It’s time to kill some of our categories.

So I don't know about you, but I hate personality tests.

I think they're useful for certain people. It's just that

I can never remember the results of my test.

And I also think.

Something about the nature of a personality test seems off

to me because depending on what mood you catch me in,

I will answer the questions very differently. Even depending on

what five-minute window you catch me in, I have, I

don't know if I should admit this, multiple personalities. I

wish you would look at me like you don't. I

will follow you home and watch how you act when

you're not in church. We will find out that you

can be one person in one context and another person

in another context and Yet our minds are always trying

to find ways to categorize life as we're experiencing life.

And it's a good thing that our minds are wired

this way. It's really a good thing because too many

things are happening to us all the time for us

to process all of them on an individual basis. So

what your brain does is in an attempt to help

you from blowing up is to group different stimuli according

to past experiences through the.

Power of association.

Your brain is always looking for a way to categorize experience.

And so your mind is trying to judge at any

given moment whether a certain environment is safe or dangerous,

positive or negative. And a lot of times this is

happening even at a subconscious level. Sometimes you don't even

know why you don't like somebody that you just met.

You haven't even had a real interaction with them yet,

but the way their nose looks is just like your ex-husband.

And there's no chance that somebody with.

That nose could have a good heart. Say amen.

Some people annoy you before you even know them just

because they remind you of Bob. And maybe they're not

a bad person like Bob was, but they kind of

talk like Bob and walk like Bob. And now you

hate them and you hadn't even gotten to know them

because you've categorized them according to an association. Yet I

have found that our associations are not always accurate and

our categories are not always correct. I think one of

the first things that God does in our lives when

he comes in through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit

is to challenge our categories. You see this through the

New Testament that after Jesus was resurrected from the dead,

various disputes broke out amongst those who claimed to be

his disciples regarding the nature.

Of true faith.

And it was that the Jewish people could not accept

this infusion of Gentiles because to have a Gentile worshiping

in a Jewish context did not fit their category of righteousness.

So we've got to kick them out because they don't

fit our category. Usually when something comes into your life

and you have no pre-existing category for it, you dismiss

it by calling it weird.

I don't like that song. Why? It's weird.

You find out sometimes that some of the things that

you call weird in one stage of your life or that.

You call bad at one stage.

Of your life or that you call failure in one

stage of your life, later you will learn to put

it in a completely different category Because one of the

things that Christ does when he comes into our lives

is to change our categories.

Paul knew this.

This is why he said, after rising to the top

of the religious ranks of his day, that what I

used to count gain, I now.

Count as loss. What I thought mattered didn't matter.

As much as what really matters, but it took some

time for me to mature to the point where I

could challenge my categories. Some of the things that we

will pray away in one season will be our very

praise reports in the next because we will realize that

unless we had been afflicted, we could not have been

humbled to the point to really know the presence and

power of God in an intimate and real way. So

God challenges our categories. This is why they killed Jesus,

by the way, because they could not find a category

for who he was, how he taught, or the miracles

that he performed. He did not come from their rabbinical schools.

He was the carpenter's son. The carpenter's son certainly could

not be the Christ. They could not wrap their minds

around the fact that the Savior of the world could

be born in the backwoods of Bethlehem.

It did not fit their category.

They could not understand why he didn't wash his hands

like he was supposed to wash his hands. They couldn't

understand why he would be comfortable eating with sinners and

rebuke the religious elite. They could not understand why Jesus would,

in many ways and in many situations, confront their religious

tradition Opposing the very values that they held so dear.

So what did they do?

They crucified him because they could not categorize him. A

lot of times people will reject you because they can't

find a box to put you in because you represent.

Watch this.

You represent a category killing God. Your God will not

be limited to one economic background, to one race. Your

God will not be limited to one way of thinking.

Your God will not be limited to one personality type.

And you see this theology entering through the apostle Paul

in the book of Galatians, the third chapter, where he

says in Christ, there's no longer Jew nor Gentile. Those

old categories don't exist anymore. I don't find my people

anymore according to skin color. I don't find my people

anymore according to gender. There's no longer male nor female,

slave nor free. It's no longer my position in a

certain society that defines my worth.

In Christ, we are one.

The categories that were existent before he came have now

been obliterated by one who is greater. He's a category killer.

He's greater than all. His name is above all names.

I wish you'd shout in the back of Valentine's Let

the weak say, I am strong. Let the poor say,

I am rich.

I love when people ask me, what kind of church

is Elevation?

I say, do you have a while?

Because I can't give you the categories that you would

normally typify a church with.

I can't tell you we're a white church.

I can't tell you we're a black church. I can't

tell you we're a traditional church. I can't tell you

we're a non-traditional church. Well, we're pretty non-traditional. I probably

can't tell you that. Somebody will ask me a question like,

is it a spirit-filled church? You know, Christians have all

these little labels that we like to put to limit

a church according to what we've experienced so that we

don't have to open our minds to the fact that

God might not exist within our denominational structures, but he

might be bigger than.

All of them.

Where are the Baptists at? You got to shout. Where

are the Methodists at? You got to shout. We got

to shout together. We're in this thing together. I'm preaching

like it's my last chance.

You know. I don't know. You never know. Are you

a Spirit-filled church? I said, well, some of us are. Sometimes.

Depends on what day.

And since they could not categorize Jesus, they crucified him.

Since he did not fit their concept of who the

Christ would be, They missed the opportunity to be impacted

by his presence. He came to his own, and his

own received him not because he didn't look like them.

He didn't do what they expected him to do. Elijah

broke my heart the other day when he said to me, Daddy,

I just don't like rock and roll music. My first

thought was, Holly, I need a paternity test. This is

not my child. This cannot be my child. But then

I realized it isn't that my son doesn't like rock

and roll music. That's impossible. That's impossible. He's highly intelligent.

He has good taste. He just hasn't heard the right

rock and roll music yet. So I gave him a

tutorial and Jimi Hendrix taught a class. And Kurt Cobain

taught a class. All these dead instructors walked into the

room and taught my child to love.

Rock and roll.

It's not that you don't love the music.

You just haven't heard the right stuff yet.

And for all of you who say, I'm not a

religious person, I get it. For all of you who say,

I'm not a church person, I get it. But it

might not be that you don't like God. It might

be that you just haven't seen the real thing yet.

Because when you really see grace incarnate, when you really

see the church alive, forcefully advancing with love and mercy

as our banners, you can't help but bob your head.

I like this stuff. It's the real thing.

Jesus came to show us what God was really like,

and he changed the categories.

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