Praise God, we’ve got power over sin and temptation! Although we have the victory, not everyone walks in it. Do you ever wonder how Christians who love the Lord can end up failing when temptation comes along? One of the main reasons is that they haven’t prepared their hearts.

Most people don’t intentionally decide they’re not going to serve God anymore and just walk away from Him. They have good intentions. They want to live for God. The problem is they haven’t prepared in advance to face the troubles of this world.

You have to establish your heart so that you won’t cave in when problems come your way. I’ve travelled and ministered for decades. Many times, I’ve met people who are excited about the Lord, but they’re just shallow. They’re a mile wide and an inch deep. There’s no assurance that later on down the road, they’ll still be serving the Lord.

However, I’ve also met people who have established their hearts. They’ve prepared their hearts to such a degree that it doesn’t matter if somebody close to them dies, or if they have financial setbacks, or any other problems arise. No matter what, they’re still serving the Lord.

There's a reason why some people don't have that stability in their lives, and it's not because they don't love God. It’s because they haven’t prepared their hearts.

We can look to the Old Testament to learn more about preparing our hearts. Everything in the Old Testament has been recorded for our learning. From the example of Rehoboam, the son of Solomon and the grandson of David, we learn the consequences of failing to prepare our hearts. Second Chronicles 12:14 says:

The word “prepare“ refers to what you do in advance. Rehoboam didn’t commit himself in advance to being focused on God, and as a consequence, he did evil.

Saul is another example of someone who failed to prepare his heart. He started out sensitive to God and had the anointing of God upon him. But he had an inferiority complex and worried about what people thought of him. He wanted to please everybody. As a result, he wound up turning against God and doing terrible things, such as trying to kill David.

God totally rejected Saul and gave the kingdom to David. David started out so good and spent the first couple of decades of his kingship just seeking God with his whole heart. But David also fell away from the Lord by sinning with Bathsheba and committing murder to try to cover up his adultery. However, David repented and humbled himself, so God restored him, and he was able to recover. Sad to say, most of the people in the Old Testament who turned away from the Lord didn’t recover. They didn’t prepare their hearts, and when they got off track, they never got back.

So what can you do to commit yourself in advance and prepare your heart? Humbling yourself is one of the most important aspects of preparing your heart. Being humble means becoming God-dependent and God-focused. Psalm 10:4 tells us that not having God in all your thoughts is prideful and wicked. That’s a big statement.

I don’t think any of us keep God in all our thoughts perfectly, but the vast majority of Christians don’t even have this as a goal. The average Christian has a little bit of their life that they section off for God, like Sunday mornings or a daily devotion, but they don’t stay focused on the Lord on an ongoing basis.

In 1 Thessalonians 5:17, Paul said to “pray without ceasing.” I believe one of the ways we can pray without ceasing is to stay in an attitude of prayer. I don’t do this perfectly, but one of my goals is to be in constant communion with the Lord. Take for example an activity like watching television. If I feel like something I’m watching isn’t pleasing to the Lord, I quit watching it. To be humble, we need to try to be God-focused throughout the day.

Another thing we can do to prepare our hearts is to make good use of our imaginations. Isaiah 26:3 says:

The word “mind” comes from the Hebrew word yester. It means “conception” and it was translated “imagination” a number of times in the Old Testament (Strong’s Concordance). So I believe I’m accurate in saying that your imagination is where you conceive things. Keeping your heart right with God is not something that just happens in a vacuum. It’s something that you have to conceive, and it starts in your imagination.

To prepare your heart against the troubles of this life, you have to use your imagination and see yourself as a new creation. You have to think, I don’t live like this anymore. I don’t steal, I don’t lie, I don’t cheat, I don’t operate in anger, and so on.

With all the crazy things we hear about in the world today—the riots, the hatred, the strife, wanting to defund the police—you may wonder how people could think like this. What happens is that people fail to recognise we’re in a battle. People fail to prepare for the battle, and because of that Satan is going to come against every single person. He’s going to try to steal away the Word that’s been sown in your heart (Matt. 13:19).