{"id":21164,"date":"2013-03-10T10:00:32","date_gmt":"2013-03-10T08:00:32","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/?p=21164"},"modified":"2013-03-10T10:13:49","modified_gmt":"2013-03-10T08:13:49","slug":"jesus-on-a-chair","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/story\/jesus-on-a-chair\/","title":{"rendered":"Jesus on a Chair"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Empty<\/a><\/p>\n

A man\u2019s daughter had asked the local pastor to come and pray with her father. When the pastor arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped up on two pillows and an empty chair beside his bed. The priest assumed that the old fellow had been informed of his visit.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u201cI guess you were expecting me,\u201d he said.<\/strong>
\n\u201cNo, who are you?\u201d<\/strong>
\n\u201cI\u2019m the new associate at your local church,\u201d the pastor replied.<\/strong>
\n\u201cWhen I saw the empty chair, I figured you knew I was going to show up.\u201d<\/strong>
\n\u201cOh yeah, the chair,\u201d said the bedridden man. \u201cWould you mind closing the door?\u201d<\/strong>
\nPuzzled, the pastor shut the door.<\/strong>
\n\u201cI\u2019ve never told anyone this, not even my daughter,\u201d said the man.<\/strong>
\n\u201cBut all of my life I have never known how to pray. At church I used to hear the pastor talk about prayer, but it always went right over my head..\u201d<\/strong>
\n\u201cI abandoned any attempt at prayer,\u201d the old man continued, \u201cuntil one day about four years ago my best friend said to me, \u2018Joe, prayer is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus. Here\u2019s what I suggest. Sit down on a chair, place an empty chair in front of you, and in faith see Jesus on the chair. It\u2019s not spooky because he promised, \u2018I\u2019ll be with you always.\u2019 Then just speak to him and listen in the same way you\u2019re doing with me right now.\u201d<\/strong>
\n\u201cSo, I tried it and I\u2019ve liked it so much that I do it a couple of hours every day. I\u2019m careful, though. If my daughter saw me talking to an empty chair, she\u2019d either have a nervous breakdown or send me off to the funny farm.\u201d<\/strong>
\nThe pastor was deeply moved by the story and encouraged the old guy to continue on the journey. Then he prayed with him, and returned to the church.<\/strong>
\nTwo nights later the daughter called to tell the pastor that her daddy had died that afternoon.<\/strong>
\n\u201cDid he seem to die in peace?\u201d he asked.<\/strong>
\n\u201cYes, when I left the house around two o\u2019clock, he called me over to his bedside, told me one of his corny jokes, and kissed me on the cheek. When I got back from the store an hour later, I found him dead. But there was something strange, In fact, beyond strange-kinda weird.<\/strong>
\nApparently, just before Daddy died, he leaned over and rested his head on a chair beside the bed<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A man\u2019s daughter had asked the local pastor to come and pray with her father. When the pastor arrived, he found the man lying in bed with his head propped […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[90],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-21164","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-story"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21164","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21164"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21164\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":21168,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21164\/revisions\/21168"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21164"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21164"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lebanesesaints.com\/Home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21164"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}