Mark Banyard: 0:10

Welcome to Kingdom Talk, the podcast where we talk all about things Kingdom. I'm your host, Mark Banyard, and I'll be interviewing a variety of people who, through their lives and ministries, have been committed to advancing the Kingdom of God. Their lives and ministries have been committed to advancing the kingdom of God Church planters, church leaders, pioneers of missions and ministries, both at home as well as abroad.

Mark Banyard: 0:40

So let's go straight to today's episode of Kingdom Talk.

Mark Banyard: 0:48

We have Paul and Jan Smith from New Zealand on our show today. At the end of last year, while we were ministering in New Zealand, we took some time with them and they shared with us an experience they had years ago as teenagers in the weekly prayer meeting at their local church. Today on the show, they talk about the cry they heard all those years ago, a cry of intercession, and how they long to hear it again.

Mark Banyard: 1:15

I'm here right now in Levin, New Zealand, with Paul and Jan Smith in their lovely home, and my wife, Jane, is here as well, and I've just been talking with Paul with regard to a book that he feels the Lord has put on his heart to write, and in fact, Paul, you were just sharing about that. Why don't you pick up where you left off?

Paul Smith: 1:37

Yes, maybe I should go back to where this started, and ideas and concepts and things start with an awareness of something, and I became aware, probably a few years ago, that there were. My wife and I were just talking about our youth and our teenage years and what were the things that actually impacted us and kind of marked us in terms of our direction in our life and Christian things. And we talked a lot about the old days when we were teenagers in our little Assembly of God church in the UK and our pastor was very young, his first pastorate out of Bible school, and he was a prayer. He really was someone who was just prayer, prayer, prayer, prayer and get out on the streets and share your faith. And if you were afraid, he said, don't worry, just get out there and do it. And we realized how much, even in the Christian community, things have changed, because today there's all sorts of excuses oh, I'm too busy, oh, that's not me, oh, leave that to the evangelists but back then it was a whole bunch of young folk, here's a bunch of tracts. Off you go, tell me how you got on. There was no training, just tell people about Jesus and we'd been, of course, filled with the Holy Spirit, which helped a lot. But in that end, one of the things that he was absolutely adamant that we should do was be at the prayer meetings of the church every Wednesday night. So Sunday morning, Sunday night, Tuesday night, Bible study and then Wednesday night prayer night, and we'd travel probably eight or nine kilometers to the church and if we weren't there he'd have a talk with us. Is everything okay?

Mark Banyard: 3:49

Oh

Paul Smith: 3:51

Are you all right? Are you reading your Bible? If you were missing from the prayer meeting, he just assumed there must be something wrong and you know we can.

Paul Smith: 4:04

I think it was that he was zealous for his young people, but the thing about it and as we were talking about this, the thing that we remembered was the, the old saints in that church, elderly people who prayed. The format of the meeting was people would, one by one, get up and we had kneeling mats. You know, we want to kneel. Here's a kneeling mat and people, all elderly people, get down on their knees. But when they prayed, and whenever we talk about it I feel it, it was a mixture of and we didn't think this at the time, but looking back and making the comparison to what we sometimes hear the mixture of passion, Holy Spirit, passion, weeping and tears. And now we can look back and say these people prayed from a burden they were carrying.

Paul Smith: 5:12

And I came up with in this, we talked about this and one of the things I said there was a cry. There was a cry in the conversations, there was a cry in the intercessions and we can remember one or two people, specifically. There was an elderly man. His name was Mr Wheatley and he would stand up and he was old. I don't know how old. We were very young, so everybody older than us was old, but he was really old, I would say in his late 70s, maybe 80s, and he'd drive in 20 miles from up the coast, come to these prayer meetings and we'd just sit and listen. And so every week, because we were there, every week we had to be there. And of course it wasn't that we didn't want to be there. We wanted to be there. And I won't say we wanted to be there just to listen to these people praying, but we wanted to pray like that, we wanted to be in that.

