When people start to pray they find that things begin to change- in fact what happens is that they begin to change! How could we talk to God, face to face and not be changed? it would seem very natural that having a direct experience of God would prove to be transformational. But who can pray? Do we have to be doctrinally sound before we can p[ray? Does God only hear the prayer of the penitent before conversion? When I tried to get a prayer room established a brother let it be known that he could not take p[art in it because of the possible presence of Roman Catholics. This is not a surprise when it comes from an infant in Christ but when it comes from a mature Christian I begin to wonder. I understand that doctrinal soundness comes with experience but I should not expect all those who pray with me to share the same doctrine with me. is it not possible that God will do the changing within us and without? Lets face it the possibility of anyone knocking down the doors to pray are very slim, at the moment anyway. Pray is only the start. What we need in our city are little colonies of Christians of all denominations gathering to ask God to change them and change the city-praying for the various government departments, hospitals, churches, communities and individuals. While praying for the individual salvation of people we miss the point if that is where we stop-we need to pray for and work for the transformation of the city, for the fulfillment of the words of Isaiah `Tyranny will be far from you; you will have nothing to fear. Terror will be far removed; it will not come near you" With this promise we will have peace in our community. That is something well worth praying for so we should be encouraging those islands of prayer.

It really seems to me that the time has come for us to take the battle to the enemy. Then time for sitting back is over, we neeed to fight with the weapons we have-the full Armour of God. At the end of Ephesians Paul tells the Christians to pray and Jesus calls the temple a House of Prayer. In our congregation we are too weak to do anything else but pray, we are too small and insignificant to do anything else. Over the next few years we will spend our time developing the congregation into a place and space for prayer. In recent days some political and community leaders have called for the walls of Belfast to be dismantled while others have said that it is still too soon for this to happen-the people living close to the walls are not ready, they still feel threatened and need the protection offered by the walls. If the church of Jesus Christ really is the gift of God to the community as St Augustine claimed it to be then we need to fight with God chose gifts and that has to include prayer-prayer for the transformation of the community-the question remains to be "how do we turn the church into a House of Prayer?