Teach My People

It was something that I could not really define because I’d not heard it before. But I knew it was God. Because it was not an audible thing. But nothin’ that I heard with my ears. It felt like from the depths within me, within my soul. It felt like something that just caused my entire body to tremor. All It said was that you are to teach My people.

LUTHER BENTON couldn’t believe that God was speaking to him, but he knew he wasn’t dreaming and he hadn’t been drinking. It was just another night at Hoi An as he sat on his bunker watching the flares go off in the distance. About a week later it happened again during the daytime. As he was walking along, every sound around him ceased, and the voice said simply, “You must.”

The young hospital corpsman had one other encounter with God while serving in Vietnam. One night his compound was attacked and overrun by VC. As he was praying and shooting, a rocket-propelled grenade hit his bunker, lifting him high in the air. He lost the fillings in his teeth but not his life. He thought to himself, “If I lived through that, what am I s’posed to do now?”

Back in the States, he began to answer that question. He went to a church near his base in Norfolk and talked to the minister. He started working with the young people of the church and organized a Bible study program. A few years later he left the Navy and enrolled in the National Theological Seminary and College in Baltimore. After graduation, he became a licensed minister in the Baptist Church and returned to the same church in Norfolk to lead a teaching ministry.

Our call from God may not be as clear and direct as that of this man. It may take much more prayer and discernment on our part. Our answers may not even come directly; they may take the form of doors closing and opening in our lives. There are many ways to discover the purpose God has for each of us. True fulfillment comes when we find what that purpose is and live it out in our lives.