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 back to First Love. My name is Dr. Nathan Kassas, and I'm sitting with the wonderful Dr. Robyn Kassas. Dr. Robyn, how are you?

It's been a busy week once again. God's been doing big things, and so we want to jump straight into our conversation tonight. We've been going over the Yada Times, Dr. Robyn's powerful teaching series from a course that she has taught in communion with God, as well as adding her own revelations.

We've walked through four steps of coming to know God in the Yada way, the intimate way, over the last four weeks. We've reached that place, Dr. Robyn, where we've come to the final step, which is Union. We want to throw it over to you straight away to take us and deep dive us into this amazing part that we need to come to with Christ, a union.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: None of these are formulas, but they are principles and keys that can unlock things. They're not die-hard things, but when you go through these different stages, you come to a place of union, especially step number five. That's where you speak, feel, and act with the Lord's reaction.

Normally when I speak of reaction, I'm usually saying reactions are negative. We say, "Don't react," or "manifest with emotion." We would always turn to the opposite, which would be response. We should respond rather than react. But we're not talking about this type of reaction. We're talking about a reaction that brings union rather than a response, which is two people talking or two situations happening.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I need to absorb that gem. Sometimes we move past reaction, and we even get to that higher level of response. But there's an even higher level than more than just response?

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's a reaction like a married couple that has been together for 40 to 60 years. They know what each other thinks; they know what each other would say and feel because they've been in union with each other for so long. That's what union is all about. You think alike and you act alike. That's where you see one another, and you can see that oneness there. That union is there.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I want to throw a little scripture in here to bring some scriptural support. We center around this scripture all the time in our Abiding in Christ course that you taught. This is John 17:21 and 23: "That they all may be one, as You, Father, are in Me, and I in You; that they also may be one in Us."

Jesus goes on to say, "I do nothing except what I see my Father do." So we're talking about this state of union where there is a separateness, but there's not an independence.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: It's like we'd be sitting together, and I would be thinking the same thing as the Lord's thinking. We would be acting the same way and saying the same thing, not having to think about what I should say. Because we're in union, it's a part of me as well as Him.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: As I was listening back to the week prior about silence being sacred, the Lord really started to impress on my heart as we were preparing for this part that union is not two becoming one by agreement; it's two becoming one by expression. I believe that a lot of believers, especially those that have been walking with the Lord for a long time, fall into this wrong understanding that just because we're in agreement means we're one.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Sometimes people go to the point where they think that God will agree with them. But it's us being in union with Him that brings Him into union with us so we can become one mind, one heart, and one spirit.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I was just being challenged by the Holy Spirit even as we began this conversation because even in my response, my personality hasn't changed to become like His yet. Union is an exchange of personalities. A lot of Christians are still seeking transformation with our personality. But if I abide in Him and He abides in me, and there's an exchange, a union, an interchange as you would say in Abiding in Christ, then I'm becoming less like me every day and more like Him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: This principle really applies by being with Jesus continually. Then you will begin to take on His reactions. We will respond the same way that He does to the situation. It will not be an effort; it'll be a pouring out.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We are still sometimes in the effort of that transactional change. We are trying to "do the doing." You need to realize that if you're doing the doing, you have not come to the place where you're exchanging you for Him.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We will respond the same way in the situation. We will, in a sense, become Him. It's not that we are gods, but as we allow Christ in us to come forth, I'm available for His ability to pour through me and express Himself through me as I take the step back and He comes forward in those rivers of living water.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I want to throw a quick scientific fact in there before we go to our first break. I talk about the mirror neuron system and spiritual reflection. Science has discovered that we are biologically wired for imitation through mirror neurons, specifically brain cells that fire both when we act and when we observe the same action performed by another.

These neurons are the biological mechanism of empathy and imitation, allowing us to feel what others feel. Just like we have a biological, natural mirror neuron system, we also have a spiritual mirror neuron system where I begin to feel like He feels. I begin to love like He loves and think like He thinks.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We actually become the radiance of His glory and the reflection of His beauty. Why? Because we are joined to Him. We will be fused to Him. We become one with Him, and He becomes one with us. The tea water and the tea bag.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: All right, we're going to go for a quick break, and we'll be back to keep discussing this powerful union that we have with Him and becoming one with Him. We'll be back.

