What is a God-centered heart? It is a heart that prays for the things that matters to God. It is a heart that cries for the priorities of God's kingdom.
What is the priority of God's kingdom? His priority has always been for the salvation of the souls of men and for eternal fellowship with them.
Unlike our prayers which can be rather inward focusing inward on our personal needs, God's heart is for the lost. His heart is to populate His kingdom and to show to the world through His church the love of the Father through the sacrifice of His Son.
His purpose is to draw the nations to Himself.
He chose Israel to demonstrate His love to the world.
Ex 19:5-6
"Now therefore if you will indeed obey My voice and keep My covenant, then you shall be a special treasure to Me above all peoples, for all the earth is mine. You shall be to Me a kingdom of priests and a holy nation. These are the words which you shall speak to the children of Israel"
Translating this to the present-day church, we are reminded that this promise is now given to the church, to all who believe in Jesus.
1 Peter 2:9
"But you are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation. His own special people, that you may proclaim the praises of Him who called our of darkness into His marvelous light"
Moses was so on fire with the love of God that he often reminded God of His purposes to save souls and to establish His kingdom on earth! Moses saw God's higher plan to bless and prosper Israel for the sake of the world. His prayer was not a prayer for worldly things or fleshly indulgence. His prayer was for spiritual things and to advance the kingdom of God.
Just think for a moment, if Moses had not prayed the way he prayed, today there might not be nation called Israel!
When the children of Israel worshiped the golden calf, God threatened to destroy them but Moses stopped Him by praying a prayer which was God-centered:
Ex 31:12-13
"Why should the Egyptians speak and say, 'He brought them out to harm them, to kill them on the mountains and to consume them from the face of the earth? Remember Abraham, Isaac and Israel, Your servants to whom You swore by Your own self, and said to them, 'I will multiply your descendants as the stars in heaven; and all this land that I have spoken of I give to your descendants, and they shall inherit it forever"
It happened again in Numbers 14. When the children of Israel refused to go into the promised land, God again wanted to destroy them and made an offer to Moses to make him a greater nation than the children of Israel.
Numbers 14:13-16. Moses reminded God again that He did all these acts to demonstrate His greatness and glory to the children of Israel and to the heathen nations as well.
Numbers 14:13-16
"And Moses said to the Lord, "Then the Egyptians will hear it, for by Your might, You have brought these people up from them and they will tell it to the inhabitants of the land. They have heard that You, Lord, are among these people; that You, Lord, are seen face to face and Your cloud stands before them, and You go before them in a pillar of cloud by day and in a pillar of fire by night. Now if You kill these people as one man, then the nations which have heard of Your fame will speak, saying, "Because the Lord was not able to bring these people to the land which He swore to give them, therefore He killed them in the wilderness"
Moses's prayer was driven by his concern for God and His glory. What would the pagan nations say if the people of Israel died in a day on their way from Egypt to Canaan? They would not assume that the people had angered Jehovah. They would assume that Jehovah was unable to do what He promised.
As a writer once said:
"I find it hard to believe that God had not already thought of what these foreign nations would think. I believe the heart of these narratives is not so much about God supposedly changing His mind, but about Moses bending to do God's will. Instead of thinking about the glory he could receive as the father of the nation, Moses thought about the glory that would be taken from God"
The problem is we all too often view prayer as the means by which we try to bend God to do our will. In reality the heart of successful prayer is to be found in this - discover God's will and pray for that. God will grant those requests.
A god-centered heart is also a word-centered heart.
When Moses prayed in Exodus 32:13, he could pray with faith that God would grant his request because he knew the promises God had made to Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When Moses quoted these promises, he was not just speaking of these two specific promises, he was referencing all the promises God had made to his forefathers. All of those promises specially the ones made to the 12 sons of Jacob in Gen 49, could not be fulfilled if God started with Moses.
Moses's prayer was successful because it was based on God's word. When we pray, do we consider God's word? How much more effective our prayers would be if we would actually go to the scriptures first and find the promises of God and pray them!
May we have the heart of Moses in prayer - to pray God's word, God's purposes and God's priorities which is the salvation of the souls of man and the establishment of His kingdom in the hearts of men!
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