Mark Banyard: 6:20

So it was attractive, it was magnetic.

Paul Smith: 6:22

It was absolutely... It was life. It made the little church we were in, it made it like a holy place because these people were speaking with God and they weren't just having prayers, they were. And so in our conversation about this, that's where we became aware of a cry and over the years, both in ministry and just general attending meetings, we noted that we sometimes hear it and we sometimes don't, but we recognize that when it's yeah, ah, that's the cry. And so over the last few years, and especially through COVID, I think and you know we were talking the other day about post-COVID, the reset that never happened and all those sorts of things, although there was a reset, I believe.

Paul Smith: 7:36

I was one of the ones who was disappointed when we came out of COVID because I thought I don't want to go back to the way it was and everyone was just longing to be able to go and have a coffee. That was a great thing, you know. We went out for a coffee and I actually took a photograph of the coffee after two years of no coffee. But the other thing was everyone wanted to get back to normal and I almost felt there was something not normal about the way we were. There was more. Of course, With God there's always more, but it was the thing that was missing and we find ourselves looking for it, listening for it, and I'm not saying that we have arrived at some grand moment of achieving something, but I think in the years we've been in ministry we've been grateful for those moments when the Holy Spirit comes and just draws out the cry.

Paul Smith: 8:37

And so that's been the basis, as I've just been thinking about it, and one of the teaching series I did at the church was Ancient Paths and Forgotten Highways. And we did actually drive down the Forgotten Highway, which runs up down from the middle of New Zealand, Taumarunui, all the way through to Stratford.

Paul Smith: 9:02

And it's called the Forgotten Highway because it's over 100 kilometers of untouched bush and they've only just recently tar sealed it. It looks like a single track road, little tunnels through hills and it's absolutely pristine New Zealand bush, and it's called the Forgotten Highway. We went there one year, it was very rough, just loose stones, I'd say. So many people use it just to see the bush and see the scenery that they've had to seal the road. But there was a big storm one year and we decided to go through the Forgotten Highway and we came up over a hill and I saw one little road cone, an orange road cone, sitting in the road in the distance, and when I got to the turn round the bend, the whole half of the highway had fallen into the valley. It was just one road cone. And they later on closed the whole road. But if it had been nighttime, you know, you could have just gone straight off the road. But this place was and a lot of people avoided it because it was not a shortcut. But now they've sealed it.

Paul Smith: 10:16

But I was on this idea. Here's this place. It's so magnificent, most people know about it, but they just don't go that way. It's too hard to go that way, it takes too long, and this is part of the thinking about ancient paths. Scriptures talk about finding the ancient paths. It seems as though it's too hard, it takes too long, and you know there are places for you know instant praying and quick prayer, but there is a place for taking your time in the Presence. And every time I talk about this I remember this this old guy and some of the older ladies who would just take their time in the Presence of God and obviously had taken time, and that really affected us as teenagers. It had a huge impact on us about the whole matter of praying. And so, ancient paths/ forgotten highways, has become a bit of a, ... how do we find the ancient paths? Obviously, I believe that's where the Lord wants to take us and we find it easier to find that place of engagement with God. It's not something you can work up, it's a Holy Spirit thing, an awareness of his presence, and he's drawing you in. So there's a whole lot of thoughts around that.

Paul Smith: 12:12

I did think about one stage, calling it the wilderness cry, because John the Baptist came preaching in the wilderness and crying out and I felt that COVID was like a wilderness and the sad thing that I was aware of, a lot of people came, didn't come out of the wilderness crying out to God, but crying out for coffee, crying out for back to normal.

Paul Smith: 12:40

The thing about that whole story of John the Baptist he was crying out in the wilderness and people came to him and his message was repent and you know, the Lord, ... God's coming to do something. So I think in this moment, in where we're at, it needs a different kind of praying, but it's got to be the cry of the Spirit. S o that's been my, my musings, but more and more becoming, as we've talked, ... I may have a bit more time to sit down actually put it down (in writing), but every time I think about those prayer meetings as teenagers and we would all be in our early teens, 15, 16, being in those meetings, I can remember them almost like a video plays.

