backward step, not a backward step but a revisiting. Now we have to revisit, and it can feel like a backward step, but we've got to start with what affects us on the outside, what affects God on the outside. Then we can come in slowly into a relationship, a relationship that would take us into talking to him because we're now going from choice to trust. We're going to trust him now to talk about lighter things in us, what makes us feel the way we do, and hope the way we do, and believe the way we do.

And then, you know, we go from there to allowing God to talk to us about his hope and his trust in us and his love for us and his belief in us and his value of us. Wow.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So what you're saying is that when we first come to Christ, there is a level of building trust on the outside things that each believer needs to experience. And when we gloss over that and we dive in for the deep things, not that there's any wrong approach with that. We do want to give God all of ourselves. When we get that enthusiasm and we first give him our heart, we want to just jump straight in and give him all our heart and all our thoughts. But...

Dr. Robyn Kassas: But that's not, that's a bit impetuous. And I'm not telling people they're being impetuous, but that's an impetuous move because we can't maintain it until something happens and works deeper in us.

So this is yada times; this is what's known as yada times. I teach that in my courses, and when you go to the second stage, you're starting to build this relationship and you're starting to get deeper. The first layer is outside. Second layer is when you come in past into the inside and you start to talk to your Lord and Savior and your creator about you.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And Dr. Robyn, this is actually backed up in one of the most famous psalms quoted. We talk about let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight, Psalm 19:14. But if we go to the beginning of that psalm, the psalmist begins with the heavens declare the glory of God. So he's beginning in an outward perspective, looking outside of himself to converse and communicate with God on what is outside him. And then by the end of the psalm, he's in that internal map saying now I trust you enough to say, let the words of my mouth and the meditations of my heart be acceptable in your sight.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And so if we think about that, just go back to the psalms and when there's a communication going on between David and God, he's always pointing out his creation. And that reminds David of who God is and that the circumstances cannot overtake only what God has ordained.

When we come to that place and we enter into that second stage where we start to let our words and our meditation be on God, and we then start to tell him what we are made up of, what we feel we're made up of. And then the next stage is he starts to tell us his hopes and dreams and loves and promises and everything.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: So what you're saying is First Love is the beginning step, but mature love is the end step, which we said at the beginning of this program. So mature love requires us going back, not pedaling back but revisiting, talking to the Lord about those outside things as well as the "I want to talk to you about this part of my innermost thought and being." It's a revisiting. Some of us have gloss over talking to the Lord about the outside things, and that's why our love is incomplete.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: And so yes, I totally agree with that. And so some of us that are coming to Christ, if they could do it that way, they might find it easier in their walk. Some people have to revisit and others could come into that understanding and the revealing of God the creator working from that place to the inside. And then let the Lord speak back once you've spoken about you and your lack of trust and I can't believe all the time and this and that, the different things. And then the Lord starts to comfort you by saying I've put within you these things and starts to hear what he wants to say to you. It's very important to do the yada times; it really is.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: And so to back this up psychologically, I just want to bring a truth that when we do talk about the things that are outside of us and we give that a...