ACTING ON THE WORD

A Teaching by Pastor Chris Oyakhilome

Christianity is founded on the Word, born of the Word, sustained by the Word, and can only be fully victorious through the Word. This truth is not decorative theology — it is the operating principle of the Christian life. If you stick to the Word, you will always come back with a testimony. What God desires to give you is not primarily a healing, a job, or money. What God desires to give you is the Word of God in your spirit. That Word will make you everything it talks about.

Yet so many believers sit week after week in churches, listen to preaching, join in worship, and go home without really knowing what they were supposed to receive or whether they received anything at all. The problem is not a shortage of preaching; the problem is that many have not understood what it means to be blessed, what it means to act on the Word, or what God's Word actually declares them to be. Once these things are understood and acted upon, life is transformed.

YOU ARE A NEW CREATION

There is perhaps no verse in the entire New Testament that carries a more revolutionary declaration about the identity of the believer than this one:

2 Corinthians 5:17  “Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.”

Notice with great precision what this verse says — and what it does not say. It does not say that you will be a new creation, or that you might become one, or that you are on your way to being one. It says you are. Present tense. Immediate. Unconditional upon your feelings, your circumstances, or your performance. If any man be in Christ — that is, if any man is born again — he is a new creation.

According to 1 Corinthians 12:13, by one Spirit we are all baptised into one body — into the body of Christ. When you were born again, you were placed into Christ. And the moment you are in Christ, the Word speaks about you: you are a new creation. Not going to be. Are.

Then come those electrifying words: old things are passed away. Not some things — all. The word “all” with the exception of nothing. Whatever was wrong, broken, diseased, damaged, or corrupted in your life before you came to Christ — all of it has passed away. And then: behold, all things are become new. That word “behold” is not decoration. It is an instruction. It is akin to the Hebrew word kazar — to see with the eyes of a prophet, to perceive something that others cannot see. God is not merely telling you a fact; He is instructing you to look. See. Perceive. All things are become new.

The next verse is equally vital:

2 Corinthians 5:18  “And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation.”

All these new things are of God. This means that whatever is not of God has no place in the new creation. If cancer is not of God, then cancer is among the old things that have passed away. The new creation is impervious to it, because the new life within is the life of God Himself, and that life does not cohabit with disease. This is not wishful thinking. This is the Word of God. And the Word of God means exactly what it says.

BEHOLD WHAT MANNER OF LOVE

The apostle John reaches for the highest language available to him as he contemplates what God has done for the believer:

1 John 3:1–2  “Behold, what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called the sons of God: therefore the world knoweth us not, because it knew him not. Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.”

Again that word: behold. See. Look at this with the eyes of the spirit and take it in. The Father has lavished upon us — showered, poured abundantly, bestowed — what manner of love? Not merely a great love, but a love of a particular kind: a love that makes us His sons. Not servants, not admirers, not distant beneficiaries. Sons.

And then the declaration that staggers the religious mind: “Beloved, now are we the sons of God.” This is not a promise awaiting fulfilment after death. It is not a hope deferred until the resurrection. It is what Peter called the present truth — a reality in the now. Now are we the sons of God. You are complete in Him. Perfected in Christ Jesus. Nothing needs to be added to you and nothing taken away. God looks at you and sees a son.

The world does not recognise this, because the world did not recognise Him when He came in person. They looked at Jesus and saw a carpenter’s son from Nazareth. They could not see the glory. But Simon Peter saw it: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” And Jesus responded that flesh and blood had not revealed that to him — it was the Father. In the same way, the world will not see who you are. But you must see it. Behold.

THE POWER OF ACTING ON THE WORD

Knowing these truths is only half of it. The other half is acting on them. And this is where many believers falter. They hear the Word, they agree with it intellectually, they might even be moved emotionally by it — but they do not act on it. And the Word of God that is not acted upon does not produce results, any more than a seed sitting in a packet produces a harvest.

Consider Moses at the Red Sea. Pharaoh’s army is behind them. The sea is before them. The people are in panic. Moses cries out to God — and God’s response is startling: do not pray now. Do something. God said to Moses: stretch your hand over the sea and divide it. Not stretch your hand and I will divide it. Divide it.

God did not say He would divide the sea. He told Moses to divide it. This is the audacity of acting on God’s Word. Moses had never heard of a sea being divided before. No one had. He had only the Word of God and the instruction to act. To everyone watching, it must have looked absurd — a man stretching his staff over a body of water and expecting it to split open. But Moses shut out every voice but God’s, held out his hand, and acted. And the Bible says God drove back the sea with a mighty wind — the breath of His Spirit — and it parted. When the believer acts on God’s Word, the Holy Ghost goes in that direction. The miracle follows the act of faith.

CONFESSING YOUR WAY INTO REALITY

The same principle governs salvation itself — and by extension, every other provision of the gospel:

Romans 10:9–10  “That if thou shalt confess with thy mouth the Lord Jesus, and shalt believe in thine heart that God hath raised him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. For with the heart man believeth unto righteousness; and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation.”

With the mouth, confession is made unto salvation. You confess yourself into that reality which you have believed. You catapult yourself, by the act of speaking the Word, into the thing that God has declared. This is not formula or ritual — it is the mechanism of faith as God designed it. Believe with the heart, confess with the mouth. The righteousness of God is imparted through faith in the heart; salvation is appropriated through confession with the mouth.

This truth was demonstrated vividly in the life of a man who had tried for years to be born again and could not understand why he had never crossed over into the experience of it. He had attended crusades, prayed, cried — nothing seemed to work. When he was asked whether he believed in Jesus Christ, he said of course he did. The problem was not belief; the problem was that no one had ever led him to confess. When, for the first time, he said the words — “I confess with my mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord of my life, and I receive eternal life. From this day I am born again. I am a child of God” — tears rolled down his face, and he knew in an instant that something had happened. He has been a minister of the gospel ever since.

The same principle applies to healing. Praying about sickness, crying about sickness, does not produce healing — because those are not the methods God ordained. What God ordained is faith expressed in action: the confession of what the Word says, the declaration that old things have passed away and the body has become new. You say it. You act on it. You hold fast to it regardless of what the senses report.

A WORD ABOUT WHAT GOD REALLY WANTS TO GIVE YOU

Perhaps the most liberating revelation in this message is this: what God desires to give you is not primarily a miracle. He is not asking you to petition Him each month for supernatural intervention to meet your needs. His design is that you would have the Word so deeply established in your spirit that it continuously produces the realities it describes. Health. Prosperity. Victory. Not as occasional miraculous interventions, but as the consistent output of a life built on the Word.

When Jesus stepped into situations, things changed. He spoke to blind eyes and they opened. He spoke to lame legs and they walked. The word that He spoke was not merely a kind wish — it was creative power entering the physical realm and reordering reality. And the same Holy Spirit who attended His words attends yours, when your words are grounded in and aligned with the Word of God. The disease dissolves. The circumstance shifts. Not because you felt enough faith, or cried enough tears, but because you acted on the Word.

If you will act on God’s Word, it will work. That is all it takes. Not more prayer without action. Not more religious effort without the Word. Simply act on what God has declared. You are a new creation. Old things have passed away. All things have become new. Behold. Say so. And watch the Word of God make you everything it says you are.