Mark Banyard: 13:46

Very real right now.

Paul Smith: 13:47

I feel it every time. So something the Holy Spirit did obviously just, and it's been very precious.

Mark Banyard: 13:56

Very good, thank you, very good.

Mark Banyard: 13:59

I want to bring Jan in, ... all those prayer meetings when you were a teenager, ... d o you have a memory, an anecdote, just something that,

Jan Smith: 14:09

yeah

Jan Smith: 14:12

I guess it's not realising then something was deposited, and it wasn't always sort of on the surface, you didn't, it wasn't something you were conscious of all the time. But then the moments come and it just just the stirring. It created a longing for the much more that was there that God had for his people, for the world, the heart of God that he wants us to feel, to carry. And to, you know, the Lord says, "my yoke is easy and my burden is light", And yet you've got to make a decision. If you want to, do you want to go there, do you really want to go there?

Jan Smith: 15:36

And at times you think, oh, how hard will that be? But really it's not about how hard it is, it's just about a willing heart. The burden is easy, his yoke is easy and his burden is light, because it's a sense of joy that it brings, knowing that you've heard a tiny, tiny bit, a tiny bit of his heart, and we can never, ever, you know, understand the vastness of his love and how he feels. But just even to have a pinprick of that deposited in us, it just makes a difference and it just, it just is with you and doesn't go away. It just leaves that longing, that desire to go further, much more. That's all I can really express, not very well.

Mark Banyard: 17:01

No, very well.

Paul Smith: 17:03

One of the things we noticed and I noticed and realised, later on, when we listened to these elderly saints praying, they prayed like that at home. This wasn't something you did in a meeting. This was, and you felt like you were slightly intruding in this intimate moment as they were engaging the Lord in prayer. And you realized this is the way they are. They do this, probably in their private home. You felt like you were intruding somehow

Mark Banyard: 17:38

but yet still invited into that moment

Jan Smith: 17:40

Yeah

Mark Banyard: 17:41

welcomed

Jan Smith: 17:42

yeah

Paul Smith: 17:42

I think that was, i t was a place, because as teenagers, we wanted to get to the prayer meeting and our pastor was,

Mark Banyard: 17:50

and how unusual was that?

Paul Smith: 17:53

It is, well, it is today, unfortunately, in a sense, and I don't want to be making judgements

Mark Banyard: 17:58

but there are exceptions

Paul Smith: 18:00

but we have touched it at times when the burden of the Holy Spirit just hits the meeting and not everyone catches it, and my prayer is I hope they're hearing. Like, we used to listen and there's something marking them. There's this cry. You can't shake it off, you have to carry it. This is broken. This is the challenge. It still affects us. It's affected us. Not all the time, but at moments, oh,

Mark Banyard: 18:47

What really hits me about what you're sharing is that this picture of a young pastor raising up young people. But the way you were raised up was by being invited into something that a past generation was carrying. And these old people that, in every other regard, might not be of any interest to you, what they were carrying was real treasure, so much. It was life and it was the burden of God's heart in prayer, different perhaps from a Holy Spirit renewal where it's a move where it's about renewal, or it's about sending, or it's about healing or whatever, but it's the raising up of the generation. Here you are now, all these years later, and you carry that same burden with you.

Paul Smith: 19:32

We're the old people!

Mark Banyard: 19:34

You're the old people, but and I think that's so and that's why I really wanted to just talk with you today and thank you for sharing and keep going, write that book!

Paul Smith: 19:50

Yes, yes, thank you.

Mark Banyard: 19:51

Thank you.

Mark Banyard: 19:59

Thanks for listening. We hope you enjoyed this episode of Kingdom Talk. You can find all the notes and links for today's show at our website, www. kingdomadvancedministries. com/ podcast and, once again, if you enjoyed our show, be sure to subscribe so that you won't miss any of our upcoming episodes. Bye for now, and may God bless.