The Word

By Matty B. Duran

The Word of God came into my life when I was 20. I never had read the Bible before. We got our very first bible from the Scudellari family who took us into their home in Anaheim.

The Word is living and powerful and sharper than any two- edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit and joint and marrow. (Hebrews 4:12) It is called the Sword of the Spirit. (Ephesians 6:17) The Word is alive and powerful, I can attest to that.

The bible isn’t a book it is the words spoken from God’s mouth to our heart. It is God heart to our souls. The Word spoke to me when no one else could. When people could not talk to me, when I wasn’t able to listen to anyone, when the suffering in me was about to murder me, the Word spoke to me, and comforted me, breathed life into me. The Word, the Bible, came to me, as real as any person. The Holy Spirit came to me, and sat with me, and spoke to me. When I was rejected and ostracized when I didn’t matter to anyone, not even myself. When there were wounds so deep inside me, when I was hemorrhaging, and I cut myself just to survive, the cutting was survival don’t you see. God saw, God knew why I was really cutting myself not to call demons, but to get them out of me, the demon of loneliness, God I was so alone, so invisible, so broken, my heart disfigured and angry.

He came to me on the concrete benches at school, when my heart called out to God, “Lord, smile down upon me, approve of what I do.”

I invited God, I invited Him to show me Himself, to teach me, I reached to touch the sun, and the stars, without realizing that is what I was really doing.

That was an act of love, looking at me, the little insignificant bug I thought I was, that was mercy, there was the Cross. The Word was there, the Book that saints had died for over the years, were burned at the stake for, the Book people hid in concentration camps, the book that was smuggled into countries, the words that gave life, not just to me, it was life, I was dying, I wouldn’t have lived past my 20th birthday if it weren’t for the Word, the Holy Spirit revealing Himself.

The Word loved me, Jesus is the Word, the Word is Jesus, He is in His Word, words they are not words, it is God’s power, God’s personality, God’s thoughts, God’s love, not dead words on a page, like everyone else’s.

The Word was my companion at night, I would sleep with the Word snuggled beside me, memorized the words of life, for hours, for days, for weeks, for years, making it a part of me, it was a part of me like my skin, my hair, my blood, the Word is like blood in me, and oxygen. Reciting the words in the Bible, Psalm 22, Psalm 23, Psalm 91, Psalm 139, Romans 8, Romans 6, Romans 7, Colossians, Ephesians, Philippians, the Gospel of John, Isaiah 53, 54, all of the epistles of Paul, the four Gospels, the Old and New Testament. The entire books of all these putting the words into my heart as food, as water, it kept me alive, Jesus kept me alive. I have devoured bibles I have marked up so many bibles, for memorization, for treasure, for hope, for joy, to remind me that nothing can destroy me, to remind me that Jesus loves me. Romans 8 kept me and Emma alive when Gary crushed my soul like an empty beer can. When men crushed me without regard, it was The Word that clung to me that I clung to, because it was God. The Word was a constant conversation inside me, reciting scriptures, not just words, euphoria runs through me, and I am lifted beyond, doing such common things like scrubbing my kitchen floors on my knees, they are the words of a King, of royalty, of creation, it is strength.

Wandering through the valleys in my life, when Emma hit me, punched me, scratched and bit me, it is Jesus who kept me alive, and I couldn’t give up, I couldn’t hurt Emma, even though her illness hated me.

I kiss the Word, I love the Word, I sleep beside the Word, reciting the Words of God before I slip into sleep. The Word has raised me. I sit cross legged reading the Word. I am comfortable with the Word, sitting in the bathtub, sitting outside in nature, God is with me, I used to love nature, even when I wanted to kill myself there was something that connected me, I now know it was God connecting me to His creation, to say to me, “you belong here, I’ll prove it to you.”

My heart belonged to the Word, when You said,

“You know my sitting down and my rising up, you understand my thought afar off, You comprehend my path and my lying down and are acquainted with all of my ways.” (Psalm 139: 2-3)

You are intimate with me, and I can be intimate with You, so I hold the bible close to my chest, and hug it, and sleep with it against my heart, beside my face, and I kiss the Word, because You are the Word, the Word is part of You, so it is part of me.

It is deeper than my dying, than my suffering, and You lift me out of the deep pit I have lived in. It battles my demons, I never feel lonely reading and reciting the Word, when I read poetry, Octavio Paz, and Existentialist writers Albert Camus and Jean Paul-Sartre, God I felt alone, when they wrote “You are alone in the universe.” They were right, in their universe I was empty and devoid of life, but in God’s my heart was overflowing, I was alive, and not dead.

