Dear Restless Heart,
You were made for the wild adventure of living alive and in love with God. Yet, for many of us, following Jesus feels routine rather than invigorating, and instead of love for God we feel boredom, absence, and distance from the One who made us and longs to be with us.
Like St Augustine in the 4th century, we believe that we were made for God, and our hearts will be restless until we find our rest in him. Simultaneously, we believe that as we go on the adventure of learning to love God, be loved by him, and follow his leadership in our lives, we get catapulted into our kingdom assignment — to build God a resting place until his glory covers the earth as the waters cover the sea (Habbakuk 2:14). As God makes his home in us, we make God a home on earth — until all of earth looks like heaven.
We exist to create prayer resources that help restless hearts find their resting place in God, and that invite a relentless God to find his resting place among us.
To do this, we are hard at work creating prayer email devotionals, wildly creative prayer journals, and dreaming about ways to ignite catalytic prayer cultures that lead to transformational discipleship. We dream about playing a part in inspiring spiritual awakening in the West, both through creative prayer resources, and through catalyzing prayer rooms, prayer-based churches, and discipling leaders committed to the intersection of the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.
Are you ready to come alive and live in love with God the way that you were made for?
Why the name?
The phrase Restless Hearts is borrowed from beloved African church father St Augustine of Hippo, and it speaks to the inner dynamics of prayer most often seen in the writings of the contemplatives and the mystics throughout the history of the Christian tradition. For us, this language communicates our desire to see prayer lives of inner vibrancy and emotional health. This is the Great Commission — to love God with all of our hearts, souls, minds, and strength.
The phrase Resting Places is borrowed from Psalm 132 and God’s desire communicated throughout the storyline of Scripture to have a people and a place to dwell in. For us, this language speaks to the outward dynamics of prayer most often seen in charismatic, Pentecostal, and missionally engaged traditions, and communicates our desire to see communities and places transformed through the manifest presence of God that leads to the renewal of society — until earth looks like heaven. This is the Great Commission — to make disciples of every nation.
We believe that as God makes his home in us, we inevitably get catapulted into a story where we are making God at home in every heart, home, church and city until the glory of the Lord covers the earth like the waters cover the sea (Habbakuk 2:14). This is the intersection of prayer and discipleship, the Great Commandment and the Great Commission.
Why beautiful prayer?
In a contemporary epidemic of loneliness, a mental health crisis, where globally 3.4 billion people have never had the opportunity to hear the name of Jesus, where injustices from racial division to systemic poverty are crying out for a solution, and where Western churches are rife with abuses of power and leaders living double lives, we believe that beautiful prayer matters because God is beautiful and only His beauty can heal a broken world.
We believe a proper Christian response to the pain of the world is held in the tension of learning to both contemplate the beauty of God in prayer and respond to the beauty of God in action. Integrating inner spiritual vibrancy with outward love is ultimately an act of creativity. We long to play a small part in the healing of these problems by creating beautiful prayer resources and to help individuals and communities pray in such a way that heals the mental health and loneliness crises, introduces people to the beauty of Jesus, invites people to join God’s redemptive mission in the world, and creates healthy prayer cultures in local churches.
We believe that any true spiritual awakening, as is seen in awakenings throughout the history of the Christian tradition, will encompass all of these things and more.
How can I join in?
Sign up for our free weekly email devotionals.
Check out our printed resources.
Become a monthly partner and receive every resource we make completely free.
Let us know how you are coming alive and living in love with Jesus!