Heather Bellamy caught up with Pete Greig about his new book and what prayer looks like in his life.

There are many reasons why our prayers don't get answered. Sometimes it's to do with God's world and the way the world is. C.S. Lewis writes about this a great deal, that there are just laws in place that make certain things happen in certain ways. We can't have continual miracles, or the world wouldn't work. So some of it is just God's world, but some of it is God's will. Sometimes really painful things happen and eventually we realise that God had a bigger and better plan. I'm so glad, for example, that the first girl I fell in love with, God didn't answer my prayers and she didn't become my wife, because I've now got someone so much better. So sometimes it's God's will. Then thirdly and this is very important, sometimes our prayers aren't answered, not because of God's world and not because of God's will, but because of God's war. There's a battle. There is an enemy out there who hates you and it is not God who puts cancer in someone's body. God doesn't want a child to be trafficked, or a woman to be raped. These things are evil and He hates that kind of stuff. There is a real war and that's another reason we've got to pray, because we are in a battle, whether we like it or not, so we'd better learn to fight.

Heather: You talk about partnering with God in prayer. What does that mean and how do we learn to do it?

Pete: It's extraordinary isn't it, that when God made us He didn't make us just like machines that had to do the right thing all the time. He gave us free choice and one of the reasons is that we can have relationships. You can't have real relationships without real choice. The terrible risk that God took at that moment, was that we therefore might choose wrong things. We might choose to turn our backs on Him and that is the tragedy of what we call the fall, in the story of Genesis, in chapter three. But prayer is kind of the reversing of that curse. Prayer is us learning to work in partnership with God's will, so we work out what is God doing and what is God wanting and how can we use our choices to serve His purposes? How can we, if you like, create a landing pad for God's will in God's world?

The great mathematician and philosopher, Blaise Pascal, said, "God has instituted prayer to bestow on humanity the dignity of causality." In other words, through prayer we get to actually shape events. We get to determine what happens.

There are things that will only happen in your life if you pray about them. There are things that will not happen until you pray about them. Just because God is God, doesn't make everything automatic. He waits to hear our opinions and to allow our choices to create a landing pad for the things that He wants to do.

Heather: Why do you believe that more spiritual authority is needed and not necessarily more hours of prayer?

Pete: We all know that some people just have an extraordinary spiritual authority. You might have experienced a time of retreat, or particular closeness of God when you feel a greater faith. Many people would know maybe an older woman, who's been walking with the Lord Jesus for many years and whose whispered prayers can shift stuff that an entire stadium of enthusiastic teenagers can only tickle. Then there's a story in the Bible about the disciples trying to heal a poor boy with epilepsy and it didn't work. Then Jesus came back from the Mount of Transfiguration and healed him instantly. When the disciples said, "Why did that happen?" Jesus said, "This kind can only come out through prayer and fasting". Jesus had an authority that they didn't have at that time. Now they went on to have that authority; they went on to pray and rooms shook. They prayed over handkerchiefs and people got healed. They even prayed for their persecutors on the point of death. They had incredible prayer lives, but we can grow in spiritual authority and so what we need right now in the church, I believe, is not greater activity in prayer, but greater authority in prayer. We need people who truly know God's will and know how to pray with faith.

Heather: What happened in that walled city of prostitution in Mexico?

Pete: It's a place called Boy's Town in the city of Reynosa, on the border of Mexico and America. For 150 years the Mafia has been running this dreadful place where you can even have three generations of prostitution, with grandmothers, mothers and daughters living their entire lives within these walls selling their bodies, mostly to American tourists coming across the border. It is the most dreadful and sad place.

One of the people I profile in Dirty Glory is my friend Kelly Tietsort, who God called to leave a beautiful safe home in Tulsa, Oklahoma and she moved to Boy's Town because she found that her heart was beginning to break the way God's heart breaks for Boy's Town. She began by just praying. For 15 months she prayed and nothing much happened. She thought she was going crazy and then the breakthroughs began to happen.

I won't spoil the stories because they are so amazing. I want to leave the surprise, but the most extraordinary things began to happen in that walled city of prostitution. People began to get set free. One particular guy, well, there's a very tragic, but very wonderful story, about a guy called Kilo. He's a pimp and a drug dealer. You'll have to read the book to find out, but God sends us to the darkest places.

Until we are willing to go to the broken and the dark and dirty places, Jesus is already there, but He sits there blindfolded and gagged with His hands tied. When we go as His hands and His feet, then the glory of God, the kingdom of God can break in. That's why it's so important that we don't just live in our holy huddles, or our little safe bubbles, but we get out there and we make a difference for those who are hurting and broken and those who are finding life hard.

Heather: How would you sum up what people can expect when they read your new book?

Pete: This book will set your heart on fire for the possibilities of prayer. It will also teach you how to grow in prayer and, I hope, inspire you to begin new adventures with God. God is the source of all life and colour and beauty. He has an incredible plan for your life and if you'll just say yes to Him, you'll be amazed by what can happen as a result.