Brendan Manning told a story about a lady who called at his door, about 35 yrs of age, in tears. She asked him to go and visit her dying father and to pray for him, citing the fact that she had asked her Pastor three times and he said he would but always seemed to forget amidst his administrative duties and busy schedule...
Manning arrived at the hospital to find the father with an empty chair next to his bed as though he had been expecting a visitor. Seeing Manning's inquisitive look, the man said, ‘Oh the chair’ and went on to relate why the chair was by his bedside...
He had struggled with prayer all his life and confided this to Manning as a life-long struggle and had after many years approached his Pastor with courage and told him that he could hardly pray two words and also that he got little or nothing from his sermons on prayer as they seemed to 'fly over his head'. The Pastor gave him a theological book by a Swiss theologian that he couldn’t understand either which was returned the next week.
The dying man went on to relate how it was a good friend of his, by no means the most ‘spiritual person that he knew, that had given him some simple but profound advice on prayer....
‘Prayer’ he said, ‘is just a simple matter of having a conversation with Jesus’. ‘All you do is sit down next to an empty chair and by faith see Jesus on that empty chair, and he has promised to be with you until the end of time, then just speak to Him and listen as you would in a conversation with your best friend’
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