Key 1: Acknowledge God and God Alone

God’s Word is the ultimate authority for the truths we live by and turning to His Word brings the revelation and enlightenment that the yoke is first and foremost a spiritual yoke. If we only deal with the technical and management keys we will not be able to deliver the poor. 

Hosea 4:1-3 “Listen to the word of the Lord, O sons of Israel, For the Lord has a case against the inhabitants of the land, Because there is no faithfulness or kindness, Or knowledge of God in the land. There is swearing, deception, murder, stealing and adultery. They employ violence, so that bloodshed follows bloodshed. Therefore the land mourns, And everyone who lives in it languishes Along with the beasts of the field and the birds of the sky, And also the fish of the sea disappear.” 

Psalm 107:33,34 “He changes rivers into a wilderness, And springs of water into a thirsty ground; A fruitful land into a salt waste, Because of the wickedness of those who dwell in it.” 

Jeremiah 23:10b “For the land mourns because of the curse. The pastures of the wilderness have dried up.” 

In this section the 6 Biblical keys will unveil the mysteries of why Africa is bound under the yoke of poverty and reveal the Godly solutions for breaking this yoke.

Key 1: Acknowledge God and God Alone 

Problem: 

The people of Africa have enormous strongholds of witchcraft and ancestral worship. Witchdoctors and wizards are found in great numbers in every village and are consulted on most things, at all critical stages of life including birth, sickness, adolescence, circumcision, weddings and funerals. The witchdoctors are also brought in to pray over the land so that it will produce a bumper harvest. Here they perform rituals including sacrificing chickens, sprinkling of animal blood, spreading bones, placing potions and putting of animal skulls on corner posts. 

The practise of ancestral worship is the honouring of one’s dead ancestors through sacrifices, ritual rites and ceremonial oaths. This worship is not practised out of love but out of fear and terror. 

Isaiah 8:19-22 ‘When they say to you, “Consult the mediums and the spiritists who whisper and mutter,” should not a people consult their God? Should they consult the dead on behalf of the living? To the law and to the testimony! If they do not speak according to this word, it is because they have no dawn. They will pass through the land hard-pressed and famished, and it will turn out that when they are hungry, they will be enraged and curse their king and their God as they face upward. Then they will look to the earth, and behold, distress and darkness, the gloom of anguish; and they will be driven away into darkness.’ 

Leviticus 19:31 “Do not turn to mediums or spiritists; do not seek them out to be defiled by them. I am the Lord your God.” 

Deuteronomy 18:10,11 “There shall not be found among you anyone who makes his son or his daughter pass through the fire, one who uses divination, one who practices witchcraft, or one who interprets omens, or a sorcerer, or one who casts a spell, or a medium, or a spiritist, or one who calls up the dead.”

Deuteronomy 5:7,8 “You shall have no other gods before Me. You shall not make for yourself an idol, or any likeness of what is in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in the water under the earth” 

Matthew 6:24 “No one can serve two masters; for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to one and despise the other.” 

Psalm 24:3,4 “Who may ascend into the hill of the Lord? And who may stand in His holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, Who has not lifted up his soul to falsehood And has not sworn deceitfully.” 

Solution: 

There is only one true God and we come to Him through His Son, Jesus Christ, who died on a cross for us to have the free gift of eternal life. We are now no longer of this world’s system and traditions but we have been adopted into His family and we have the privilege of knowing God as our Father. 

We have to come back to worshipping God and God alone in all areas of our lives, not just at our Sunday church services. God is not mocked. 

Proverbs 3:5,6: “Trust in the LORD with all your heart and do not lean on your own understanding. In all your ways acknowledge Him, and He will make your paths straight.” 

This scripture gives us the guidelines to the breakthrough. 

Trust in the Lord with all of your Heart: 

Whomever we trust in, we will consult. 

Lean not on your own Understanding: 

Jesus fulfilled all that He could, not through independence but rather dependence on His Father. His Father showed Him what to do, He did it and succeeded. 

John 8:28 “So Jesus said, ‘When you lift up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am He, and I do nothing on My own initiative, but I speak these things as the Father taught Me’”

John 8:38 “I speak the things which I have seen with My Father; therefore you also do the things which you heard from your father.” 

John 5:19 “Therefore Jesus answered and was saying to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, the Son can do nothing of Himself, unless it is something He sees the Father doing; for whatever the Father does, these things the Son also does in like manner.” 

What a glorious life we would live if we fulfilled His every desire for us. 

In all Your Ways Acknowledge Him: 

In all our ways means just that – every area, work, word, action and thought. This means we acknowledge Him in birth, adulthood transitions, weddings, funerals, healing, pre-planting, rainfall, harvest – everything. 

And He will make your Paths Straight: 

In the African continent we desperately need the Lord to straighten out our crooked and hopeless path which has been taking people on a journey to nowhere for too long. God’s straightening will lead us into the fullness of His promised abundant life. 

Deuteronomy 8:18,19 cautions us "But you shall remember the Lord your God, for it is He who is giving you power to make wealth, that He may confirm His covenant which He swore to your fathers, as it is this day. It shall come about if you ever forget the Lord your God and go after other gods and serve them and worship them, I testify against you today that you will surely perish.” 

Deuteronomy 7:13-15 “He will love you and bless you and multiply you; He will also bless the fruit of your womb and the fruit of your ground, your grain and your new wine and your oil, the increase of your herd and the young of your flock, in the land which He swore to your forefathers to give you. You shall be blessed above all peoples; there will be no male or female barren among you or among your cattle. The Lord will remove from you all sickness; and He will not put on you any of the harmful diseases of Egypt which you have known.”

If we believe that it is indeed Africa’s time, then we have to tear down the high places of ancestral worship and set aside the traditions of witchcraft, which have kept us in bondage. 

Then we can come and ascend the hill of the Lord with clean hands and pure hearts to worship Him alone, in Spirit and in truth.