PREACHING TO A TREE
	One early morning around 03:00 my Indian dad heard God tell him in his sleep: 'Run!' He woke up from the dream, and God kept telling him: 'Run!' He understood that it was not just a dream. Amazed, he asked God, '…at this hour of the day?' And God answered him in a firm tone: 'Run!' My dad thought it was weird, but he quietly sneaked out of the door while the rest of the family were sleeping and he ran, not knowing which left or right turns to take. He just ran. After some time, God said, 'Stop!' So he stopped. While he was catching his breath under a tree in the darkness, God told him: 'Preach to the tree!' My dad just gasped: 'Preach to the tree?' He was certain he heard it right, but he was upset. 'You disturb my sleep, then You ask me to run, now You want me to preach to a tree in the dark, in the middle of nowhere? Is this some kind of a joke?!' God simply said: 'Preach!' So he preached the Gospel of salvation to the tree in the dark. He preached about the Fall of Mankind and how even nature suffers from this, but then God in His love sent his Son to forgive the sins of mankind and how His Son died on the cross to redeem the sinful world. At the end of his sermon, as a good evangelist, he gave an altar call. 'If you have sinned, would you want to submit your life to Jesus?' To his astonishment he heard a shivering 'Yes' from the dark tree! A young man climbed down from the tree, trembling and weeping. He had a rope in his hands and he wanted to hang himself from that very tree, thinking nobody would look out for him at this hour. That day my dad understood what it means to obey God. My dad is now 81 and he has served God for the last 47 years. Source: Mercy Simson, Joel News 977, 12 January 2016.