The Word, “He who dwells in the secret place of the Most High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty.” Right there, under the shadow of the Almighty, God put me underneath His chin, and put His God arms around me, those Fatherly arms, and the “fea” is gone. The ugly is gone, the ugly that scratches inside me wanting me to cut myself, the vast emptiness that is my soul without God.

I took the Word everywhere on my daily walks to grab a Diet Pepsi with Emma at the 7-11. I put it on top of her stroller and I would read and walk. I forgot I was a poor single mother no one loved. I forgot that men didn’t love me. It just didn’t matter. I was swept up into the Word.

Jesus is right here, when I read the Word, right here. When You said,

“Who shall separate me from the love of Christ, shall tribulation or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword, as it is written we are killed all day long we are accounted as sheep for the slaughter, yet in all these things we are more than conquerors through Him who loves us, for I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing shall be able to separate us from the love of Christ which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” (Romans 8:35-39)

This is carved into me, these words, I wrote them, like a piece of my own conversation, I own it I belong to it, and belong to the One who wrote it. I don’t know how I ever survived without the Words of the Bible, the Word that now lives inside me, and can never not be a part me, more than any man I ever loved, the Word is an organ inside me, the flesh I wear, my tears, and laughter. This is Jesus dancing inside the words, living and breathing inside the Words. The pages are falling apart, the edges of the page literally spent. But I know where the Words are, where to look for them.

I cannot imagine people living without knowing what is inside these pages. More than any other words, Shakespeare is rubbish, people so proud to recite his words, those words cannot rejuvenate and renew.

The Old and New Testament meet inside of me, The Holy Spirit. The Word tells us, the Holy Spirit is inside of us, and it makes sense, it makes the world make sense, knowing that.

Finally God made sense of the world for me, the world I couldn’t stand to live in, so I hid myself in movies, in Gigi, and Fiddler on the Roof and The Sound of Music, and The Elephant Man. I was stranded. The Word healed me, healed the deep dark bruise of my identity. My identity was shattered I didn’t know who I was. I was characters I would make up, even in my thoughts, male and female. It wasn’t that I was male I just didn’t know who I was. There is a world who doesn’t know who they are, young children, boys and girls, young men and young women. God made us in His image, to be seated in the Heavenly places in Christ Jesus that is who I am. The Word reveals yourself to you the Holy Spirit speaks through the Word. He told me I wasn’t trash.

When I was in the Word, the world didn’t flood me with its lies. Since I was 20, I became intimate with the Word. When I didn’t live right, the Word corrected me, spoke to my heart, the Holy Spirit spoke to me, the voice in my heart that wasn’t me, it’s not what I would say to myself. The Word revealed God to me, revealed myself to me, the world to me, and the culture to me. This culture is an illusion and it is built on lies.

I stand because Christ stood with me, in His Word, He is the Word made flesh, and we are in union, I am not His enemy anymore. The Word told me that that I am reconciled through Jesus, through His blood He spilled, through the Cross He was murdered on, and that made peace with God the Father. Then I understood. Then peace filled my heart, knowing that. His Resurrection gave me the power over sin the Holy Spirit cleanses me daily, regenerates me, and transforms me.

I don’t have to cut myself to get rid of the guilt, the pain, the shame, the horror. The blood of Jesus got rid of the guilt, the pain, the shame and the horror.

I look at the world today young people, old people with piercings, piercing every part of their body, tattooing every part of themselves, modifying their bodies, and suspending their bodies in mid air, the suffering they have gone through to transform, when all they have done is hurt themselves even more.

The Holy Spirit re-creates you into the image of Jesus, into His likeness, without piercing, wounds, tattoos, body modifications, it is internal. The suffering comes from inside.

The Word taught me that.

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“I have been crucified with Christ, it is no

Longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and

The life which I now live in the flesh I live by

Faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave

Himself for me.”

(Galatians 2:20)

“For as the rain comes down and the snow

From heaven,

And do not return there

But water the earth

And make it bring forth and bud,

That it may give seed to the sower

And bread to the eater,

So shall My word be that goes forth from

My mouth;

It shall not return to Me void,

But it shall accomplish what I please,

And it shall prosper in the thing for which I sent it.”

(Isaiah 55:10-11)

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In the beginning was the Word, and the Word

Was with God, and the Word was God.

(John 1:1)