Keion Henderson - Armed and Dangerous

I need to teach you something today: 2nd Corinthians, chapter 10, verse 4. The weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds. May be seated in the presence of the Lord. Tell your neighbor, «I’m armed and dangerous.» Very few people know who you really are; partly their fault, partly yours. Their fault for not getting to know you intimately, your fault for not being real at all times. When I say you’re not being real, I’m not talking about being a fake person; it’s like Shena losing her brother and being hurt. When I call her and say, «How are you?» she says, «Fine.» People don’t know how to minister to you if you’re not vulnerable enough to say you need ministry. If I call you and ask you how you’re doing, and you say «fine,» then I say " okay,» and I move on, you can’t blame me for my lack of ministry because you were not transparent in your reality. So, you need to put some new stuff in your vocabulary. If somebody asks you how you’re doing, be honest. I’m terrified. I know they’re going to tell you, «Don 't claim it.» You can’t claim something you already have; I have the flu, but I can claim it. You don’t have to claim it; you have to be real: «I’m angry, I’m confused, I’m stressed. I’m bewildered; I don’t know what my next move is.» I never thought I’d be 55, still trying to figure out what I’m going to do. I’m frustrated because I have a job that has no growth opportunities. I need more income, but I didn’t prepare myself in my younger years. I didn’t educate myself, and now I’m at a roadblock because they require an education, and my life is too full of responsibilities to go back to school to get it. If you do have the time to go back, you don’t have the money, and you don’t want to get another loan because you 're already overwhelmed. You want to be a nurse, a nurse practitioner, and you want to go back to cosmetology school. But when they tell you how much it’s going to cost, you have to weigh that against the fact that you don’t even have enough money to make it through your current reality. The devil uses all of these things as weapons. So, very few people know you, and to add injury to insult, as a Christian, they really don’t know us. Our Bible teaches us to turn the other cheek, but that’s what the Bible says; that isn 't what your mother said. Your mother said if somebody hits you… I don’t know what kind of house I grew up in, but my sisters and I never lost a fight. It wasn’t because we were tough; we just knew that the fight at home would be worse than the one in the street. We had to come home winners. That meant if all three of us got on top of one person, because in our house, you can’t just fight one of us; you have to fight all of us. Do I have a witness? You fight Danielle, then Keanu, and Keanu here we come! I mean, we’re coming! But very few people know us, because when we get angry, we’re told not to curse. But that’s in your spirit. Ooh- you can look it up. I see it. When Christians get to the doctor and they say, «Do you drink?» you can’t say, «Yeah»; you have to say «on occasions.» You know, yeah, you drink. What 's the occasion? Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday? What 's the occasion? So, we are hiding. We’re hiding in plain sight. Very few people know who we really are, and the person who knows you the least is the person who should know you the most, and that’s yourself. You don’t know you. If you knew you, you could cut yourself off at the pass. If you knew you, you would know what makes you angry, but you just get angry and don’t even know why. You don’t know yourself; you don’t know your buttons. You are not self-aware. So, the world doesn’t know you, and you don’t know you. God knows you, but you don’t talk to Him enough so that He can tell you, «Be angry and sin not.» Then, on top of that, your kindness is taken for weakness, humility is taken for stupidity, and they think that just because you haven’t spoken, it means you don’t know anything. I haven’t said anything because I’m waiting for the opportunity when I can say something that makes sense. Is this word for anybody so far? All right. When I looked at this text, the Lord showed me something I had never seen before. This is one of those verses that all of us can quote together, right? «For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds.» People can be in church for a few weeks and know that one. That 's one of the verses that everybody knows. Well, let me give you the backdrop; let me paint this picture so you can understand what’s happening. At the time Paul wrote this letter to the church at Corinth, Judaizers had come into the church and tried to infiltrate it and dilute the message of Jesus.