A Prepared Heart

Ezekiel 36:26-27 I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit within you; I will take the heart of stone out of your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. ²⁷ I will put My Spirit within you and cause you to walk in My statutes, and you will keep My judgments and do them.

Proverbs 23:26 My son, give me your heart, and let your eyes observe my ways.

Do you know it is a personal duty to allow the Holy Spirit to work on your heart and you have to be willing to work together with Him in preparing your own heart? God works with prepared hearts, He is always searching the motives and the nature of our hearts.

We can pretend before men but we will never pretend before God. God does not look at what men look at, He does not look at our status, our level of education or our back grounds, He looks at the nature of our hearts. Truth be told, you will never lie to God, to yourself and to the devil.“The human heart is the most deceitful of all things, and desperately wicked. Who really knows how bad it is? But I, the Lord, search all hearts and examine secret motives. I give all people their due rewards, according to what their actions deserve.” Jeremiah 17:9-10 (NLT)

Let’s take a look at the life of David in, 1 Samuel 16:18 One of the servants said to Saul, “One of Jesse’s sons from Bethlehem is a talented harp player. Not only that he is a brave warrior, a man of war, and has good judgment. He is also a fine-looking young man, and the Lord is with him.” Before David came into the scene where Prophet Samuel would anoint him, he was busy tending his father’s sheep in the wilderness. It is in the wilderness that God took notice of Him since David was after God’s own heart. We learn that the presence of God was evident in the life of David and without the servants of King Saul knowing what had transpired in David being anointed as King by Prophet Samuel, the extra ordinary life of David could not be ignored. He was a worshiper, a prayer warrior, a war general yet he never knew ahead of him was a great assignment and his heart had to be prepared.

Pause a little bit and ask yourself the following questions:-

• Are you willing to allow the situations you are going through and the opportunities you are facing today, prepare your heart for your destiny?

• Is your heart prepared to face a Goliath?

• Is your heart prepared for the standards that God has set ahead of you?

• Is your heart prepared for the next level of elevation?

• Is your heart prepared for opposition and criticism?

• Is your heart prepared for the applauds of men and the rejection of men?

David’s heart was well prepared, he knew how to handle the applauds of men and the criticism of men which never got the better part of him. His heart was prepared for the throne, his fame never got into his head neither did it pollute his heart. His heart was prepared to face oppositions and challenges that would come and the best part is, his heart was prepared to always acknowledge God in all He did.

At times, you might go through situations you may not understand but have you ever paused and asked yourself, is this a tool God is using to prepare my heart to handle a Goliath that many people are afraid to conquer in a particular area? The army of Israel including the King Saul Himself, were afraid to face Goliath in 1 Samuel 17:24-25 As soon as the Israelite army saw him, they began to run away in fright. ²⁵ “Have you seen the giant?” the men asked. “He comes out each day to defy Israel. The king has offered a huge reward to anyone who kills him. He will give that man one of his daughters for a wife, and the man’s entire family will be exempted from paying taxes!”  No matter how good the offers King Saul offered to anyone who was able to face and kill Goliath, no man in his army had a prepared heart to face Goliath.

But what do we learn in 1 Samuel 17:34-37? But David persisted. “I have been taking care of my father’s sheep and goats,” he said. “When a lion or a bear comes to steal a lamb from the flock, ³⁵ I go after it with a club and rescue the lamb from its mouth. If the animal turns on me, I catch it by the jaw and club it to death. ³⁶ I have done this to both lions and bears, and I’ll do it to this pagan Philistine, too, for he has defied the armies of the living God! ³⁷ The Lord who rescued me from the claws of the lion and the bear will rescue me from this Philistine!” David had a prepared heart to challenge Goliath and his confidence was not in himself but on God . His encounters with the wild animals and how God strengthened him to destroy them, gave him full assurance that God will do the same in this particular challenge.

God can allow any environment to be a tool to prepare your heart.

Your wilderness season can be a long season of waiting for something but what is God teaching you in this particular season? David was in an incubation season but once the set time came to face Goliath, his life became a living testament of God’s glory till today. From this context of Scripture, it is very evident that when your heart is prepared, God will not hesitate to entrust you with great assignments since He can trust you with the task.

Parting Shot: David’ life paints a picture of a prepared heart but it’s also important to note, his own Brother Eliab almost weighed him down with an accusation that was simply a reflection of Eliab’s own heart and not David’s heart in 1 Samuel 17:28 Now Eliab his oldest brother heard when he spoke to the men; and Eliab’s anger was aroused against David, and he said, “Why did you come down here? And with whom have you left those few sheep in the wilderness? I know your pride and the insolence of your heart, for you have come down to see the battle.”If David had heeded the words of Eliab and taken them to heart ,he would not have had the capacity to face Goliath. This simply means, we have to reject words which do not resonate from a genuine heart. Discernment is very important, not all criticism is positive criticism. Some people will only attack you as way to hinder you and intimidate you from pursuing your dreams, your talents and accomplishing your goals.

Don’t allow yourself to be an Eliab in anybody’s life, since you don’t know the journey they have been with God.

When our giftings are synchronized with prepared hearts , the supernatural is evident, there is birthing of new ideas and lives are transformed in our area of assignment.

In the next post, I will divulge on the Power of a prepared heart. Keep it locked here as the Holy Spirit pours out more.

Love ReinaBeaty.