Guest (Male): You're listening to First Love with Dr. Robyn and Dr. Nathan Kassas. The story isn't finished yet, and neither is what Jesus wants to reveal to your heart today. Let's jump back in and pick up right where we left off.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: Dr. Robyn, we're coming back in to talk about this important part of becoming one with Jesus Christ and His Spirit: union. Before the break, we were talking about the interchange of personality. When I become like Him, I become less like myself every day. Something in me is given away, and something from Him is received into me.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: When He's joined to us, He is fused to us. You used the tea water, so I'll explain that. If you took a tea bag and you put it in water, that water changes from being just hot water once you put the tea bag into it. It starts to fuse the water, and the water changes.

The water becomes tea water, and so it's now got a different purpose and has a different identification. That's really what the tea water is all about. It's like God fusing His character to us. He fuses His character and His character traits as well, and we take them on. Then He's able to flow through us effortlessly because we are one.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: The goal of intimacy with God is actually not dependency on God. I want you to think about that statement. It's not dependency on God, but it's actually synchronization.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: I would say it's a reliance on God.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: When we get dependent on God, we can develop what I would call as a psychologist, like we have in human relationships, this mindset of codependency upon God. This is very dangerous because the Lord wants you totally dependent on Him, but He wants you totally able to think for yourself.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: This is not codependency when you make the choice to rest back and let Christ come forward—His ability, His character, and even His gifts and His fruit. This is not a separation. This is not my gifts and I'm using them for God. It's His gifts pouring through me. There's the union, there's the fusion, and there's the working: one inside the other. He's fused to me, and I'm fused to Him.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: In psychology, codependency is the state of emotional fusion where one loses identity in the other. It's a relationship rooted in fear and validation. If you are living a codependent relationship on God, you would label that a holy thing because you have to hear God say you're accepted. You're thinking it's okay because you're putting all your trust in God, but it's actually not trust. It's led by fear and the need to be consistently validated.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: If you're continually in His presence, you're not going to need to be validated all the time because you'll feel it and you will feel the spontaneous flow of Him moving through you. There won't be two works going at once here; there will be the work of the Lord. Therefore, it's Christ in us, the hope of glory. When Christ is in us and we're in Him, the hope of glory is there for the situation, whatever it may be.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: I see the difference because even in my own walk with the Lord, I have realized where I have moved in the codependency where there's still me and God. Even me leaning on God for an answer, rather than becoming one with Him and letting Him flow through me as that outpouring.

It's a very slight change, but it's so crucial. When you're codependent, the person you're leaning on becomes the addiction.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: In the body, they say it's a crutch to lean on the Lord so much. But it is not that. It's where we see the level of the expression of Christ in our body.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: We're going to exchange codependency for interdependence. Rather than independence, we're moving to interdependence, which is from a psychological place, a mature attachment style. Interdependence is where connection enhances individuality rather than erasing it, but it also creates a union of exchange of personality. I am interdependent on you, even though I am fully still independent in my own autonomy. I am choosing to lean and to become one.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: Interdependence means something's working inside, whereas independence is something aside from, and dependence is something that you're leaning so heavily on that you have no place in this. We have to allow the effortless flow of the Spirit to go through us spontaneously. Then we will start to identify with the expression of Christ in us.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: It is no longer I who lives, but Christ who lives in me (Galatians 2:20). And the life which I once lived via the flesh, I now live via the Spirit. Union is where you're coming to that place where it's not just intimacy as a separate; you're actually becoming like the person that you behold.

As we behold together the observance of the evidence, we become what we see. If I behold what He's done in my life—the goodness of God, the faithfulness of God, the healing—I can become more like Him, and then I go on that journey where I don't have to fight my own personality anymore.

Dr. Robyn Kassas: We become Him. When we get to this union stage as we grow and grow, we become the expression of Jesus. We're not doing something; we're becoming someone. We're becoming to be with someone and becoming the expression of that person.

Dr. Nathan Kassas: In my biological and functional health, we always learn about markers. Here are three important markers that are a sign that you are about to stop union. Number one: self-preservation over surrender. Whoever needs to seek to save his life, Jesus said, will lose it. But whoever loses his life...