A small group of us have been meeting once a week to pray for West Belfast for over a year now, and have been feeling God’s permission and push to start getting out and ‘doing’ things.

In December a local community group was holding a Christmas Fair. We thought it would be great to have a presence at the Fair for anyone that wanted prayed for, and we approached the organisers and asked if we could have a chair in the main Marquee. However the organisers came back to us and said they weren’t sure how appropriate it would be to have prayer in the main marquee so they were going to give us a whole room instead! When we arrived to set up we were then told that we had two rooms to choose from, and when we prayed for guidance on which to take we felt God say, ‘Why not use both?’.  We decided to have the bigger, more public room as a prayer room that people could come in and out of and be nosy at, and the smaller room as a meditation room, where we would have constant intercession for the day and if anyone wanted quiet one-to-one prayer we could take them there.

There was a bit of drama when we arrived on the day to find everything had fallen off the walls overnight and we had an hour for set-up, which was very stressful but we had it looking lovely in time anyway! From the outset we felt such favour over the whole day, and were blown away by how God used it.

The prayer room had a steady stream of people in and out asking questions and some receiving prayer, and the intercession room was in constant use.

We were able to pray over a group of young girls and impart to them how He sees them and loves them; we heard personal stories from them that made us cry and made us desperate to show them God’s love. An older couple came in because they’d never been prayed for before and were curious, and we had the honour of praying for them for the first time.

The Fair itself got off to a shaky start and we felt the push to pray blessing over the Fair and the businesses that were hosting it, including the childcare centre that the prayer room was in – afterwards the organisers said it was the best Fair yet and ‘there was just a different atmosphere about the place’!

We’re touched by His love for this place and His favour over our first prayer room – we only asked for a chair and we got two rooms! We’re certain this is the start of similar projects and so excited so see where the journey takes us. As the day came to a close two 12/13 year old girls were flicking through the Bible and reading their passages to us. This is the last verse they picked out for us and we’re claiming it:
” Then the seventh angel blew his trumpet, and there were loud voices in heaven, saying, “The kingdom of the world has become the kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign forever and ever.”
 
And Amen to that! Kingdom Come
Laura Brown