BROKEN? OR CRUSHED?

Howdy!

How has the week been so far? 

Welcome to today's gist.  

I was reading Matthew 21 a couple of days ago and verse 44 in the Amplified version says "And he who falls on this Stone will be broken to pieces; but he on whom it falls will be crushed.”

When I read this it got me thinking, "why would the person who falls on the Stone get broken while the person the Stone falls on be crushed?" In fact, doesn't broken and crushed both allude to the fact that the person is no longer in prime condition? If you have a plate, whether it breaks or it's crushed, the end point is that it becomes unusable. 

Then I went to check the meanings of both words. The Merriam Webster Dictionary defines the term broken as "being separated into parts or pieces by being hit, damaged, etc." The same dictionary defines crush, the transitive verb from which crushed is derived from to mean "to squeeze or force by pressure so as to alter or destroy structure." 

When I read these and other definitions of the terms, one thing stood out to me as the distinction between something that is broken and something that is crushed: there's hope to repair something broken, but when something is crushed, it cannot be repaired. If you break the glass of your wristwatch, it can be repaired and another glass fixed, but if your wristwatch falls on the road and is crushed by a car, nothing can be done to fix it. 

Allowing yourself to be broken by the Stone means coming to Jesus, submitting yourself to Him and asking Him to reshape you into a better version of yourself. 

So when Jesus is telling you to fall on Him and be broken, He's essentially saying "come, let me fix you, let me make you better. You can be more than what you are now, come let me rid you of those things that are stopping you from being who you should be." You'd of course have to become damaged because He will first remove those things that are not supposed to be in you and when He's repairing and remolding you, He will make you the better for haven been broken. 

But if you refuse to be broken by the Stone, He will fall on you and crush you! If you refuse to come to God for remolding and restructuring, a time will come when the chance for remolding will be lost and all that will be left is judgment. In that time, Jesus won't be coming to change, He will coming with judgment for those who have refused to be broken. 

The way I see it, there's only two options to choose from; to allow Jesus break you, in which case there's definitely redemption for you, or to put yourself up for being crushed, in which case redemption is no longer possible. You cannot avoid both; to neglect the first option is to automatically choose the second, there's no fence or in between! 

I hope this encourages you to allow yourself be broken by Jesus. 

See you next week!

Love,

Achenyo.