The lesson of the chair

Once when I flew back from Sweden to America my plane first went to Amsterdam and then on to Washington/Dulles. I always pray for opportunities to talk to people about Jesus while I am on a long trip. My flights to Europe are sometimes up to 8 hours so I have plenty of time. I could just read which I do sometimes or I could watch movies all the way over (which I also have been guilty of), but I consider the latter a total waste of 8 hours.

This particular morning before I began the flight from Stockholm I forgot to ask for an aisle seat. I like to get an aisle seat so that I can get up and walk or stretch whenever I want to instead of having to crawl over someone else that is sleeping or having to ask someone to please move while I go relieve myself. Anyways I forgot and so I was stuck the whole trip over from Stockholm to Amsterdam, and from Amsterdam to Washington D.C. and Washington D.C. to Jacksonville Florida all on window seats. It didn’t really hit me what I had done until I sat down on the flight from Amsterdam to Washington D.C.

When I realized that I had been given a window seat and that there was a man sitting beside me hemming me in I thought oh no I need to change seats. He was talking with another person across the aisle and I thought that maybe I could get that person to change with me. No such luck. He told me that both he and she had asked for an aisle seat. I realized then that I needed to look and see if an aisle seat was empty. There were a few that were empty so I thought, once this plane gets up in the air, I will simply get up and take one. But then it hit me. I remembered my prayer, “Lord, I ask for an opportunity to talk to someone about your Son Jesus while I am on this trip today”. But I fought it by thinking that the man beside couldn’t speak English very well. I have tried at times to share with people before that didn’t have a good grasp of English and if they don’t speak English or Swedish it gets real difficult for me. Anyways, surely this guy doesn’t speak English very well and I would really like an aisle seat.

As I sat in my seat and the plane was about 15 to 20 minutes in the air I realized that I shouldn’t get up and change seats until I had at least tried to talk to the man beside me. Yes, he was reading a book in Dutch, but still I needed to try. Sooo I waited until the drinks came by. I usually like to try and begin a conversation when the Stewards bring the drinks by. Even though I thought that this conversation was never going to take off I still couldn’t forget my prayer and thought I must give the Lord a chance to answer it. He has surely done it before so why not today.

I don’t even remember now how I began but I did. I really couldn’t believe the results. This man that was sitting beside me could speak English very well. We starting talking and as our talk continued I slowly moved into spiritual things and then I was totally shocked. The book the man was reading in Dutch I was very familiar with. It was the Alpha course by Nicky Gumble ( I didn’t notice the name of the author or else I would have been able to figure it out). It is the book that God has used in many Swedes life to give them a second chance to consider the claims of Christ and how they can begin a personal relationship with God. I have even helped teach the course at our church plant in Stockholm. This man sitting beside me had gone to the first meeting of the Alpha course but was going to be in Florida for the next three weeks so the pastor teaching the course had given him a copy of the book and told him to read the next three chapters so he wouldn’t miss anything. It became very obvious to me that God was after this man. The Hound of Heaven had treed this Dutch man and then He had placed me beside to speak to him and help him along the way on his journey to meet Jesus.

For the next 5 hours of the trip this Dutch man and I talked about Jesus, the Bible, the Alpha course and so many other important subjects. I felt so privileged to be sitting there talking with him and being used by God (and having my prayer answered in such a real way) to take this man a little ways farther on his journey to meet the Creator of the universe. I was also blessed to see the excitement in the Dutchman’s eyes when he found out I was a Christian and I was sitting right next to him and that I had actually taught some of the book (Alpha) he was now reading. He kept turning to the lady next to him and telling her what we were talking about. He told me he had seen that I was reading a Christian book when the flight first started and he wondered what it was about.

I call this story the lesson of the chair because I was looking for an opportunity to move from my chair to another one that would put me beside the aisle. I had prayed about an opportunity to talk to someone about Jesus that day but wasn’t looking for the answer. God had placed me in the right chair but I wanted to move away from it and I would have missed God’s answer to my prayer. When we pray we must keep our eyes open for answers. We must be prepared that God will answer us and use us for His kingdom. In the letter to the Colossians Paul say, “Devote yourselves to prayer with an alert mind and a thankful heart.”