In Psalm 10:17 David writes, “O LORD, You have heard the desire of the humble; You will strengthen their heart, You will incline Your ear.” Near the end of a Psalm in which he has been entreating God for answers to prayer, he indicates that God HAS indeed heard the prayer of the humble, and will do something about it. But it is interesting to see part of what this entails:

After he says that God has heard the desire of the humble, he writes: “You will strengthen their heart.” The Hebrew word here for “strengthen” literally means, “prepare”. God will “prepare” the heart of the humble person who is praying, for the answer which He is about to give them. There is a lesson for us here.

We may feel that the only thing needful in our situation is for God to intervene and do something to someone else, or provide that “missing something.” But such is rarely the case. Most often, there is something that needs to happen in our own hearts as well. We are frequently not really ready ourselves for what God wants to do. So a good part of the answer that needs to come is that God has to prepare OUR hearts for what He will do by way of the answer.

It is surely part of being “the humble” that God speaks of in this verse, that we realize that we need some work in our own hearts before God can give the answer we are seeking. So it would do us well, in whatever situation we are praying for, to pray in line with Psalm 10:17, “Prepare MY heart” for the answer You are about to give!